Reading with Challies

Blogger Tim Challies, a main Young Calvinist blogger, from time to time has something called Reading the Classics Together. I haven't been too interested in the former selected books, but this time I am majorly interested. For this next book he has selected Gresham Machen's classic work on the advance of Liberal Protestantism in the early 20th century, Christianity and Liberalism (first pub. 1923). Since this topic is of utmost interest to me, as you know if you read this blog, I decided to get the book and read it with Tim and hundreds of others. We are supposed to have read the Introduction by this Thursday (June 2) so I am in the middle of reading that now. This is really good stuff and certainly can be applied today to Postmodernism vs. Christianity. And, I believe this book will give many of us the foundations for what is happening in churches today. The only difference is--we would substitute the word "postmodern" for Machen's words of modernism, liberalism, and science. There is still time for you to get the book. Amazon.com charged me only $14.19 for delivery and book within 3-5 days. If you want it by Thursday, you obviously would pay more for faster delivery.

Here is the link at Tim Challies' site that describes this reading adventure:

http://www.challies.com/reading-classics-together/reading-classics-together-a-reminder-1

The Pillars' Legacy

My friend called me yesterday and told me a pillar of the church I left had died. He was a Charismatic in what was once a very evangelical church in a very liberal denomination. He was a prayer warrior and was able to deliver many people from their emotional and spiritual bondages. Today I thought about his legacy. But what is his legacy? This church now is going down the emergent trail. What a disappointment to his legacy. I began to think of all the things he did for that church as well as what so many other pillars had done and wondered how the church could have gotten so off? As I was thinking about this, I realized that the people who changed people's lives had left the church, many hurt; others in disgust; others had moved away or died. And our pillar of faith had to drop out to care for his Alzheimer's wife. This left "the termites" who undermined the church's very doctrinal base as well as elders who seemed to be more carefree doctrinally than those pillars who left or died.
So what was the use of what the pillars had done if it had all gone up in smoke?
But then I realized something. While they were active in the church they had mentored and helped and prayed for people. THey had readically changed lives. A few of those people who had accepted the pillars' ministry were still there fighting for the faith of the church. But most had left. However, those that had left had gone to other churches taking the legacy put into their lives by the pillars with them, thus enriching their new church. My optimism returned.

More from Smythe on the Tithing Fiasco

As I've written here before, Peter Smythe, IMO, is one of the rare people I call "The New Kind of Faith Teacher." He correctly blasts New Testament tithing.

Here is his latest post about that subject and it is gooooood!

Christian Carnival CCCLXXXI

Welcome to the Christian Carnival this week. There is some really good stuff here, so I hope you will take the opportunity to scan through the entire list. Here's the line up:

*I've been studying philosophy for the past 5 years but I have to admit Maryann of the Ichthus77 blog is on a much higher level than I am. In her post entitled, Why Sam Harris' "objective moral truth" hovers over an abyss, she presents a logical argument to "deconstruct" (sorry--I'm studying postmodern philosophy right now) Sam Harris's atheistic arguments.

*I never thought about relationships as part of stewardship. But Joe of the Personal Finance By The Book blog talks about the first two of four points in this fascinating post entitled, Stewardship Baseball Part 1.

*Here's an interesting question:
Why did God create the world as He did, in certain shapes and colors?
Jessie of the What? blog gives us a possible answer in her post entitled, Beauty is Created by God.

*What are the top 20 Bible verses you think a Christian should know? Test you results with Kaleb of the W2W Soul blog as he presents his top 20 to keep us strong despite our cultural influences in his post, Top Bible Verses to Memorize.

*Christina of the Sisternotes blog tackles the woman submission issue. In her post she talks about how she came to see herself constantly using a certain word. To find out what that word was, read her post entitled, A Woman's Role, Part I.

*I've read many comments on the "eye of the needle" statement by Jesus, but never what Tim of the Faith and Finance blog presents to us in his post, Eye of The Needle...Will The Rich Go To Heaven?

*This blog from Dave at his site, Letters from another life shows us the way through the murky waters of correcting our church leaders in his post entitled, Easy to criticize, harder to edify.

*What is the "Love Guitar" approach to guitar playing? Actually, if you are in music, you probably already know the technique Claudia shows is in her post entitled, Love Guitar: Your Guitar Practice Can Be Spiritual Practice at the StringLove Guitar Lessons blog. But whether or not you are in music, if you either play or want ot play the guitar, this is a good read.

