DowBlog

If you can’t appreciate this…

By Darrell | August 6, 2008

then you and I will not get along very well.

You have been warned.

Topics: Humor | No Comments »

The Suburban Jesus

By Darrell | August 6, 2008

Here’s a bit from a longer post over at internetmonk.com. It’s worth reading a couple of times.

a recent sojourn into suburbia has reminded me that if one wants to come face to face with the demands and the promises of Jesus, there are just some places you can’t go. Jesus is still the “sponsor,” but the economics, politics, and security of the Kingdom of God are taking a beating over there. Stay very long, and it gets into your head and starts pulling alarms that you’ve actually wasted your life by not having the American Dream.

I’m not in anyone’s face over this, but I don’t get Jesus AND the American Dream. Some people do. Great. I don’t.

The test for me isn’t what the average Christian is doing. It’s what the average Christian has to say about the person who is trying to do it.

I used to get paid by large churches to tell their kids all about Jesus, get them into Bible studies and take them on mission trips- which I choose to be in the inner cities of Chicago and Boston, not the beach. The basic assignment was actually to keep these kids out of drugs, jail and pregnancy so they could go to college, make lots of money and pursue the lifestyles of rich Americans while attending large prosperous megachurches.

I figured this out early on, but I kept telling myself it wasn’t the case. I thought that if one of those kids becomes a serious Jesus revolutionary, going among the poor, giving up the suburban lifestyle, my churches would have applauded.

Then, a few years ago, a church kid from Minnesota came to talk to me. She’d been out of college for a few years, had come to Appalachia to teach English, then taught and coached at our school for a while, after which she took off for Africa for a couple of years. She brought me a letter from her parents where they told her what they thought about her life.

Note: These parents were card carrying suburban American Christians in church. “Nice sermon, pastor.” “Oh the music was lovely today.” “We so enjoyed the youth leading worship today.” All that.

In this letter, the parents honestly said what they thought of this girl. They thought she was nuts. The called all the ministries she worked for abusive, slave labor operations. They begged her to come home, take her college degree into the city and make some money, get a house in the suburbs and find a husband with wealth and security.

And there were good churches up there, too. Churches where she could do whatever it was she was doing.

Hey, I understand what parents go through. I feel their pain. I really do. But that letter told me, once and for all, that I had been right all those years ago, and I’m still on target today when I feel this way. Suburban Christianity is frequently not about an honest following of Jesus. It’s about an edited, reworked Jesus who blesses the American way of life and our definition of normal and happy.

Read the rest…

Topics: Christianity Today | No Comments »

Some Interesting Statistics

By Darrell | August 5, 2008

Top 13 Reasons that Unchurched People Choose a Church
(research conducted by Rainer)

1. 90% - Pastor/Preaching
2. 88% - Doctrines
3. 49% - Friendliness of Members
4. 42% - Other Issues
5. 41% - Someone Church Witnessed to Me
6. 38% - Family Member
7. 37% - Sensed God’s Presence/Atmosphere of Church
8. 25% - Relationship Other than Family Member
9. 25% - Sunday School Class
10. 25% - Children’s/Youth Ministry
11. 12% - Other Groups/Ministries
12. 11% - Worship Style/Music
13. 7% - Location

Top 9 Reasons that Church-Attenders Choose a Church
(research conducted by the Barna Group in 1999)

1. 58% - Doctrine/Theology
2. 53% - People Caring for Each Other
3. 52% - Preaching
4. 45% - Friendliness
5. 45% - Children’s Programs
6. 43% - Helping the Poor
7. 36% - Denomination
8. 35% - Like the Pastor
9. 26% - Sunday School

via The Gospel-Driven Church

Topics: Christianity Today | No Comments »

Crime as Entertainment

By Darrell | August 5, 2008

Stories of crime being used for entertainment is nothing new. After all, who doesn’t love a good murder mystery or whodunit novel? My bookshelves are certainly full of fiction works about murder, thievery, and general mayhem.

Yet as I flip channels on my television or peruse magazine covers at the bookstore, I’m struck by the fact that mere fiction about crime is no longer enough to satisfy the public appetite. True Crime stories are now a staple of media companies feeding the public’s voracious appetite for spectacle.

Marching under the banner of ‘informing the public’ news outlets unleash volley after volley of stories about the likes of O.J. Simpson, Laci Peterson,Natalie Holloway, and more recently Caylee Anthony.

What is the fascination with these cases? It certainly doesn’t seem to be based in any kind of compassion for the families of victims. Indeed, a few minutes of watching Nancy Grace will show that the more the people involved in a crime are brutalized by the press the more the public seems to enjoy it. Every detail of their lives is poured over. Every flaw is scrutinized. Because the public needs to know? Hardly. The public is licking their chops waiting for the next tantalizing tidbit of titillating information as they breathlessly consume this human drama.

The sad truth is that human pain has become entertaining. We no longer go to the Colosseum to watch the gladiators fight to the death for our pleasure. Not us! We’re civilized enough to wait until some criminal on the streets does the deed for us, then without hesitation we join in carnivorous feasting on the bones of their victims.

What a happy breed of men we are.

Topics: Current Events | No Comments »

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Church

By Darrell | August 4, 2008

My general impression is that most of our services are terribly depressing! I am amazed people still go to church; most who go are female and over the age of forty. The note missing is “joy in the Holy Ghost.” There is nothing in these services to make a stranger feel that he is missing something by not being there…

It is a great thing to be a listener. You want something for your soul. You want help. I don’t want a “great sermon”. i want to feel the presence of the God I am worshipping and to know that I am considering some great and glorious subject. If I do get this I do not care how poor the sermon is.

I suggest to you that our greatest danger is the danger of professionalism. We do not stop frequently enough to ask, What are we really doing? There is the danger of just facing a text and treating it as an end in itself with a strange detachment. It is all intellectual. Nor should our preaching be just emotional, or only to the conscience. Far to often it is one or the other of these things. There is no life, no power! We of all people ought to have it. Joy and power are intimately related. One without the other is spurious. (D.M. Lloyd-Jones, The Fight of Faith)

HT: Daryl Dash

Topics: Christianity Today | No Comments »

Eureka?

By Darrell | August 3, 2008

With both of our exhausted wives opting to stay home today, my brother and I went to church this morning with Darlene in tow. I left an hour and thirty minutes later feeling a sense of cautious optimism.

In short, it was a good service. We sang great hymns with gusto. We heard reports of ongoing work in the community. The preacher gave a message on peace from John 16:33 that had everything the message we heard a few months ago lacked — namely a biblical handling of the subject matter.

We’ll definitely be giving this church a second visit and see what the Lord does.

Topics: Me | 1 Comment »

Unexplainable

By Darrell | August 2, 2008

Topics: Humor | 4 Comments »

The World Is Flat

By Darrell | August 2, 2008

For the past few days, I’ve been listening to The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman on my commutes. As it just so happens, Friedman is giving away a free audiobook download of this book through August 11th.

HT: Esky

Topics: Books | 1 Comment »