Jesus-and-baptism. Jesus-and-communion. Jesus-and-the Westminster confession. Hmmm… Jesus-and-angels. Jesus-and-Moses. Hmmm…

Check this out, especially those of you denominating yourselves as “Reformed.” I’m always interested in seeing how baptism plays out over there, since it’s like the #1 issue to fight about.

The Lack of Chick Translations: I must apologize to the blog. Here at Translation Industries, Inc. (“Building a Better Fundamentalist Nutjob”), we’ve become rather overloaded with actual work. Rest assured – future translations are planned and will commence after a short delay.

Quick Question to our Blog Tech Guru: How can we get “Chicky Narratives” added to the list o’ categories again?

1. Ditto.
2. Ad hominem with KH leaves me all psyched out and no place to go.
3. RCC taught me all prots were condemned. I’m better now.
4. Who are the Bereans?
5. Read the Screwtape Letters and saw his Video Bio. I dislike CSL, but I would read his stuff if threatened with bodily harm.
6. Acute Statement.
7. In other words, this is how nuclear and rocket scientist get such a bad rap.

Drugs I believe drug Ads are advancing our culture in the knowledge of evil. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there regarding the CIA and the infiltration of banana republic regimes. If the US were serious about drugs, we would take them on, the way we did Saddam. Propaganda and spin.

I am sooo behind. I have some thoughts on the children in church thing, but those will have to be posted later when I have more than five minutes left before class.

Quickly, though, Noel, I have another few suggestions to add to your list. If I duplicate any, I apologise.

The War for the Oaks

Magic Kingdom for Sale – SOLD!

Jane Eyre

A Farewell to Arms

Catcher In The Rye

Dragonriders of Pern – note, this is an entire series. Start with Dragonsdawn

That’s all off the top of my head. If I think of anymore, I’ll let you know. :)

Yes, Tom, doing nothing is a better alternative. Just like doctors swear to “first, do no harm.” Even if the drug war were simply an ineffective approach that didn’t make things worse, the fact that it consumes resources that would be better spent elsewhere makes it immoral.

For the record, I’m not a disinterested by-stander in the realm of substance abuse. I have been around faith-based treatment programs for alcoholism and drug use since I was 6 months old. My father devoted his entire life to working with addicts. My first paying job was at a rescue mission. During my college studies, I spent several days each week working with drug users. I’ve witnessed my alcoholic “uncles” from the mission during relapse, when they show up at our house in the middle of the night and piss all over the porch. I’ve cared for babies while their moms fought (and in most cases, lost) their fight to stay clean. I’ve fished kids out of back alleys and crack houses where they had collapsed, rode in the ambulance with them, held their hands when they woke up and told me not to bother telling their parents, who were too strung out themselves to notice. I’ve held crying 15-year-old girls as decide to give up their crack-addicted babies because they knew couldn’t care for themselves, let alone their kid. I’ve been in the prisons that are full of fathers, sons, brothers and husbands doing time because they were in a car with someone who was carrying when they got profiled.

I’ve fought (and am still fighting) subtance abuse myself. I’ve struggled with compulsive use of alcohol and drugs. I’ve had legal troubles. I’ve destroyed relationships. I’ve damaged property and people. I’ve been to (and still go to) 12-step programs.

A lot of people say things that sound right when it comes to drugs, but they’ve never been there. I’ve been on the battlefield, and I’m telling you that we are not winning this war. All we’re doing is letting those who aren’t in the trenches feel better about themselves.

I’m not a bleeding heart on this stuff, by any stretch. I understand and value the rule of law. I vote Republican, generally, and I support conservative values for the most part. I believe firmly that drug abuse is a serious problem, and I agree that it’s a form of immorality. I know that no addict can blame anyone by himself for his addiciton. But the “War on Drugs” has proven time and time again to be as effective a measure as medical “bleeding” was two centuries ago, and it’s time to face the facts. We’re making it worse. We need to stop.

On The War On Drugs: Man, I love this topic! But I’ll sit back for a while longer and see how it plays, first. One of these days I’ll work up the energy to compile a long list of arguments for each position, and demonstrate how, generally speaking, people holding each position never actually answer the objections of the other, they just use some of the same words to answer a slightly different problem. And it works both ways, too! What fun.

Pepsi Drinkers: Thanks to generosity of a certain BHT fellow by whose initials I am unworthy to indicate sarcasm, I am reminded that some parts of this country have already begun to receive Pepsi bottles labeled with the Apple iTunes Music Store promotion. One in three bottles has a code under the cap good for a free song of your choice from the iTunes Music Store, redeemable beginning February 1. If you watch the SuperBowl, you’ll see commercials, don’t worry.

So, if you’re not an iTunes user, now is a perfect time to start (Mac or Windows only, Linux users will have to use another computer long enough to burn the track to CD).

If you’re not going to do that, then I’m a perfect candidate for receiving emails (pwinn-at-winn-dot-com) or IMs (AIM:PWinn089, ICQ:2561556, MSN:pwinn089-at-hotmail-dot-com, Yahoo!:pwinnski, Jabber:pwinn@jabber.org) with the ten-letter codes you aren’t going to use. Why me? Um, because I asked nicely!

Look for free music under the cap of a 20oz or 1-liter Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Sierra Mist near you.

Sorry if this posts twice…I’m having computer trouble.

Not that your comment was directed at me, necessarily, but I don’t live in the suburbs. I teach in Muhlenberg County, which is nicknamed Methenburg, and I spent four years teaching in an area that was plagued by drug abuse, even if it wasn’t as obvious as some of the things you mentioned. And not to play “I’ve seen more plight than you have,” but I grew up around the abuse of almost every drug you could imagine. My first step-father was a heroin junkie, my friends smoked pot and other funny-smelling stuff at the busstop every morning, and drugs were dealt in the alley behind my school (Johnson Elementary, 6th street, Lexington). I don’t have time to go into the rest of the melodramatic story of my sister’s struggles and years in rehab, my brother’s drug escapades, all the times I was offered drugs by crack-heads, etc etc. But even if all that weren’t the case, I’m not sure the “You don’t llive around it so you can’t comment on it” argument works. Isn’t that like the old chestnut about how men can’t comment on abortion since they can’t get pregnant?

