The Enemies of Christ's Church

World Watch List 2009

1. North Korea
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Iran
4. Afghanistan
5. Somalia
6. Maldives
7. Yemen
8. Laos
9. Eritrea
10. Uzbekistan

Cool Majic Trick

Source

A Night Out with the Lady Aggies

The Fergie's enjoyed an evening out at Reed Arena watching the 12th ranked Women's Basketball team UPSET the #2 ranked Oklahoma Sooners on a great shot with 5 seconds left in the game. Final score: Aggies 57, Sooners 56.

Here are some shots from the game (taken from phone camera):


These was our view of the court.


Miranda with #40 Kelsey Assarian



Miranda with #20 Tyra White


Miranda with #12 La Toya Micheaux



Miranda with #21 Adaora Elonu



Miranda with #2 Damitria Buchanan



And my personal favorite: Miranda showing Damitria that she was wearing pink too!



And last but not least, the boys got in a picture with Aggie Basketball Coach, Gary Blair. [They didn't want to get their pics made with any of the ladies. Go figure!]

At any rate, we had a great night out. The school charged $1 for admission so we were able to afford a game for the entire family. Kevin & Heather had to split out early for his practice. A funny note: those who know Colton will be surprised at this. I gave him permission to yell as loud as he wanted to b/c everyone else was yelling. But...he didn't want to!!! I should have told him that he wasn't allowed to yell and then he would not be able to hold back!

Gig'em Aggies!!

More popular than Jesus?

This actually isn't surprising, but in the recent Harris Poll, Jesus gave up his number one spot on the list of America's favorite heroes to Barack Hussein Obama.

Check out the Chicago Sun-Times article here.

Is God's love Unconditional?

Justin Taylor has a great post dealing with this question. You should check it out.

A little perspective....

“Suppose you spent $1 million every single day starting from the day Jesus was born — and kept spending through today,” says the announcer as an image of the three wise men flashes on the screen. “A million dollars a day for more than 2,000 years. You would still have spent less money than Congress just did.”

Click source for must see video.

And that's not counting the bailout that Dubya, McCain, & Obama voted on in October.

Quote of the day...

Quick, who said the following?

...the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.

“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”

“Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”

Who said that?


Rush Limbaugh?


No.


Sean Hannity?


No.


Karl Rove?


No.


Dubya?



No.


Give up?



Drum roll please...

...
...
...

The answer is...


That's right, folks. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Putin said this during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

You can read it in an article entitled, "Putin Warns the US about Socialism."

These words are sustaining me today...

From Ed Welch's, Running Scared: Fear, Worry, & the God of Rest,

"Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Silly question--worriers by definition expect the worst. Bad things certainly can and will happen, but there is a resurrection ending. So your task is not to transform into a superficial optimist [thank God!]. It is to grow to be an optimist by faith. The kingdom is advancing; God's reign is spreading; there will be justice; and when we belong to Christ, it will end with joy."

Quote of the day...

Okay, so I'm really behind in reading blogs. My Google Reader is stuffed to the rafters, so this quote is a bit dated (written about 2 weeks ago), but Doug Wilson nailed this on its head:

...as Christians look at their options, we need to fix this in our minds: there is no political solution to any of this. Politics is no savior -- politics must get saved. And in order to be saved, politics needs to get baptized, and start attending church along with a good mid-week Bible study. I would also want to suggest some AA meetings. This means that as we look at the various ways Christians want us to engage with the culture, we must rule all the most popular ones out. We must rule out the Jim Wallis sob sister approach, top to bottom, front to back. He must have learned his idea of what prophetic means from a high school sociology class taught by an angry, overweight feminist in a mumu. We must rule out the middlin' Republicans who always want to do what the Left is doing, only slower. If we are going to be governed by Leftists, at least let it at least not be by retarded Leftists. And last, most important because most tempting to us, we must rule out the hard-line, hard right, secular conservatives. It would be a drastic mistake for us to think that secular conservatives really ought to be Christians (if they want to go to heaven), but in the meantime they can certainly do a better job governing without Jesus than the liberals. But they can't. You are not a better driver just because you always hit a different telephone pole than the other guy. No one can govern without Jesus.

Actually, the whole post is noteworthy.

Go ahead, Indulge yourself...

