These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.
(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here.
)
These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.
(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here.
)
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Titled "To hell and back", from Dateline NBC. Carlton now peaches that everybody gets a free pass to Heaven--everybody. Says Pearson: "I was resentful of God. See, if you fear God the way we’re taught to fear Him, you’ll serve
Travis Johnson, over at The Edge Church Think Tank, posted an article bemoaning the incredible shrinking church: “The Great Shrinking Church. What Gives?!?!” First, he cites some statistics from The American Church:
- 18.7%: Americans in church in 2000
- 18.0%: Americans in church in 2003
- 11.7%: Americans projected to be in church by 2050
- 4,600: New churches from 1990–2000
- 38,802: How many new churches there should have been in order to keep pace with American population.
That America is becoming an increasingly secular nation is no surprise. That traditional church style seems increasingly irrelevant in the “naughties” and that church numbers are in decline—again—no surprise.
So, taking an unflinching look at the numbers (there was more cited), Travis concludes:
“In my mind, those statistics absolutely prove that we MUST move every single priority to the side burner. Establishing new churches and transitioning declining churches needs to be
First, I blogged about Blake Bergstrom and his hilarious attempt to have Lot say “pitch his tents.” Then we had John Ortberg entreating: “Let everything that has breasts, praise the Lord,” along with William Willimon’s story of an evangelist unintentionally preaching the shorts off a church-skipper.
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On the time-worn religious use of the word F---
The obscenity f--- is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys,” from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The |
There’s an essential irony in all the talk about the emergent church vs. the old-style church and where they intersect. Or, maybe—to be charitable—there’s an essential paradox. To wit: how is it possible to decry and denounce all the old structures and forms as being irrelevant without falling into the same trap of culturally-bound irrelevance yourself? Didn’t the Jesus People try this experiment? Didn’t the Quakers do this? Hasn’t the patient gone through the same exploratory surgery time and time again?
And yet, the patient still lives, the church and Christ’s ministry continue on, and the revolutionaries represent small pockets of like-minded individuals that have become all but footnotes in church history.
I’m not emergent. I’m not postmodern; but, then, I’m not modern. I’m not fundamentalistic. I’m a mongrel. While there’s much in my Fellowship I can be critical about, there’s much more