Having lived in 2 different neighborhoods where drugs were a pretty big problem, I’m really not in favor of deregulating crack, meth, heroin, or prescription drugs. Drug abuse destroys families and neighborhoods, and it’s just not worth it. It’s really easy to talk about it in your nice suburbs where the only drug users are your kids, and they mostly keep it to out behind the church after youth group where you don’t notice it.

Frankly, I think the solution is shooting drug dealers. Would you sell crack if getting caught means getting shot? Probably not!

Hey, that rhymed!

I am dead set against drugs, but I don’t think that means I have to be in favor of any and all techniques to get rid of them. Some techniques just do not work. Would I be in favor of paying millions of dollars to pass out salami to drug users as an alternative to crack? No. Why not? Because it wouldn’t work, and it would be a waste of money. Similarly, when the “war on drugs” has failed miserably, I choose not to be in favor of it either. Honestly, I don’t know that I have the correct solution to the problem (I’m no expert in the field), but to me that does not mean that I have to support the government’s ill-advised and failed one.

Really, I think the answer lies in helping people want to stop doing the drugs, as opposed to punishing them when they do. Of course I am not saying that no one should ever be punished for a drug-related offense. But throwing people in jail for every drug offense does nothing to get them to stop except while they are physically in the jail (assuming—ha ha—that there are no drugs to be had in the jails)—it does nothing to address addiction, emotional problems leading to drugs, social attitudes toward drugs, etc. I know drugs are harmful (my brother just got out of his 3rd tour of prison, one of which was on a drug-related charge. He deserves to be there, but not because he smokes pot). But since when is everything that is harmful to individuals illegal? Of course, that is a completely different argument.

I don’t know. It is a complex issue; and as I say, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I am sure that what’s happening now is not working.

I’m really not going to get into it too much except to say…well, what I’ve already said. I have to go to work here in a little bit. And I’m not sure how much reason rules the day when things that I have posted, believing that I made a good logical argument, get misconstrued as personal attacks.

Be warned: While emotion favors the war on drugs, reason doesn’t support it. Here at the BHT, reason tends to rule the day. Just something to keep in mind as you wade in toe-to-toe with Jim. Good luck!

Jim,
What’s the alternative? Doing nothing? Just sitting back and allowing the nation to become one big Amsterdam with a hash house on every corner? (I’m overexaggerating here, but you get the point)

Maybe the way the battle has been fought has not been very effective, but I don’t think every little anti-drug measure should be ridiculed. As a Christian, living in the meth lab capital of the world, it seems, I really think illegal drugs are something I should be against. If what we have isn’t working, maybe we need to try a new tactic. Not being an expert, I’ll leave it up to whoever the “drug czar” is, but I don’t think twiddling our thumbs and building more rehab facilities is the answer.

Great list! I’m with you on #2, #3 (obviously), #6 (though I enjoy making my theology more obtuse).

Michael: I’ve actually thought it true for a long time that all Christians have trouble passing on their religious beliefs. Of course, I’ve always run in P/C circles, too. If it is in fact easier out here, then I’ll be happy, but I’m not relaxing, either. I’m speaking on more or less this very topic in four months, so I look forward to your article.

I can tell you this: before I joined up with the Anglicans, I would have said that non-P/Cers have a greater retention rate because of the lack of “real” content. The image from the outside to me was a bunch of people going through empty motions and participating in a social group.

Also, great article on the RCC, and great summation post, too. You’re relative-linking now, you whiz! Clearly I could phrase my own discontent with the practices of P/C churches as just that – a quest to find real authority, or at least a lack of pretenders thereto.

Tom, sorry to get in your face first thing in the morning, but really, now…

The “War on Drugs” is a joke, and the incredible artless waste of money (it’s MY money and yours that pays for this stuff) that constitute “drug awareness campaign ads” is sinful. We’ve been “fighting” against drugs for decades, and by all accounts more people are using drugs than ever, and they are starting at an earlier age. Why is it that people with the common sense to oppose morally “neutral” child sex education in public schools can’t seem to apply the same logic to drugs? We increase sex education, and kids have sex. We increase drug education, and kids take drugs. It seems pretty simple. I’m not arguing that the tactics we’ve deployed against drug use are behind all drug use, but they clearly aren’t working, and we should be willing to give them up.

Michael: What you’re writing about reminded me of the third verse of “Mm mm mm mm” by the Crash Test Dummies:

‘Cause then there was this boy whose
Parents made him come directly home right after school
And when they went to their church
They shook and lurched all over the church floor
He couldn’t quite explain it
They’d always just gone there

I wonder who this child has been listening to?

I don’t know if I can get this new IM thing written or not. Basically, we are talking here about religious (fanatic) parents- good people really- who are just doing things that will send their kids out of the faith like a rocket.

For example, would you take a small child- let’s say 6-8- to a Pentecostal prayer meeting where there would be lots of dancing in the Spirit, loud talking to God, rebuking of the devil and demons, speaking in tongues, sightings of angels, etc? Would you tell a child of the same age to spend their time praying? Would you have your kids memorize scripture, or write scripture as a punishment? Would you explain to a child that their bad thoughts and actions are because of the devil and demons trying to get them to do bad things? Would you pray “hedges of protection” around your kids, as if you were magically stopping bad things from happening?

If someone says, “If you raise your little children as Christians, they will turn out to be good Christian teenagers,” what might be your response?

We can add James Brown to the grungy mugshot gallery, along with Nick Nolte, Glen Campbell (our beloved brother in Christ), and Michael Jackson.

I Feel Good. NOT !!!

Things I learned here and elsewhere..

When I asked Michael for a beer, my goal to read more than post because I wanted to learn some things about other people’s views on Christianity. Except for a few subjects I have stayed quite close to my goal.
apply jn where needed..

1. People that have other ideas than me might not be wrong.. If you knew me, you know that’s a major development!
2. Michael is the first person who ever explained his views on an Old Earth that I respected.
3. I have respect for other protestant denominations other than Baptist. I was taught that Methodists/Preysbeterians/Lutherans were all in varying degrees -always wrong, liberal, incorrect or Catholic wannabes (Lutheran).
4. No one ever mentions the Bereans? Sup with them?
5. CS Lewis is not always boring, but the first two things of his I read were.
6. The more people read others, the more obtuse their theology gets.
7. The quest for knowledge can often mask a shortage of wisdom and common sense, and knowledge without the other two is a very bad thing.

