Rick Brannan’s Advent Devotional

Give it a look over here.  With thanks to Rick for telling me about it.

Why You Should Buy Presents During the Holidays

In contradistinction to this guy- I think you should go shopping for presents for your dear ones for one simple reason:

You’ll help save someone’s job.  There’s nothing more selfish than hoarding for self.  And there’s nothing more pointless than tossing your money into the black hole of most ‘charities’ (which, like the Red Cross, pay huge sums to their executives and only a fragment of what you give actually reaches the people you think its helping).

If you want to do something to help someone, really help someone, then go to your local mom and pop shop and get a few gifts from there for the people in your life you appreciate.  That’s not crass materialism, it’s kindness.  And you’ll help someone keep their job as a bonus.

[Link tip via Craig Martin on FB]

Quote of the Day

There are many items in Dante that are very close to what the Obama-haters experience and illustrate. In the meantime, all respectable persons and institutions should take an interest in this matter and offer the strongest possible condemnation of all such evil and un-Christlike imprecation. — Dave Black

Good News

Als deutliches Zeichen für die Ökumene unterzeichneten Vertreter der Universität Trier und des Vereins ”Dialog” am Buß- und Bettag einen Kooperationsvertrag zur Gründung des ”Ökumenischen Instituts für interreligiösen Dialog an der Universität Trier”. Zum Leiter des neu gegründeten Instituts wurde der Kirchenhistoriker Andreas Mühling gewählt. Das erste ökumenische Institut für interreligiösen Dialog in Rheinland-Pfalz soll als wissenschaftliche Plattform für Hochschulen, Politik, Konfessions- und Religionsgemeinschaften dienen.

So reports Reformiert Info. Nifty, eh!

A Word About The So Called ‘Prosperity Gospel’

Is decidedly insightfully offered by Steve Wiggins (I wonder if he knows that was my mother’s maiden name and that we might be related somewhere back in the line) today in his posting titled ‘False Profits‘.

Read it, enjoy it, and then send it to one of the many tele-vangelists you watch.

That’s Not A Church, It’s A Squid

Come on now.  That’s just pure, unmitigated pomposity for the sake of show.  And it’s ugly too.

True Fear

Via Chris Brady

More Pastoral Misconduct

A local pastor charged with sexually assaulting a teenager has entered a guilty plea. Timothy Ortiz, who served as the pastor of Father’s Heart Ministries in Midland, was arrested in September after allegations he assaulted a 17-year-old girl. Ortiz, 44, had been charged with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. Ortiz had been the pastor with Father’s Heart Ministries for almost a decade and was credited with building the church.

I would only say that, aside from his perversity, if he is ‘credited’ with ‘building’ the church, it isn’t a Church. The Church is built by Christ through the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, not by human effort (something the Emergents, by the way, fail to grasp).

I suppose these pastoral misconduct tales will continue as long as there are Pastors who can’t exercise a modicum of self control or self discipline.

Control yourselves, or get out of the ministry. Simple, huh.

Lust

I never thought the IPhone was anything worth having, so I was never interested in getting one (in the same way that I’ve never been interested in visiting Pittsburgh).   The IPhone is too artsy for me.  Too Prius.  Too West Coast (even though I was born in California).   Too smarmy really.

But, Dell, you devils, you’ve come out with a smartphone that looks lust-provoking indeed.

When will it come to the States?  Who knows.  Probably after I’ve lost interest.  That’s how lust works.  Here one minute, and gone the next.  Just like the satisfaction that comes along with it.

What?

This I just do not get.  What on earth do Jesus and guys trundling around the woods killing deer have to do with each other?

Sure, Christians can be hunters.  And sure, Jesus loves everyone.  But the confluence of Jesus, blessing, hunters, deer…  it’s just theologically grating.

EVERY YEAR, on the Thursday night prior to the opening of deer hunting gun season, Goss Baptist Church in Columbia hosts the Blessing of the Hunt.

Why?

The purpose of the event is to bring the community together to share the word of Jesus, as well as to pray for the safety of the thousands of hunters throughout Mississippi who take to the woods every year to track that elusive whitetail deer.

Huh? I mean sure, pray for hunter’s safety. But what does that have to do with ’sharing the word of Jesus’?

But what’s a hunter’s blessing without a celebrity?

Thursday’s guest speaker is Jason Cruise. The Tennessee native is the founder of the Outdoor Ministry Network and the producer of Dad and Me TV. Cruise has teamed up with the Tennessee Baptist Convention to train pastors and volunteers on how to reach men and women, who love to hunt and fish.

Huh? Why do men and women who love to hunt and fish need to be the victims or targets of a special sort of ‘evangelism’? Isn’t regular ‘lifestyle evangelism’ good enough to reach them or are they so special (or weird or whatever) that special means and methods must be used or they just won’t want any part of Jesus?

Well anyway if they don’t want Jesus, at least they’ll have the chance to win a gun and an atv. That’ll ‘bring them in from the fields of sin…’

Also at Thursday’s event, there will be a variety of food, as well as many door prizes including caps, shirts, guns, various hunting gear, guided hunts and a Chuckwagon ATV.

Last year’s event drew a crowd of more than 800, and this year is expected to be even larger.

But of course. And a scant 1 or 2% will bother to attend an actual service of worship at their local congregation. Not once they’ve decided to get up Sunday morning to go hunting instead of worshiping.

The Church has really lost its way.  No wonder 9 out of 10 people think it’s there to give them stuff rather than their existing to glorify God.