Would any of us pass these tests? :)

Report from the Pastor Search Committee:
We do not have a happy report to give. We have not been able to find a suitable candidate for this church, though we have one promising prospect. Thank you for your suggestions. We have followed up on each one with interviews or by calling at least three references. The following is our confidential report.

ADAM: Good man but has problems with his wife. One reference told us how he and his wife enjoyed walking nude in the woods.

NOAH: Former pastorate of 120 years with no converts. Prone to unrealistic building projects.

JOSEPH: A big thinker, but a braggart; believes in dream interpreting and has a prison record.

MOSES: A modest and meek man, but poor communicator; even stutters at times. Sometimes blows his stack and acts rashly in business meetings. Some say he left an earlier church over a murder charge.

DEBORAH: One word --- Female.

DAVID: The most promising leader of all until we discovered the affair he had with his neighbor's wife.

SOLOMON: Great preacher, but serious woman problem.

ELIJAH: Prone to depression; collapses under pressure.

HOSEA: A tender and loving pastor, but our people could never handle his wife's occupation.

JONAH: Told us he was swallowed up by a great fish. He said the fish later spit him out on the shore near here. We hung up.

AMOS: Too much of a country hick. Backward and unpolished. With some seminary training, he might have promise; but he has a hang-up against wealthy people.

JOHN: Says he is a Baptist, but doesn't dress like one. May be too Pentecostal. Tends to lift both hands in the air to worship when he gets excited. You know we limit to one hand. Sleeps in the outdoors, has a weird diet, and provokes denominational leaders.

PETER: Too blue collar. Has a bad temper, even said to have cursed. He's a loose cannon.

PAUL: Powerful CEO type and fascinating preacher. However, he's short on tact, unforgiving with young ministers, harsh, and has been known to preach all night.

TIMOTHY: Too young.

JESUS: Has had popular times, but once when his church grew to 5000, He managed to offend them all; and his church dwindled down to twelve people. Seldom stays in one place very long. And, of course, he is single.

JUDAS: His references are solid. A steady plodder. Conservative. Good connections. Knows how to handle money. We're inviting him to preach this Sunday in view of a call.

So, I have been watching how my more conservative Christian friends have been responding to President Obama. I delurked a bit politically earlier in the healthcare debate. But, life has been interfering with my ability to think deeply about minor things like politics, so I just kinda left it at that.

I just saw this blog post by a former pastor of mine, liked it, and I thought I would share.

No Stinkin' Geologists

When someone says that we need to take full account of what the old earth scientists say, or that we need to accept what professional historians say about the period of Second Temple Judaism, why does Stellman not reject this out of hand, on the simple ground that we are sojourners and pilgrims? If we don't need no stinkin' church marketers because our congregation is a mere band of wayfaring pilgrims, then does it not follow that we don't need no stinkin' geologists either? Or astrophysicists? The outside world is still outside whether it is the world of hustling businessmen, religious entrepeneurs, or high level academic scientists. If Stellman's "wall of separation" between the two cultures is as high as he claims, then what unbelieving scientists and historians have discovered should never, ever show up in a Christian pulpit.

But if there is legitimate kind of traffic between the cultures, then two things follow. First, our position on imports needs to become more nuanced than the view Stellman is presenting here, and second, our position on exports needs to be examined as well. But if Stellman allows us some latitude on the exports, then the first thing that will happen is Christian schools, teaching Christian kids about everything in the light of God's Word.

(note - this is not about six day creation, etc. It's about two kingdoms)

Morning and Evening: Daily Readings - Evening, September 30

The thief on the cross excels Caesar on his throne; Lazarus among the dogs is better than Cicero among the senators; and the most unlettered Christian is in the sight of God superior to Plato.

Life is the badge of nobility in the realm of spiritual things, and men without it are only coarser or finer specimens of the same lifeless material, needing to be quickened, for they are dead in trespasses and sins.

From Pullman's blog:

About six years ago, i had a conversation on the stage of the National Theatre with Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the course of talking about "His Dark Materials", he said that he was curious to know why, although the story was plainly about a form of the Christian church,  there was nothing about Jesus in the book.

I said that he was right, there wasn't, and that I'd deal with Jesus later in another book. 

Well, the time has come. "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" will be published next April by Canongate as part of their Myths series.

 

The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God

All the dead who have ever lived will be raised from the dead by Jesus. Millions of Chinese and Nigerians and Indonesians and Germans. He will raise Julius Caesar from the dead, and Judas Iscariot, and Isaiah the prophet, and Michelangelo, and Johann Sebastian Bach, and Adolf Hitler, and Marilyn Monroe, and Kurt Cobain, and Princess Diana, and Michael Jackson, and Ted Kennedy. He will raise them, and they will stand before him. And you too.

All these people and millions more—all people, without exception, will be raised from the dead by Jesus. Jesus is universally superior to all these people. He is universally sovereign over all these people. He holds them in being and will give existence to their decomposed bodies so that there is a continuity between the body that was and the body that will be raised. He lets no one go out of existence—there is no such loss for the righteous, and no such hope for the wicked. Jesus raises them all.

So, I found a thought-provoking op-ed piece over at cbsnews.com:

One of the most embittered complaints from critics of George W. Bush was his use of religious imagery to promote a domestic agenda. Religious liberals lamented that God and the Bible had been "hijacked" by Bush and his social conservative allies. Self-styled "prophets" such as Jim Wallis of Sojourners even accused the president of "idolatry" for the way he blended God-talk with his faith-based initiative to alleviate poverty.

That was then. Today, with a president who shares their political priorities, the apostles of liberalism don't seem worried about conflating the city of God and the city of man. Their religious enthusiasm is directed, for the moment, at ensuring passage of Barack Obama's health-care reform agenda. Detractors are not just mistaken, but morally debased: that's the gist of a fiery campaign led by the religious left and stoked by the president himself.

Hmm, given some of the positions I have taken over the years, I might be perceived to resemble this remark...

Malachi 2:16 (NKJV):

“For the LORD God of Israel says
That He hates divorce,
For it covers one’s garment with violence,”
Says the LORD of hosts.

“Therefore take heed to your spirit,
That you do not deal treacherously.”

This year, I, along with a few Christian friends (and perhaps others currently unknown to us will want to join in) will be joining Muslim friends in the fast which begins August 21. We are not doing so in order to become Muslims: we are deeply committed Christians. But as Christians, we want to come close to our Muslim neighbors and to share this important part of life with them. Just as Jesus, a devout Jew, overcame religious prejudice and learned from a Syrophonecian woman and was inspired by her faith two thousand years ago (Matthew 15:21 ff, Mark 7:24 ff), we seek to learn from our Muslim sisters and brothers today.

Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Conservative, has an interesting blog post that relates to metallurge's Journal entry. It is a discussion of a lecture given by the Roman Catholic curial Archbishop Gus DiNoia, discussing how to preach to young adults today. The lecture itself may be found here.

The post is much too meaty for an excerpt; you'll have to read it all for yourself.