ANTI-DRUG ADS ARE NOT FOOLISH.

My daughter’s right. Mohler missed the biggest reason bi-sexual chic is in. Attention from BOYS who think it’s way cool. But hey, a seminary President can’t know everything.

I’m preaching tomorrow. I wrote my sermon notes and now I can’t remember what disk they’re on. How much more fun life was back when I was organized? Whenever that was. BTW- people who think we normally ought to be focused, emotionally stable, happy, etc, must be breathing strange gases.

I’ve gotten one letter from a preterist asking that I read a book about Revelation. If R.C. couldn’t get me there, no one else will. I’m getting notes from happy Catholics, and only Jenny has tried to get me to come over. My last post on the authority page over at the Forum says it pretty much the best I can.

I’m getting tired of kids whining about the cold weather. (Which, as the Yankees know, isn’t really cold.) Don’t students understand the concept of the four seasons? It’s still January, people. Gather up your diapers and brave it out.

Aaron Boone leaves the Reds for 5 million, goes to the Yankees, beats the Bosox with a dinger, then blows out his knee this week. Sorry Aaron. Now excuse me. HAHAHAHAHA.

Dennis Miller finally hit his stride tonight. Good show. Nobody asks interview questions like Dennis. He told Rudy Guliani that he had bxxxs the size of Macy’s floats. Won’t hear that on CNN. The grief over losing Dean as a target is palpable over there. Comedians stuck with Kerry and Edwards. Dull, dull, dull.

BTW- Kerry says he’s never heard of Botox. What’s the french word for that?

My uncle, the Rev. W.O. Spencer, is the man who showed me everything I ever knew about God that mattered before I was a Calvinist. He’s elderly and fell badly this week and is out of his head hallucinating in the hospital. Because of the “Patient’s bill of rights”, they can’t do anything to restrain him, and it’s a bad scene. Please pray for him. He is a wonderful man whose last years have not been pleasant. Pray for his wife, Dorothy. He is a special person to thousands of his flock, and it’s tough to see him going through this. He is the last of the 8 children in my dad’s family. I knew them all except one who died in his 20’s, but they were all Christians. Mountain people with great old fashioned names and faith. Hard to let them go, but a grace if they go peacefully. I don’t like to pray for comfort, but a good death is a good prayer.

Here’s a paragraph I wrote about him in “A Career in Foolishness.”

My only model for being a preacher came from my uncle, W. O. Spencer, who pastored for more than fifty years in Western Kentucky, mostly at the Hall Street Baptist Church in Owensboro where I grew up. A man with very little formal education, he carried a sense of God about him that made him different from other men. When he came to the pulpit every Lord’s Day, there was something about him that declared he had been with God. He was mysterious, different, anointed with the Holy Spirit. He was the very opposite of the stand-up comedians occupying today’s pulpits. I now realize that in him I was seeing the best of what preaching is supposed to be: a man who is compelled to pay the price to be with God, so that he may stand before other men and speak for God.

Personally, I do not know of any “Charismatics” that stick with it for long, except the few on the top of the food chain..
Once the blabit/grabit Jabez magic wears off, there is little left.

Sorry if this got double posted, My ‘puter went nuts a few minutes ago.

Someone here mentioned some seafaring books,, I forgot who, but it reminded me of one of my favorite books of all time called “The Bounty Trilogy”
I used to make a wooden model ships as a hobby and have always been interested in the sea/ocean/,, heck water in general. maybe it’s where I live?
So if Noel or anyone ever wants to read a great adventure that is true, I would highly recommend this book..

Anyway, I’ve read this book at least 5 times and it never ceases to amaze me. the second book is made up from Lieutenant Bligh’s own notes.

My dream has always been to go to Pitcairn’s Island, where the mutineers ended up.

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but our own credobaptist deer hunter, Bill Mackinnon, was one of the “quotables” in the most recent issue of Modern Reformation. They quoted one of the articles posted on the iMonk’s site.

That’s pretty cool…

OK. Denise and I were just talking, and a thought occured to me. I am comparing this with 30 years of working with teenagers, and I think it’s true. I would like your feedback.

“Pentecostals, Charismatics and other intensely pious groups, tend to be unable to pass their religious faith on to their children intact. Those children may be Christians, but their chances of being P/C are significantly lower than those of Catholic or Baptist or other mainstream backgrounds.”

Actually, what I said was, “When you are a member of a cult- and I say that with all due respect- your kids probably won’t want to join it.” But that’s rather crude.

This is an IM piece in the works, so get in on the deal now!

“Dean looks across the room and sees his old homosexual lover from college. Suddenly, a strange memory rises up from deep within him…”

I’ll admit that I’m curious about why CBS is refusing the ad, since they’re accepting other political ads. Including the misguided and foolish anti-drug ads. Penance for considering The Reagans, perhaps? (JN)

As far as them being a private company, I beg to differ. They are entrusted with a monopoly by the federal government, and with that coercive force comes responsibility. Now if you want to talk about how the airwaves ought not to be regulated, then that’s cool, but some sort of quasi-deregulation that keeps the frequency monopoly the way it is while relaxing ownership rules doesn’t count.

My entry is a headline: DEAN SWALLOWS FROG!

Interesting…

Does anyone else here subscribe to MoveOn.org’s emails? They’re up in arms (hehe) over CBS’s refusal to air their silly anti-president advert during that whatever sports game coming up.

They seem to think that a private company should be forced to pander to their specific political ideology in the name of free speech, because, well, they accepted a republican ad.

Russell: The Dark Tower series has many many many great moments, but I had to make myself read part 4. The first 3rd of it bored me to death. But when I finished it, I was glad I had. I have not read part 4 yet, because it’s out of the llibrary, and the last time I bought a hardback in the store, Reagan was in office (that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I really don’t buy them much).

