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Can the pastor of a church really make everyone happy? Greg Simmons says yes — just not all at the same time (from a comment at Church Relevance).
It is possible for pastors to make everyone happy. Some are happy when you come to the church, others are happy while you’re there, and the rest are happy when you leave.
Oh well, maybe two-thirds of the people at my church are happy then. Of course, the more important question is, “Should the pastor make everyone happy?” (What do you think?)
Snakes in a church. The pastor of a church in Kentucky was arrested for the illegal possession of venomous snakes. Apparently, the church practices snake handling in its services. Wildlife officers confiscated over 100 snakes including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.
Wrong house. Contractors razed the wrong house in Jackson, Mississippi after pranksters moved the demolition sign from the lot next door. Owner Annie Wilson is trying to get just compensation for the mistaken demolition of her house with everything in it.
Pay toilets. No, you don’t pay to use these toilets. The government pays you to use them. Dozens of people are lining up to use the toilets in Musiri, a remote town in India, where authorities are succeeding in keeping street corners clean with the new scheme.
We are right in the middle of a great week of Vacation Bible School at our church (Agawam Church of the Bible). The theme is “SonForce Kids: Special Agents on a Mission for God.” I am grateful for the many men, women and teens at our church who take the time out of their busy schedules to minister to children during VBS week. Some of our adults even use vacation time or shift their schedules at work to be here. It is definitely a team effort, and I would say the funnest place to be this week.
Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers set a first round record in the Home Run Derby Monday night with 28 home runs. Josh recently returned to baseball after five years of drug addiction that nearly took his life. He credits God and Christ in helping him overcome his addiction. Here is the video from the Derby:
How am I here? I can only shrug and say, “It’s a God thing.” It’s the only possible explanation. There’s a reason my prayers weren’t answered during those dark, messed-up nights I spent scared out of my mind. There’s a reason I have this blessed and unexpected opportunity to play baseball and tell people my story …
Every day I’m reminded that my story is bigger than me. It never fails. Every time I go to the ballpark, I talk to people who are either battling addictions themselves or trying to help someone else who is … A father will tell me about his son while I’m signing autographs. A mother will wait outside the players’ parking lot to tell me about her daughter. They know where I’ve been. They look to me because I’m proof that hope is never lost.
They remind me that this isn’t really about baseball … I’ve been called the biggest surprise in baseball this year, and I can’t argue with that. If you think about it, how many people have gone from being a crack addict to succeeding at anything, especially something as demanding as major league baseball?…
This may sound crazy, but I wouldn’t change a thing about my path to the big leagues … You’re probably thinking, Bad decisions and addiction almost cost him his life, and he wouldn’t change anything? But if I hadn’t gone through all the hard times, this whole story would be just about baseball. If I’d made the big leagues at 21 and made my first All-Star team at 23 and done all the things expected of me, I would be a big-time baseball player, and that’s it.
Baseball is third in my life right now, behind my relationship with God and my family. Without the first two, baseball isn’t even in the picture. Believe me, I know.
The cyclone took an estimated 350,000 lives. More than 100,000 are still missing. But life was not much better for those who survived. More than 1.6 million homes were destroyed and 1.3 million acres of fertile crop land were damaged as the cyclone swept across an area known as “the rice bowl of Myanmar.”
“In some affected areas, the dead are more than the living,” the missionary noted. There was no way to bury the vast number of dead, so their corpses litter the waterways and landscape.
Then GFA missionaries and volunteers showed up with emergency food and supplies. The missionary leader himself was on the crew of volunteers who helped serve food to survivors who took refuge at the GFA Bible College in Yangon (Rangoon). He, and every other missionary who served with him, were letting their lives preach the sermons during those days.
The people in this majority Buddhist country were stunned at the love these Christians showed to them. Two families who went without food for seven days after the storm articulated their thoughts about Jesus to the missionaries who brought them food.
“Buddha did nothing while we were suffering. But your Jesus loves us,” the missionary reported. “Now every Sunday they are coming to church and worshipping the Lord.”
The world’s former only official Hindu country is now open to the preaching of the Gospel, a Christian missionary working in the country shared this past weekend with joy. Formerly, Christians were reportedly arrested and imprisoned for preaching the Gospel in Nepal …
But in April, Nepal held its first election for a new legislative assembly, and in May lawmakers legally abolished the monarchy and declared the country a republic. The king was previously considered to be a god. Newly elected officials also promised to allow religious freedom in the government. Now, Gospel programs are aired over the same government-owned radio stations that used to carry reports of Christians being arrested.