*Ong shows us Salvation Checklist - Tipskey at his Tipskey - Unlock Practicality blog. In this post he gives a really neat, short synoptic outline of the salvation message and how to communicate it.

*This post was fascinating to me and I think it will be to you too. INSPIKS has a post entitled, The Historical Accuracy of the Bible, in which they present several discoveries that confirm various Bible passages. And although I knew about a few that Inspiks lists, I didn't know about most of them presented.

*Every week we learn a bit more about Micey of the finding God's way blog. In this post, entitled, what's in a name?, we learn more including how she got the name "micey."

*In his post, Helping victims of the Joplin, MO. tornado, Barry of the who am I? blog tells us how to help.

*Harold Camping. What feelings come to you about his "predictions?" I thought Ridge's post, at The Second Coming of Christ was a very good summation of what so many of us feel about this situation. Here is an example from his post,
What has bothered me is that when I talked to people, they really have mocked the whole idea that the world is coming to an end.
Ridge's blogsite is here.

*Josh of the What Christians Want To Know blog gives us some very good Bible passages about peace. He divides the verses into four sections as follows:
What Jesus said about peace, Things you can do to increase peace, Living at peace with others and Other quotes about peace.
Read his post entitled, Bible Verses About Peace: 20 Great Scripture Quotes.

*Andrew of the Bullet's Brain blog writes about, when prayers aren't answered, what do you do? He begins with a sort of capricious prayer to illustrate his point (for all of us readers over 30--does anyone know who Brian Regan is?). His post is entitled, What I'm Thinking: Caprice/Son?.

*Ambra of the you129.com blog gives ten choices you probably should make when sexual temptation comes your way, in her post, Ten Key Choices to Keep You Out of Trouble.

*While we have Harold Camping here, they have A. J. Miller in Australia, who, as Rodney of the Beyond Belief blog tell us, thinks he is Jesus and his wife is Mary Magdalene. Rodney interviews Dr. Ross Clifford about why people follow these false teachers and how we can guard ourselves against them in his post, One of them must be wrong.

Fundamentalist Evangelicals! Let's Organize and Be Kewl!

I've been reading a very interesting book, published this year, entitled, Join the Club by Tina Rosenberg. It's about social relationships accomplishing things that "campaigns" don't. In the book, Rosenberg cites examples of No Smoking campaigns put on by adult associations and the health community completely failing with teens. On the other hand, campaigns begun as a teen rebellion succeeds. But since smoking is usually done as a rebellion, then what kind of rebellion would appeal to teens to stop smoking? South Carolina led the charge of teens against smoking by diverting their attention against the tobacco companies. Ads and "cool" clubs cocentrated on letting teens know, in the teens' media and lingo, that the tobacco companies were trying to kill them AND, the companies knew how dangerous cigarettes were the whole time. In states where these clubs existed, smoking among teens dropped significantly. Although the book is not a Christian book, the author cites Willow Creek Church's small groups as an example of this social peer pressure and how it helps group members. The last part of the book is devoted to the youth uprising in Serbia. This was the most fascinating part of the book to me because this movement was not only non-violent, but they did silly and creative things. Now remember, they were trying to topple a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. One wouldn't think being silly, cool and creative would do that. But it did.

OK...I have an idea. Let's topple the Cool ones (emergents) by being even "cooler." Let's make the substitutionary atonement relevant and cool. And since I am an old person, I insist that we need to be involved too. After all, we who grew up just after WWII had our cool stuff too. Remember "Kookie Talk" (77 Sunset Drive TV show)? Remember being "boss" in the 1960s? (No, it had nothing to do with Bruce Springsteen; he came much later). Remember the cool dances during those times? See? Us older folks can be "kewl" too.

Let's Organize! Let's Rock!

Finally! The PCUSA Suspense is Over!

Well, surprise, surprise! The Presbyterian Church USA finally did it after waffling around all of these years.

The old part of their constitution said,

...all ministers, elders, and deacons live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness..


And now the new part says,

Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000). The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G.14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003). Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates..

I'm wondering what took them so long. Maybe it was all of those horribly fundamentalist, more evangelical churches in this overall liberal denomination. Maybe they held up the "progress." I'm not really sad about this as I knew 20 years ago it was inevitable and the suspense of when it would happen grew to be agonizing. So now the BIG question is: How many PCUSA churches will finally leave the fold?
Or maybe a better question is: Will any leave the fold?


For the complete story of this event from the PCUSA site, go here.