Marianne Jenning’s nightmarish experience talking to public school kids about cheating is an indicator of where we are as a culture, and why Al Mohler is right, and Chuck Colson was right a long time ago when he said we are headed into an era similar to the barbarian ages. I am an optimist about the Gospel, but reading this essay made the pessimism of the dispensationalists all the more clear.

BTW- I am reading Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought. There is a lot in this book about how the early church related to the pagan Roman culture, philosophies and religions. I will read some more before I post, but I find it quite different from the ideas at the root of the seeker/niche churches. I tend to forget that the early church faced all these questions about how to relate to the culture around us, but they were not driven by this darned wretched urgency church growth evangelism business, so they were extremely interested in the substance of the faith, not in minimilizing it or hiding it. They retained, to a large extent, the language of the faith when talking to the pagans. They thought in the Bible, in the narrative of the Bible and in the ideas of the Bible. Where they built bridges into the cultures and mindsets around them, it was simply to communicate, and really much more to teach. The idea of tossing out the traditions, the liturgy, the language and the vocabularly of the church, and adopting the language and structure of paganism would have been largely obnoxious to them. And should be to us. (I’m not painting them as ghetto-thinking fundies. I’m saying they had more confidence in the their own language and story than we do.)

Judson: Are you suggesting LOTR is fiction?

Eric: I read 1, 2, and 3 of the Dark Tower series quite some time ago. I just saw Wizard and Glass in paperback at the local bookstore and in the intro King says that he was trying to build his own Lord of the Rings. Heavily influenced by Tolkien, he says, he wanted to wait until he had his own original idea before diving into that, because otherwise he would have just rewritten a Tolkien epic. I havn’t bought or started readin W&G because I’m not sure if that will make me lose my salvation.

Politico: Quote MS: “Look for Kerry’s team to start talking VP to Edwards. Look to Edwards to have nothing to do with that if he’s smart. ”

Already happened.

Michael Graham on why Edwards is probably a sure thing by ten points in SC:

“Every FDR Democrat who isn’t a Yankee retiree will be voting for John Edwards. Nearly every black voter not willing to cast his lot with Angry Al Sharpton will back Edwards. Every proud southerner looking for a “native son,” every liberal woman susceptible to his boyish charms, every attorney and opponent of tort reform (not an inconsequential number), every die-hard Dixiecrat who’s sick of northeastern liberals and every inattentive couch potato who thinks it would be cool to have a TV psychic as president (also not inconsequential), they are all Edwards voters and nothing happened in New Hampshire to change their minds.”

Michael says There are churches here built on nothing but music
He is right again. Here it is.
www.fly.co.uk/church.htm
Juxtapose this to your KY bluegrass.

Found it!

Whoops! That’s a different King article in CT. Anyway, there you go.

You can still find that King article here.

Noel:

Hope you didn’t bite off more than you can chew.

After reading your request, I scanned through my bookshelf to jog my memory on a piece of fiction to commend. I couldn’t find anything (besides LOTR, which your dad already recommended) that wasn’t nonfiction.

A fuse in my brain may have burned out, but for some reason I’m not reading any fiction these days. HOWEVER, comma, if you get a craving for interesting nonfiction, let me know. My favorites are travelogues—usually the “mad dogs and englishmen” kind, which are quite hilarious. I can also recommend a ton of nautical, musical, geographical and cultural stuff. It’s kinda an acquired taste.

Moby Dick is a great novel, one of the greatest, but not an overwhelming number of people agree with that statement. Most people miss Melville’s subversive and hilarious sense of humor. The boundless description can be a little overwhelming, but he did that on purpose too, methinks.

Noel Sperm whale explodes in Tainan City
Take this as a sign. You should be reading Moby Dick!

I thought we already did the stuff-we-like-that-people-tell-us-we-shouldn’t list. I guess I forgot Stephen King. I too have read nearly everything that he has put out, though recently I have taken to listening to his books (unabridged) in my car. There is something to his works beyond the story. I guess his recent award from the National Book Foundation (Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) raised the ire of some. But then again, Oprah won in 1999. There was a brief piece in Christianity Today about King, but it turned into a Premium Content recently. I’m not sure that the way I read King would qualify him as a good author by Lewis’ standards (Experiment in Criticism – Noel, read this before any of the other suggestions…), but I enjoy reading him. Some of the more “respected” authors these days I don’t care for. I read Franzen’s “The Corrections” and thought it was crap.

Jim: I won’t try to convince you that reasonable people with otherwise excellent choices in fiction should like King. But I will say that he has written some good stuff (genre-speaking). He has also written some crap, and if anyone were interested I could list the crap, the okay, and the really good by him. But I perfectly well understand why some people don’t understand the attraction. With me, it began right after I first got interested in reading—I was at that time (not now) interested in gory, scary, spooooky stuff, and I found a paperback copy of a book with one of those scary-as-hell wind-up monkeys on the cover: Skeleton Crew. I started reading the first story and was hooked. Since, I have read everything he’s written, even the bad stuff, with the exception of a couple of books that were so bad even I couldn’t get through them.
Anyway, King himself describes his writing as the literary equivelant of a Big Mac and fries, and I think that’s pretty accurate, although it sells him short on a couple of books.

I know we have some other King fans on here. Are you all ready to come out of the closet yet?

I’m sure that the Democrat strategists are scratching their heads this morning, but they could have been doing it all along. This group of Democrats doesn’t have anyone that looks like a winner. Take, for example, the 2000 GOP primary. McCain and Bush. Really, what were you debating? Whether an independent minded, ex POW from Arizona was the nominee, or a Reagan-esque, dynastic, Governor of one of the largest Southern States? Given historical trends in the GOP electorate, this wasn’t really stressful. (Unless you were Bush :-)

What do we have here? An aristocratic (get ready for that word a lot), Massachusetts liberal with a double edged war record and a lot of nasty contradictions in his Senate record. (Guess who was a prime player in gutting human intel in the 90’s?) Or a fire-breathing Nut case. Or a compulsively untruthful man with a military resume and nothing else. Or Bill Clinton as a 29 year old Southern first term Senator whose voice hasn’t changed. IOW, given the realities of presidential politics, this is not a great field, and it is starting to show the chronic weakness of the Dems in the South, and it is revealing that Hillary Clinton (God help us) is probably the only conceivably electable Democrat whose name has been mentioned in the last year.

