Monday, November 15, 2010

A Little Church of Miracles... on Wheels




This "Little Church of Miracles on Wheels" is for sale in Stanley, Idaho. It would make a really neat little chapel. The video highlights all the detailed wood work as well as several items brought in from churches around the world that were being dismantled. What a great place for "quiet times."

Sunday, November 14, 2010

"How He Loves" by John Mark McMillan

My sister sent me the link to this video. I thought I'd share it with you all. 


Saturday, November 13, 2010

Homogeneity in the Church, A Bad Thing

The following is an extensive quote from James M. Harrison's article, Church Complex: on the Value of Being Uncomfortable with Others. (From Touchstone Magazine, July/August 2007)


But what makes the gospel unique is the way in which Jesus is not like us. I don’t need someone who is just like me. I’m sinful. I need someone holy. I’m human. I need someone divine. I cannot stand under the wrath of God. I need someone who has stood there in my place. I cannot raise myself from death to life. I need someone who can raise me up because he himself has been raised.

The Incarnation is not a reason to associate only with those who are like us. It is actually a reason to associate with all those who share the life he came to bring us, because he made no such distinctions. The Paul who became all things to all people constantly spoke of the unity of the churches he founded and fought any kind of division.

A Bad Thing

From the very beginning, the gurus of the Church Growth Movement have contended that to grow a church we need to focus upon a specific demographic, and seek to make our churches reflect it.

The idea is that people will be more receptive to the gospel when it is presented to them in their own environment, within their own comfort zone. This has affected the way in which we “do church.” Church must be made to be a comfortable place, and since people are most comfortable around their own kind, their own kind should be encouraged to come (which means that other kinds will be effectively discouraged from coming).

The result has been a church-planting strategy focused upon specific groups: Baby-boomer churches, Baby-buster churches, Gen-X churches, GenNext churches, and on and on and on. And they are successful, defining success by church-growth standards.

Some would ask, “Isn’t that a good thing?” And I would answer, “No. It is not.”

I have no doubt that individuals have come to know Christ through these ministries. But that is not evidence of a correct, and by “correct” I mean a biblical, church-planting or church-growth strategy. It is evidence of the extreme graciousness of God in accomplishing his purposes even in the face of our errors. Moses was not only in error, but positively disobedient, when he struck the rock. In spite of this, God graciously provided water for his people.

Nonetheless, it must be said that this emphasis on similarity is not a good thing for the church. It runs counter to the biblical ideal of what the church is to be, and also counter to the biblical example of what the church is to accomplish before a watching world.

In the New Testament, whenever a problem of cultural or racial division arose within the church, the solution to the problem was not separation into compatible social or racial groups. The solution was to foster ever-increasing union around the gospel and its implications.

The church of Christ is to be a witness to the power of the gospel to change lives and minds and hearts, as Peter’s was changed when he saw the sheet descend from heaven. The church is to be a witness to the power of the gospel to break down walls of division between races and ages and cultures, between generations and social classes.

The church is to be an earthly representative, imperfect though it is, of the heavenly glory, in which men from every tongue and tribe and nation are gathered together, worshipping the One who sits on the throne, and the Lamb.

Let there be a Big Bang...

This is a bit of a riff off of what Meirav said in the post about the beginning of life. She wrote a short blip about "how creation would have been described in the Bible if evolution theory was true" (except that she really meant "if the Big Bang theory were true"). So here's my own blip on that.

What science says:
The Large Hadron Collider has succeeded in recreating a miniature version of the Big Bang by smashing stripped-down lead atoms together.

The reaction created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun, which have not been reached since the first billionths of a second following the Big Bang.

This was expected to cause atomic particles such as protons and neutrons to melt, producing a “soup” of matter in a state previously unseen on Earth

What the Bible would say:
In the beginning, there was light.

You could follow that up with, "... hotter and brighter than the sun." But the Bible (especially in the first 10 chapters of Genesis) often kept it short and sweet.

By the way, everything after that point is post Big Bang, technically. But it's often lumped into the whole shebang because it all only follows if the premise of a big bang is accepted. 

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

What if life began with a single cell

What if life began with a single cell. 

And what if life multiplied when that cell divided into two cells (mitosis). 

And what if you were around six or seven thousand years ago and you knew that life started with a single cell that divided into two cells, but you were trying to explain that to someone that didn't even know that cells existed (and who probably still wouldn't get it even if you explained it since the microscope hadn't been invented yet to show them what you meant). So how would you explain it to them? What would you say to get that idea across while still being comprehensible? 

In other words, how would you describe mitosis to an ancient Sumerian or Akkadian in a way that they might still get the main idea of what you're saying?