Yesterday’s message was the last in the Life of Samuel series. The message was called Returning to God and was taken from 1 Samuel 7:2-17. The message was about steps to take in returning to God. Here is a brief outline:
Steps to returning to God:
I. Repentance (verses 2-4)
A. Mourning for sin and seeking after the Lord
B. Putting aside any rivals to God in your life
C. Committing yourself to serving God only
II. Prayer (verses 5-11)
A. Asking for prayer from other believers
B. Freely confessing your sin against the Lord
C. Trusting God to deliver you by his grace
III. Growth (verses 12-17)
A. Marking your progress
B. Seeing the changes
C. Living it out in your daily routine
Note: Click on the Sermons tab at the top of the blog for this and other messages.
E. B. White writes about living in the country. “Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.”
Jim Martin has been blogging about what he has learned at 30 years of marriage. “During those years of being a family and being a married person, I probably tended to think that marriage was primarily about personal happiness. In particular, I wanted to make sure my spouse was happy. It would be many years before I realized that God was using our marriage to shape us into a certain kind of people.”
Scott Nehring gives a great tip on discerning a movie’s message. “All movies give the audience a message. This message can be, ‘crime never pays, ‘war is hell’, [etc.] … The way a film delivers this message is by posing a question at its opening and answering it at its very end. Within the first 3-7 minutes you will find a question, a conflict, is established – will the boy get the girl, will the treasure be found, will the hero learn to love, etc. At the end of the film, the last 3-7 minutes, you will find that question is answered.”
Sinclair Ferguson believes that the church is God’s greatest evangelistic tool to reach the lost. “That is perhaps the single greatest need we have as a community of God’s people. That there might be something about the very atmosphere of our fellowship together in the unity of the bonds of the Holy Spirit that makes people ask the question ‘Where on earth, or in heaven, did that come from?’ And if they’re not compelled to ask that question about our church, it’s an almost certain sign that there’s very little that’s heavenly about our community.”
J. C. Ryle asks the all important question, Do you pray? “It is essential to your soul’s health to make praying a part of the business of every twenty-four hours in your life. Just as you allot time to eating, sleeping, and business, so also allot time to prayer. Choose your own hours and seasons. At the very least, speak with God in the morning, before you speak with the world: and speak with God at night, after you have done with the world. But settle it in your minds, that prayer is one of the great things of every day. Do not drive it into a corner. Do not give it the scraps and parings of your duty. Whatever else you make a business of, make a business of prayer.”
Got an itchy back? Grab the nearest tree. This so reminds me of Baloo the Bear from the movie The Jungle Book. (Video length: 1:44)
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies …
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us—that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God’s love for others. Sickness gets us partway there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy …
I sat by my best friend’s bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away … His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity …
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don’t know much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable place—in the hollow of God’s hand.
Snow is survived by his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, whom he married in 1987; their son, Robbie; and daughters, Kendall and Kristi.
A new Barna survey shows that more Americans accept the Bible as “holy” or “sacred” than they would other books. Respondents of the survey for The Barna Group identified around 12 books they thought fit the bill as “sacred literature” or “holy books.” The list included expected titles such as the Bible and the Koran and others such as Quiet Strength by football coach Tony Dungy. However, the Bible stood out by far from other texts with 84 percent of Americans deeming it a holy book.
Only three books were recognized as holy by at least 1 percent of Americans. The Koran trailed behind the Bible in second place with 4 percent; the Book of Mormon was labeled by 3 percent as sacred/holy; and the Torah was deemed holy by 2 percent of the public.
I was glad to see 84 percent of the respondents accepted the Bible as holy but puzzled why only 2 percent accepted the Torah. The Torah (also known as the Pentateuch) refers to the first five books in the Bible. So if the Bible is holy, by definition the Torah is too. Actually more people should embrace the Torah as a holy book than the Bible. Jews would not view the whole Bible as from God, but both Jews and Christians together would accept the first five books of the Bible as holy. I am guessing that many of the respondents did not know that the Torah is actually part of the Bible.
I have been a Batman fan for as long as I can remember, so I am really looking forward to The Dark Knight, the follow-up to the Batman Begins movie from 2005. The Dark Knight comes out in theaters July 18. Here is the two-minute trailer for the movie, masterfully re-created with Legos. (Video length: 2:09)
And here is the trailer re-created with clips from the 1966 Batman
movie starring Adam West. (Video length: 2:07)
Water Found on the Moon. New findings point to the existence of water deep beneath the moon’s surface. And in other water news:
Water Crisis in Israel. Israel is having its worst water crisis since records started being kept 80 years ago.
What would happen if you answered all your spam? Would you believe — a stuffed mailbox at home, a computer clogged up with spyware, and an exponential increase of 20,000 spam messages in just one month?
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July 18, 2008
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Posted by Ray Fowler
Categories: Pastors
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2 Comments
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