A lot of Clinton Dems are now panicing at the prospect of a Massachusetts liberal heading their ticket. Look for Gephardt to endorse Edwards. Same with all the dropouts, except probably Lieberman. Look for Kerry’s team to start talking VP to Edwards. Look to Edwards to have nothing to do with that if he’s smart. Look for the Dean campaign to make a lot of ugly noise all the way to the convention. It won’t be pretty. Look for Edwards to make it close. In fact, don’t be surprised if somewhere along the way, Kerry falters, and Edwards surges.

This talk about “Scum of the Earth” churches reminded me that back in the late ‘80s there was a group of churches called Sanctuary that was based on heavy-metal music. The guy that started it had connections to a bunch of Christian heavy metal bands like Guardian, Barren Cross, etc. I wonder if any of them are still around?

Here it is. And it’s all these lectures on Mark, and the inclusion of Gentiles by Jesus that finally got me to think about this.

The disciples say….”Here is how we are going to reach young, twenty-something, Samaritans. We know what they are into, and we can put together an outreach event aimed right at that group. Their age, their language, their culture. We can put together a Jesus group from this niche in a few weeks.”

“In fact, we think we can use this approach throughout Galilee. We have an outreach for Romans. Another one for Greeks. One for the Greek Jews up north. In fact, we have so many groups here in Galilee, that we can have dozens of niche groups within a few months.”

Now….I’ll freely admit that I am as prone as anyone to make Jesus into a clone of….me, but I cannot see Jesus buying into this. And the NT seems to argue pretty plainly that while Christianity spread in cultural units, and specific mission efforts to Hellenists and Samaritans took place, there is no evidence of a mission strategy in place that is as narrow as the niche churches.

Acts 13:1Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.

In a church in Syria there is a Jew from Israel, an African, a Greek from Cyrene, A Hasmonian, and a Jew from Asia Minor. This kind of church is a challenge to all of us, because we rarely see this kind of diversity. We have run back into our sub groups.

I once worked with a church that had 8 language congregations meeting in one building. It was wonderful. But if that language barrier didn’t exist, I just cannot feel the same way about 8 congregations based on musical styles or dress or age. The Gospel obligates us to move across those barriers and be one body. Doesn’t it?

UPDATE: Actually, it would be fun for the BHT to do a plan for starting a church sometime. I would certainly have no problem with a target group. (Eastern Ky, Clay Countians) And I think researching that group is very very wise. But if we were to start narrowing down the focus of that ministry to the point that our targets were coming for cultural reasons, and not brought into a cross cultural community by THE GOSPEL, I would be uneasy.
For instance, saying we are going to dress like mountain folk would be great. And allowing music to be shaped by the culture would be OK. But it could quickly get out of hand. There are churches here built on nothing but music. At the end of the day, these people have to respond to Jesus, and Jesus wouldn’t let them remain JUST Clay County Ky mountaineers. He would loosen their hold on culture (and culture’s hold on them.) They would be challenged to love the black folks in our town, and reach out to whoever needed the Gospel. The cultural sub group fine tuning, which mght help us know who we are, must not become the driving force in the mission life of the church, and certainly should always be clearly submitted to the judgement of Jesus.

This is interesting.

I have a few issues with this “cultural” talk going on here.

The pierced or tattooed or whatever people are not a “culture”, they are a rebellion and not afforded a “cultural” status as far as I am concerned. Catering to them is just justifiying them and I have little patience for that.
This is true of other niche groups as well.

But maybe I’m just ornry today..

I get a lot of questions from teenagers about Revelation. I have often whined that there wasn’t a short introduction to the book, written for young people, that addressed what you need to know to understand it and also answered some of the F.A.Q.’s. So I wrote it myself. It’s on line at Internet Monk, and I am posting it here. I’m too lazy to go and underline/bold the thing, so if you want the headings the way they should be, go to IM. Feel free to use this, with credit of course. More »« Less

Imagine every church in the county doing country bluegrass…..oh wait. I don’t have to imagine that :-)

I once wrote this:

This does not, however, erase the fact of culture. God is not a relativist, but he has created a world of various cultures to give him glory in various ways. The city of God is made up of the worship offerings of various cultures. “They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.” (Revelation 21:26) This is not relativism, but true diversity in Christ. Biblically faithful worship that arises from cultural diversity is not relativistic.

The implications for the public worship of God are simple. As long as cultural diversity does not drift into an idolatry of entertainment or an indulgence of diversity for the sake of novelty or political correctness, there is nothing to prevent any congregation from embracing as much diversity as is reflective of its own time and place in history. The worship on the shore of the sea (Exodus 15) came from a diverse people who shared a common experience of salvation. The Lord was their song.

There is a place for music old and new within the lived-out objective values of a worshipping community. But there is no place for the culture of CCM to utterly rout the diversity from a church in the name of a supposed “worship renewal” that is actually nothing more than an expansion of commercialism. There is no place for worship leaders who become uncritical advocates of contemporary music and the opponents of tradition and heritage. There is a place for the worship leader “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (Matthew 13:52)

...But the majesty of God may be addressed in a variety of musical styles, and as I have said in a previous article, a congregation is under an obligation to represent the diversity of its culture in its worship by the use of what is best in its setting, and what most gives glory to God in a way the entire congregation can affirm and participate in....

In other words, while occasional forays into diverse expressions are probably healthy and manageable (as many churches have done with occasional youth led services or jazz services), the elders need to so regulate worship so that a discernable and dependable cultural flavor is present and worship praises God and involves the congregation in the broadest, but most participatory manner of worship possible.

But I would suggest that niche churches, who intentionally ax the heritage of Christian music and hymnody for the latest kickin’ band, are simply going too narrow. I mean, I get a worship CD from Macarthur’s church every year, and it’s everything from A to Z. Piper’s chruch is very intentional in their urban setting to use a lot of different kinds of music. The reason? These churches are not intentionally trying to get such a narrow niche in the pew, but have a broad, mission based sense of how the church should transcend culture and taste and generations as much as possible, all the while allowing the congregation to develop a coherent, worshiping identity. I just think this overly niched overly market driven thing will actually kill off a lot of these kids ever becoming parts of the larger church. “Where’s the mosh pit?”

