Churchless Christian

"I believe that there is upon the earth a holy congregation and communion of pure saints ruled under one Head, Christ, called together by the Holy Spirit in one faith, in the same mind and understanding, furnished with multiple gifts yet one in love and in all respects harmonious, without sects or schisms." Martin Luther

Thanks to tallskinny

1. UN studies show that $70-80b US per year would be enough to provide essential health care & education for all the poor in the world. If western Christians gave just 5% of their income towards this, it would solve this problem totally.

2. Of all giving to Christian churches, only 5% is spent on overseas missions. ie the church is spending 20x more on it’s own spiritual needs than on the enormous needs overseas. To quote the late Brian Hathaway “this is an outright crime”

3. US Christians control TRILLIONS in assets while at any given time 200,000,000 Christians starve." (NZ Christians control billions in assets too)

4. Annual church embezzlements by top custodians exceed the entire cost of all foreign missions worldwide. Emboldened by lax procedures, trusted church treasurers are embezzling from the Church $5,500,000 PER DAY. That’s $16,000,000,000 per YEAR! That’s Billion - with a “B”!

5. Criminal penalties against clergy in sexual abuse cases now exceed $1 billion, causing a number of churches, dioceses, and even denominations to be forced into bankruptcy.

6. Each year 600,000 full-time ordained workers (clergy,ministers,missionaries) reach retiring age; 150,000 then discover that their employers provide no old-age pensions.

7. 40% of the church’s entire global foreign mission resources are being deployed to just 10 oversaturated countries already possessing strong citizen-run home ministries.

8. All costs of ministry divided by number of baptisms per year. Cost per baptism in India - $9803 per person. Cost per baptism in the United States - $1,550,000 per person.

9. Christians spend more on the annual audits of their churches and agencies ($810 million) than on all their workers in the non-Christian world.

10. Non-Christian countries have been found to have 227 million Bibles in place in their midst, more than needed to serve all Christians, but poorly distributed.

11. 91% of all Christian outreach/evangelism does not target non-Christians but targets other Christians in the world.

Thanks to www.edgenet.org.nz and http://www.fellowshipofthemartyrs.com/scary_stats.htm

For most of my life as a Christian I`ve been miserable. After 20 years of being a Christian, I realized that I was not happy. I was very devout. I know the Scriptures fairly well. I was probably the ‘best Christian’ I knew. However, I was an ass in my daily life (just ask my wife and kids). I felt angry, unfulfilled and unsatisfied with my spirituality.

I never seemed to attain this vision that was in my head as to the way I thought my Christianity was supposed to look. It often felt as though the pursuit of God was like chasing a mirage. Not long ago I realized that this picture of my spirituality was my own imagination playing tricks on me. God wasn`t asking me to be the ‘super-apostle’ that I thought I should be. God freed me to just be. I didn`t have to prove anything. He loves me the way I am, and I can just relax a little more.

20 years of seeking God, but it hardly ever impacted my daily existence. It was always something untouchable, just out of reach. It was like I was trying to live in the life to come or in some other plane of reality, but had no idea how to live on this planet. I didn`t enjoy life in the here and now. I constantly wallowed in the past and obsessed about the future. My search for meaning led me to a dark place. Well, things are changing for me now. God is teaching me to enjoy the moment and embrace where I am and who I am. I’m leaving the future up to Him. For me, dreaming can be a dangerous thing. The picture in my head is always better than what I`m doing today, and so I get discouraged about life. But I`m learning that obsessing over my life is just a lack of trust in God. This thought from

Ecclesiastes 6:9 sums up what’s happening with me:
Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don`t have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless, like chasing the wind.

I`m letting go and embracing this life that I have. I`m eager to discover the beauty in this world and to learn more about a variety of subjects. My blog will change to reflect this. I hope to blog often, so please don`t give up on me yet.
from the blog at http://www.paulvieira.info/blog/24/I've-been-miserable-Christian

Had a real special afternoon / evening to farewell the Deans who are heading off to Thailand following God having given up job and home to follow the call. We had about 40 people pass through the Middlemiss home saying farewell and enjoying a BBQ Linner (half way between lunch and Tea).

"Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat waz invisible, An he maded the skiez An da Urf, but he no eated it." Rather better is the Valley of the Shadow of Death -
"When I wuz walkin thru dis scary valley Im sayin "me feelz no evil" cuz teh Ceiling Cat iz beside me pokin mah side wif hiz stix an it mak me so kumfy."

New Bible translation in LOL Cat explanation here

Note to outraged clergy: the only viable response to this is to say "how useful it is to look closely at the Bible and translate its wonderful meanings into language you feel comfortable with". Then, and only then, go and bang your head on the wall.....

read the article at www.timesonline.co.uk

There are 8 MILLION twenty-somethings alive today in the U.S.A who were active church-goers as teenagers but who will NOT be active in a church when their 30th birthday rolls around.

Many people say now that you are silly if you do not live together before you marry, because then at least you see your partner as they really are. its an intellegent argument and makes a lot of sense, but the proof does not really seem to be borne out in society. People who live together first have higher divorce rates then those who don't for example.
Personally I did live with someone and then married someone else. I have always said that there was no comparison between the two. I came across this article today which I think is interesting.

Cohabiting couples destined for singledom

Weston told the Sydney Morning Herald that many young people thought moving in together was "a fun thing to do".
But she said cohabiting couples often lingered for years in unsuitable relationships and had trouble finding new partners when they eventually did split.
"In the old days people might go 'steady' but there was still opportunity to meet others," she said.
"Now once you are living with someone you are cheating if you see someone else. When you cohabit it adds a sense of commitment to a relationship that might be going nowhere."
Weston told the Sydney Morning Herald that cohabiting couples in the 1980s had tended to treat the relationship as a trial marriage and usually went on to marry each other quickly. "Some might have separated later," she said.
Now, many people enter relationships before they are committed, and without having discussed their future.

"They enter prematurely but can linger on and waste their time," she said.
read the whole article here

UPDATE

I wrecked my palm pilot clearing out the drain when I got home after I took this pix. I stuck it in my raincoat pocket and forgot about it. I discovered that Palms don't like getting wet! Goodbye free internet coverage

I took this pix through my car window as I hurridly moved my car over the bridge before it was flooded out when the creek broke its banks.