Churchless Christian

"Our misguided belief that life change can come through proper knowledge acquired through education has failed to produce the kind of radical commitment to life in harmony with God in the way of Jesus that we are called to."
Doug Pagitt

The American church is losing ground as the population continues to surge. If trends continue, by 2050 the percentage of Americans attending church will be half the 1990 figure.
David T Olson

Come with me to a third grade classroom..... There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how
this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives. The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer,

"Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes fromnow I'm dead meat."

He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered. As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and
inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap. The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!" Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie. She tries to help, but they tell her to get out.
You've done enough, you klutz!"

Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Susie whispers
back, "I wet my pants once too." May God help us see the opportunities that are always around us to do good.

Remember.....Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.

In New Zealand On average, every $2 coin in your pocket has been through a poker machine six times in the past year.

The first data from a new $35 million electronic monitoring system, to be presented at a gambling conference in Auckland today, shows that people sank $2.4 billion into non-casino gambling machines in the past year.

Almost $900 million of this was in $2 coins - which was 6.7 times the total value of $2 coins in circulation. NZHERALD

Don't ever take three children to the dentist at the same time especially if two are Aspergers and Autistic. Kim refuses to take them now, and even the dental nurse had fear in her eyes when she opened the door to us! Mind you I was the one in shock when $6000.00 was mentioned for one of the kids teeth.

Verboticisms

DEFINITION: n., Forced small talk used by professional caregivers to put patients at ease. (Not usually effective.) v. intr., To ask insipid questions while subjecting a person to an intimate, awkward or painful procedure.

Got this from www.tallskinnykiwi.com

One thing that has amazed me is the kaleidoscope of Christian expression that has come out of the people we were originally sitting in pews with before leaving. Some started doing gift cards as a way of starting micro business's. Others got involved with the city mission and helping the poor. Another couple started bringing Chinese students into their home and caring for them. Some of us have got involved with helping offenders and those in drug addiction. Some more got involved with people with disabilities. As mentioned in my previous post one couple have given everything up and changed countries to encourage the starting of Simple Churches in Asia.

One of the more interesting expressions of Christian actions has been under taken by a friend of ours who look after a Simple Church down the road from us in Albany. They feel led to design a new flag for New Zealand and are part of a growing ground swell to see a change to what is viewed by many as an outdated New Zealand flag. Have a look at the ideas behind the new flag at www.starfern.co.nz

We had a farewell for the Dean's yesterday who are heading for the mission field tomorrow. Had about 35 or so people come along and eat and pray and bless them out into their endeavours. They are training up people to think about establishing simple churches in other cultures.

In 1925 a Maori prophet from New Zealand called Ratana visited Japan where he prayed for the healing of the Japanese Emperor.

When the Japanese Emperor said to Ratana, ”If you are a prophet, give me a prophecy”, Ratana replied,

"This kingdom, this house you live in will become a prison. Your status as a god will be taken from you. “Your people will be turned to dust when you see two bright lights above you”. “Have no fear, your nation will rise again”

Two decades later that prophecy was fulfilled.

We are up camping with friends at the momment, but have snuck home to water the garden and pop a few pix on the blog. We are really in drought conditions at the momment and the water is critically low.

1. Didn’t bring a lost person to decision.

2. He offered forgiveness without confession of sin.

3. Failed to ask about the prospect’s (yuck, hate that word) spiritual background

4. Didn’t use healing as a bait for decision.

5. Failed to get the prospect (yuck, again) into a Bible (Torah) study.

6. Failed to communicate the urgency of the encounter.

7. Forgot to assign a spiritual person to do follow-up

from www.cindybryan.blogspot.com

Is 83 year old President Carter the First of the Emergent Christian breed? For 30 years Carter has tried to show a concern for enviromentalisim, poverty and other Christian world views, all within the very narrow confines of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Sadly Carter has been forced to seperate from SBC over things like the quote below

Patterson (current SBC president) said the current split boiled down to "an epistemological question: How do you know what you know you say is true?"

Carter, who did graduate work in nuclear physics, doesn't necessarily disagree. "There's no doubt in my mind that the Bible was written by, almost exclusively, men, who were limited in their knowledge of science." Today's biblical literalists, he said, "might believe that the universe was created in 4004 BC. I don't believe that."

The Los Angeles Times has a fabulous article on Carter and the Southern baptist's here