FOR THOSE WHO CARE ABOUT TAKING A STAND AGAINST BIBLICAL IGNORANCE: Last night I whined to Matthew that there was nothing in print for high school kids to help them understand the basics of the book of Revelation, and answer all the questions I repeatedly get about that book. So, I just wrote it myself. Runs about 8 pages, and you are very welcome to use it. Half intro. Half FAQ. A Young Person’s Guide to the Book of Revelation.

Michael: Here’s a thought for you. Imagine that every church in your area uses nothing but rap music for the music portion of every service. How easily are you going to sit through that to hear the message? Heck, I’m a fan of rap, and I have a problem with that. Assuming that the lyrics to the music was solid, certainly that would be a case where an enshrined culture would be a huge stumbling block for you, even if the culture was unintentional, merely a result of the background of the people running the churches.

I do hear what you’re saying. That every church in the world seems to want to scramble to do a lame half-way job to reach into these niches while culturally alienating the people God has already put into that church is ridiculous, and as the recent Razormouth article humorously pointed, it doesn’t accomplish the desired goal anyway.

I’m talking about something different. Not screwing up a church that is doing a good job of supporting the people already going there, but planting new ones that target people who don’t normally hear the gospel because it doesn’t tend to show up where they are. And that was my initial response, if you remember. I don’t have a problem with those churches, so long as they (1) keep the Word central and (2) don’t pretend that they’re somehow superior to churches that reach a different culture. White American protestantism is just fine when it is Word-based, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all, despite having a heck of a lot of history behind it.

Maybe now you’ll disagree more than you did for your last post. :o)

My fellowship’s worship schedule looks like this:

Weekly Worship Schedule

Sunday Evening at 6:00 p.m.
Hearts Afire!
Sunday night worship “for the younger generation”.
The style of worship is geared for younger believers but the service is open for all.

As far as kids in the main worship service goes, the bulletin reads someting like “Gloria Dei encourages families to worship together. However, to be considerate of others in their own worship, please take loud children into the lobby.”

There are a number of folks who keep their kids in the main service, and they mostly seem to stick to the guidelines.

It seems a pretty balanced approach to me.

I don’t disagree much. “Better to segment and reach into the niches, I say, along the cultural spectrum, but with the clear message of the gospel at every step.” Absolutely agree with this, but don’t have any time for the current way of doing it, i.e. arrogantly enshrine your niche and cater to it.

In the SBC I grew up in, you could blast the congregation for the organ, for being all white, for not reaching out, for not inviting blacks and pierced people, etc. The strong missions emphasis was very much about some kind of outside the culture evangelism. The fact that they all had to eventually look like Jerry Falwell was in the small print. I think the requirement to be pierced boy is not in the fine print, but in the mission statement.

I think the niche is in the mission, not in the church’s approach to being church. As Alex said, Sola Cultura is what we have. In the old days, it was sin. Now it’s the rage. Ugh.

Michael: Nor’kirk doesn’t intentionally seek to alienate black people or young people or any of the other groups that somehow still manage to not show up in droves. SotE doesn’t intentionally plan to alienate Scottish Presbyterians; they simply intentionally reach out to the people unintentionally alienated by Nor’kirk.

You’re focusing on the people that don’t feel comfortable at SotE, and missing out on the people that don’t feel comfortable at Nor’kirk. Me, I’m happy if I know that there are places where people can feel culturally comfortable so that they can confront the gospel. Again, I don’t know if SotE is one of those places, but I applaud a gathering of people who go out into the highways and byways and pick up the people who weren’t invited the first time around and confront them with the Gospel without wrapping it up with foreign culture at the same time.

I’ve got a serious problem with the fart-heads who throw hymns out and alienate a congregation to expand their membership rolls. I think you know that. SotE, on the other hand, is a new church plant specifically aiming at people who tend to feel left out. I see a possible parallel to a Savior who made a point of hanging out with sinners because the the healthy have no need of a cure. Maybe you don’t. That’s fine, we can disagree.

Let’s consider music for a moment. I attend a class on Monday nights, Christianity Explored, that is music-free. It opens with food, involves lots of talking, and closes with prayer. Nothing about it seems culturally biased to me. Well, except that it is an Australian leading the meeting and a Brit on the short video. But I think that it is the introduction of music that is the major cultural divide, and it is easy for us to downplay that when the music is within our range of taste. I miss the gospel choir from my old church.

As you’ve said, music is not essential to the gospel or to worship, but it is an important part of church life, and music is quintessentially cultural from beginning to end. Shame on us for throwing up barriers to comfort for people and confusing that artificial (but unintentional) discomfort with the real offense of the cross.

Better to segment and reach into the niches, I say, along the cultural spectrum, but with the clear message of the gospel at every step. Do most “seeker” churches screw this up? Certainly. But it is still a valid need, and even a series of mistakes don’t eliminate the need.

Argh! I think we would do better communicating on this in person, while in this environment I feel like I’m making speeches and waiting too long for feedback (and so going off on unnecessary tangents) and not providing proper emphasis on the parts about which I’m emphatic.

Anyway, I guess in the end I’m saying this: I believe that you underestimate the cultural barriers many churches establish unthinkingly, or the profound effect they have on the reputation of the church in the world. While the gospel should never be compromised to cross cultural lines, a pipe organ is not the gospel. Hymns or praise choruses or hip-hop dance troupes are not the gospel. The gospel is the gospel, and it is offensive enough on its own without us adding our own levels of whatever on top of it.

And bah to hip-hop dance troupes, by the way. :-)

So I put all the book recommendations in a cup and drew one. Looks like I’ll be reading Kurt’s choice – Ender’s Game. Scifi right? This could be a long road ahead of me ;)

When categories come back, I’ll try to remember to nominate Hal Lindsey for the “They’re Always Wrong” award. Thanks to Hal’s Prophetic Review 2003 (no peeking!), I present the Prophetic Review 2003 Quiz, a sardonic look at Lindsey’s wackiness.