Say it isn't so, but indulgences are making a comeback. See this report in the NTTimes.

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

I know, I know, "John, you just don't understand."

“Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the Catholic magazine America....“

"The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.

Good news indeed, but JUST NOT THE GOOD NEWS WE'VE BEEN COMMISSIONED TO PROCLAIM!!!

A Bad Rap

Hey Shawn, if normal preaching doesn't work, perhaps you could threaten to bring these guys in...



I just hope this wasn't in a church service, but alas, I fear.....

Quote of the day...

"To deny the reality of sin or struggle in our lives is to deny God the opportunity of working through our weakness."

Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker

...built around the mission of God....

In prep for or work in Calgary, I've read The Multi-site Revolution. Here's a great quote:

"The future of the multi-site church might be a return to the mindset of the first-century believer, when the word church did not refer to a specific building or location but to a group of believers by a common mission. Imagine the power of a church not built around a personality or a facility but instead built around a mission!"

We hope to see a number of sites established that are identified by their participation in the mission of God. May God grant the increase!

I'm also looking forward to attending the multi-site church planting conference in March in San Diego with my good friend, Shawn Doud.

Wes on Youth Ministry

My good friend, Wes Baker, has some good thoughts on Youth Ministry. He writes,

The goal of youth ministry is to prepare our children for service in Christ’s Kingdom. This involves a process of spiritual formation in which they are molded and shaped into the image of Christ. The child’s will, intellect, and emotional life must be conformed to the will, intellect, and emotional life of Christ, and dedicated fully to His service. This process will not happen automatically. We must intentionally cultivate in them all of the moral, intellectual, and emotional virtues to make them well rounded, fruitful, and faithful citizens of Zion.

The church cannot do this without the parents, but neither can the parents do this without the guidance, support, and active involvement of the whole body of Christ. It is an error to think that youth ministry can make up for parental negligence. Discipleship is not something that anyone else can do for the parents. At the same time however, the opposite error is to think that parents are self-sufficient, and equal to the task all by themselves. As Christian parents we must raise our children together, in mutual dependence on one another, making full use of each other’s gifts, not least of which include the guidance, direction, counsel, and instruction of our ministers and elders.

Check it out here.

Obama's Insight & Blindness

Obama said the following at the National Prayer Breakfast (p. 2, 3rd paragraph): "There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know."


Douglas Wilson tells us what he really meant: "There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being, except for those millions of lives we have found convenient to take on the threshold of life, and those lives we find it too expensive to not take among our most senior seniors. This much we know."

Then Wilson comments on the National Prayer Breakfast: "If a man with Obama's open-throttle abortion policies can appear at the National Prayer Breakfast, say something like that to a group of Christians without starting a junior high cafeteria riot, then it is clearly time to shut down the National Prayer Breakfast. What conceivable good is it? What would the prophet Isaiah have said? "Who required this tramping through the breakfast line? I cannot endure iniquity and glad-handing evangelicals. Away with the smell of your bacon . . ."

CJ on Biblical Productivity

I've been reading these articles by CJ Mahaney on Biblical productivity. He says,

I forget now who first brought these points to my attention. But the realization that I could be simultaneously busy and lazy, that I could be a hectic sluggard, that my busyness was no immunity from laziness, became a life-altering and work-altering insight. What I learned is that:

   * Busyness does not mean I am diligent
   * Busyness does not mean I am faithful
   * Busyness does not mean I am fruitful

Recognizing the sin of procrastination, and broadening the definition to include busyness, has made a significant alteration in my life. The sluggard can be busy—busy neglecting the most important work, and busy knocking out a to-do list filled with tasks of secondary importance.

Check these out if your interested:

1. Are You Busy?
2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator
3. The Procrastinator Within
4. Just Do It
5. In All Thy Ways
6. The Sluggard
7. Time. Redeemed.
8. Roles, Goals, Scheduling
9. Roles (Part 1)
10. Roles (Part 2)
11. Goals (Part 1)
12. Goals (Part 2)
13. Goals (Part 3)

Any comment necessary...?

According to Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, every month she & Obama do not get their $1,000,000,000,000 stimulus 'pork' bill that will enslave our children & grandchildren, 500,000,000 million Americans will lose their jobs.



According to the US Census Buruea, there are only 305,749,091 people living in America.

How do you explain this?