I’m not telling where I found this link. You’ll spot the answer yourself after you finish the quiz. And no peeking!

>Is SotE Church more closed to non-piercees than Nor’Kirk Presbyterian is to piercees?

Yes, and you said it just fine. Unintentional vs. Intentional. Very intentional. Norkirk doesn’t sit down and plan to go after over 50 White suburbanites. Scum quite intentionally plans to go after its group. In fact, let me suggest that traditional churches are far more flexible than these postmodern enclaves. I’ve watched a boomer mega tell the senior adults “no more hymns- ever. Sorry.” Think that many FBC’s say absolutely no more choruses? Ever? Some do, I’m sure, but the difference is obvious to me. In fact, I believe the closer we get to confessional, mainstream orthodoxy, the more flexible and cross generational the church becomes. Maybe not culturally, but missionally. (The sins against those possibilities are many, and real, I agree.) But Scum is narrowing and narrowing the focus. Everything they do is to send folks elsewhere if they aren’t in the niche. Scum WANTS to be the niche. They glory in the niche. They brag that they are the niche. (I’ve heard of boomer mega pastors inviting the older folks to leave if they didn’t like the changes.)

Someone pointed out (Harold Best) that the typical hymnal has in its pages hundreds of different kinds of songs, from many different cultures and denominations, across hundreds of years of time. The local seeker church sings music written in the last ten years in Nashville and Mobile, and is stylistically in concrete after 20 years. Diversity anyone?

Lord, save us all from churches which insist young kids must full participate in every service, and from churches which insist young kids are not allowed in any service. Amen.

My church keeps kids through the opening, includes a little talk directed at the kids at the front of the sanctuary, and then dispatches them to more age-appropriate lessons while we enjoy the liturgy and sermon, which is generally closer to Lutheran-length then reformed-length. Every now and then (quarterly?), all the kids 6 and older stay in the service the whole time, and there is generally a children choir performance during those services.

Lord, save us all from children’s choirs. Amen.

The evening service is a little more casual, natch, and has fewer kids (since there is only “child care” and not “Sunday School”), but at least one little girl generally stays in the service until just before the sermon. So she gets the liturgical part, too, though there is no kneeling.

Lord, save us all from children and kneelers. Amen.

Michael: Wow! Another subject on which we disagree! Actually, I suspect that we don’t, really, except on the surface, but it happens so rarely that I’ll revel in it for a moment anyway. We don’t share a brain! I don’t always think your thoughts after you. Wow.

Anyway, you raise an important point, and I’m taking it seriously despite my jovial tone. It’s my second day of wrestling with a particular stubborn Linux installation process, and humor is keeping me from killing everyone around me. Well, humor and the new Popeye’s Chicken place that opened on Friday. Mmmm, good.

So, are churches like SotE intentionally closed to other generations and cultures? Let me rephrase that: Is SotE Church more closed to non-piercees than Nor’Kirk Presbyterian is to piercees? Tough sell, there.

I’ll think out loud for a bit for you, so you can see what I’m thinking. I attend a church with two different styles of service every Sunday. One is low-church Anglican, built around pretty strict Morning Prayer liturgy in the 1928. The other is underneath-the-church, using an informal but dependable liturgy and a more contemporary band. Really the differences between the two seem quite small to me, and I enjoy them both. And yet even the small differences are enough to drive a cultural wedge between people that seem indistinguishable to outsiders. A young couple that we often hang out with at Monday night or Wednesday night classes won’t go to the evening service, because “church must have an organ,” and there are people attending the evening service who just don’t like the stained glass of the morning service. Over such tiny preferences, cultural distinctions are made.

The difference between a typical white church choir singing hymns and a typical black church choir singing the same hymns is often more stark than night and day. Which is better? Given the same lyrical content, I suggest that neither is “better,” and to hear otherwise from a bunch of white guys isn’t likely to sway me. Sorry, I know that’s not fair, but please hear what I’m saying.

We look at the pierced freaks and we see people that are different. They’re not even different like black people are different; black people are born that way, but nobody is born with a steel stud through the bridge of their nose.

What is our response to those “different” people? Ideally, we could all worship together as one big happy family. Er, wait, as a series of small-to-medium-sized happy families, that is. Not even linked via satellite. :)

Anyway, the point is that there are plenty of things that separate us that have nothing to do with our common faith in Christ. You suggest that a group like SotE Church is “intentionally” closed to other cultures is bothersome, and I respond by suggesting that our own church are often unintentionally closed to other cultures, and I don’t know that the intentions really matter in this instance. The result is the same.

The church (in the catholic sense) is cross-cultural. But that little gathering of people once a week is not the universal cross-cultural church. It is merely an ekklesia of people who share common interests, primarily an interest in the Christ.

I doubt they turn away old people or folks in polo shirts at the door to Scum of the Earth Church. That those people might not feel comfortable there doesn’t strike me as much different from how urban black youth probably don’t feel comfortable at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Anyway, I’ve been distracted a few times while writing this, so I’m sure it is unfocused, but can you see what I’m trying to articulate?

Wow Josh,
and I thought I was anti-goat ..er kids.

I could use a little holding and comforting.

Maybe if children were beaten more often, they’d shut the frick up during the service.

Well actually, I don’t get much out of adult sermons either. Could the church build a room in the back where a woman could hold and comfort me as I squirm? (JNJNJN)

Regarding the kiddos in church: I haven’t given it a lot of thought, but it is worth mentioning the novel (?) idea that our church has taken to the problem. In the back of the sanctuary, is a seperate set of pews, enclosed in walls with a glass window. It is called the “training chapel”. Parents can sit with their children, hear the sermon (through speakers) and see everything, but no sound escapes from the area.

That said, though, I’m not sure the kids get much out of adult sermons. I don’t have a clear answer though, I don’t have to worry about it seriously for a few years now. I think.

As an age group specialist in the SBC, I fought many a bloody battle to keep the young people in the adult service. The cry of the unwashed was always, “The kids will like Church better if they have their own preacher, their own pizza communion, and their own kickin’ worshop band.” One guy actually offered to pay for the construction of a “Youth Church” and to staff it, if they would fire me. Sorry, Jerry. Of course, as far as that effort succeeded, we have today’s youth groups running the church.

Here’s where I am on this one. For the worship service itself, please leave the kids in as young as possible. Let the parents parent, let the kids hear the music, and the Bible, and see the sights, and ask all kinds of questions. Print Services that are on their level. Make a special time for them. That is assuming your church has something worth seeing and hearing. Then at grown up sermon time, we can make a change. Let the young ones go to an age group, based on the same lectionary, for a “children’s time.” IMO, this ought to end about grade 4. The wonder of the lectionary, btw, is the kid can get the same Word, just on their level.

But the dangers of this are VERY HIGH. If the family is not doing the spiritual and religious education of children- I mean if they are actually leaving it up to the church to do- it’s probably going to be a bust. I was good at what I did. I am in school with a lot of kids from high powered youth programs. They are, and were, a bunch of rank pagans, pretty much. God said the spiritual education of kids is the business of the family. If the church wants to reinforce that, good. But aside from a lesson/sermon for younger kids, please leave the kids in there. These modern churches that basically tell parents “We will do this whole Christian nurture thing for you. Bring us the little brats,” are not helping at all. I ran youth groups. My kids never were in one. And boy am I glad.

BTW- I have never been able to do a children’s sermon. Denise did them, and others did them. I’ve always wanted to do them. I guess the time has come and gone. Which brings me to my job…..and that is another story entirely.

Noel: I recommend Hammer of God by Bo Giertz. Beware of Lutherans recommending novels.

I completely agree with Jim, if that is possible. Children’s church is not for the children; it is for the adults. I did not fully appreciate this until I became a Lutheran. See, we don’t believe in children’s church. It’s a Protestant innovation that undermines the Incarnation, the Real Presence, the Trinity, oral hygiene, and good housekeeping. That means that on a given Sunday, I can expect to have the sermon more or less broken up by the whimpering and fussing of the baby or toddler in the pew behind me (don’t worry, there’s one in every pew). I can expect that Mr _____ will completely miss the sermon because his incorrigible little boy will engage in the kind of squirming and (eventually) yelling that force his pa to take him outside for the remainder of the preaching, which of course distracts me. If this is what little kids are like during a 20-minute Lutheran sermon, I can’t imagine how bad they are during a 40-minute Reformed ramble. The yells, smells, and cries of the children are not precious or endearing. They’re aggravating. Far from sending them to children’s church, I believe small children should be locked in crates in the coat closet on Sunday morning.

On Noel’s Reading List: Why do otherwise reasonable people with otherwise perfectly excellent choices in fiction seem to like Stephen King? This is a deep mystery to me. Noel, I suggest Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. Or Memoir from Ant-proof Case, for that matter.

Question for the bar: If you accept (at least what I’ve been led to understand as) the Reformed view of common grace – that what keeps all of creation, including mankind, from dropping into utter depravity, sin and chaos is God’s intervention in the day-to-day lives of each person – then eventually you have to come to the point where you accept that the morally good things that evil men do – even though they aren’t sufficient to be called righteous – are the work of the Spirit. And at that point, you have the Spirit working in the lives of unregenerate people, both to hold them back from the worst possible sins, and to enable them to do things that are good in at least a temporal sense. So doesn’t that mean that the Holy Spirit is, at least in some sense, “in everyone and everything” in the way that the transcendentalists believe?

On Kid’s Church: YES, PLEASE. NURSERY. CRY ROOM. SOMETHING FOR 6-YEAR-OLDS TO DO BESIDES KICK THE PEWS, DROP HYMNALS, TALK LOUDLY AND MAKE PAPER AIRPLANES OUT OF THE HUGE STACK OF PAPERS WE’RE HANDED ON ENTRY. It’s simply too much to ask that kids sit through sermons. For better or worse, children today simply aren’t equipped to handle that much sitting still. Also there’s a bigger issue for me: In today’s culture, during a sermon the pastor may handle (or even mention) a topic or current event in ways that I take great pains to avoid exposing my young kids to. What good is it for me to filter TV, radio and the Internet when my 5-year-old comes home from the service and asks what “oral sex” is, and why the pastor is so upset that the President has one?

Amen to the iMonk. The problem that so-called “postmodern Christians” don’t realize is that, in sharply distinguishing between two cultural zeitgeists, and also making it a point to conform the church to the prevailing zeitgeist, they are effectively cutting the body into pieces. I’ve been to several “emerging church” gatherings, and they are dominated by hip twenty and thirtysomethings.

But then, another question I have is, where do people like me fit in? I definitely do not consciously label myself as postmodern, and I reject most of postmodernity as fuzzy-headed at best, and incoherent at worse.

Os Guiness’ criticism is salient here: once we replace sola scriptura with sola cultura, we’re in for big trouble. If anything, cultural considerations ought not be the dominant factor in determining “how we church;” rather, it should be a committment to faithfulness and to the Gospel that ought to be the primary factor.

With this talk about community; I am curious about the tavern patrons’ thoughts on Children’s church. Our church has a separate worship time for those who are 4 years old through 4th grade.

What about churches that have multiple worship services. Early Sunday A.M. contemporary service, followed by Sunday School, then the traditional service. Have we divided the community (body) based upon preferences and demographics?

stress reducer

Phillip: But aren’t you bothered by the construction of a community that is intentionally closed to other generations and cultures? I mean, swat me if I’m hallucinatin’ here, but isn’t this kind of like all the logic of segregation? Our kind and your kind? Separate but equal? The church must be cross cultural. Period. And when we look at what happens when commuity is built around the Word (liturgy, etc.) and not some shared cultural value, we see that grandma CAN worship with pierced boy because neither of them defines the community by their own preferences and values. As I’ve said before, what might be a mission strategy can’t be the church in every case. A group that reaches a group isn’t the church if it remains INTENTIONALLY closed to other ages, cultures, demographics, etc.

I don’t have a problem with a church that is oriented toward people of a certain culture, so long as they preach the gospel. I don’t know much about SotE except that it was founded by Five Iron Frenzy, a decent little band. But I do have a problem with people who represent those churches as somehow superior to churches where the pastor doesn’t have a pierced nose. And of course I have a problem with a church that doesn’t preach the gospel, by wh