Response to JP Video Blog

What a poser!!! Over 7 minutes of video, and not ONE BIBLE VERSE. Excellent sermon dude, lets be all laid back, open collar, leaning on his wrist, what a leader man!! I'm so jealous, i wish he were my pastor. I do however agree partially, mainly to the point about being called to Palm Springs, or Myrtle Beach, or Panama City during Spring Break. I really do think this is a joke, taking a summer long outreach in some of the most beautiful places in the world. I guess the inner cities don't have enough people to outreach too, and I'm sure people on the beach are way more receptive. PNate out!

More SG, I look at his articles just for one-liners like this:

The Lakers fans? They treated it like any other game, mainly because they could -- again, the Lakers have the best team. Because of the early start time, the fans didn't even fill the arena until midway through the second quarter. They ran a "Kiss Cam" during one timeout and had a fan attempt a half-court shot during another. You wouldn't have even known it was the playoffs except for the competitiveness of the game (way up there) and a spectacular "Hollywood Nights" montage of celebs that featured Tobey Maguire, Cameron Diaz, Flea and others, ending as always with a semi-disoriented Jack Nicholson standing up and applauding like a homeless person.

I received the video below a few days ago with this pretext:

"I would ask why does it matter if someone leaves your church and starts another one in the same city, the same part of town even?

Is he trying to harm the pastor and the church he came from? Is he being obedient to God's leading? Was he frustrated about the church he was in? Trying to minister to a group of people not reached by his former church (nor any other churches)?

When is it appropriate, and inappropriate, for someone to leave a church to start another church? And, when is it appropriate to call such a person a church 'pirate', and when is it harsh to do so?"

Before watching the video, I responded with the following:

1) I would be that at least half (and I am being very conservative) of US church growth post-1980 has been from people leaving one church and going to another. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, just making a guess.

2) Research shows that churches of less than 100 are faster growing and their people go deeper in their relationship with the Lord, the more churches the better.

3) I don’t believe the culture or context of the New Testament speaks to this topic. I often hear that in the NT there were city-churches, not like we have now. I can’t disagree as I wasn’t there, but you also had a plethora of house-churches with their own issues on this matter, i.e. “What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas[a]"; still another, "I follow Christ.”

4) I am inexperienced in this matter, but I have never encountered one situation where a person started and church and then “robbed” another church of their people. I have seen people leave one church or another for various reasons, good and bad, but not be “stolen.”

5) Jesus was the ultimate sheep stealer, and that was one issue that got Him crucified.

Then I watched the link:



Then I responded with the following:

Who does this guy think he is?

Why is he talking on this topic?

He sure wants to play the part, nice little suit, no tie, sitting down, etc.

He really turned me off and I didn’t agree with what he had to say at all. The corporate world would be in jail? It happens every day in the corporate world.

I added that I thought he was arrogant and everything I've seen about him or his church has been about him. I don't like the guy.

The Sports Guy is being extra tough on Ray Allen:

And Allen has been so atrocious that the home crowd gets extra excited every time he shoots a jumper, to the point that it's a little embarrassing. As reader Sals in Toronto described it, "Is Ray Allen THAT bad now? Watching the Boston crowd rally behind him after a 12-footer is like watching the Jason McElwain story all over again." Ouch. But it's true.

I have a book and a half to finish and then on to one of the books I've been looking forward to reading for some time, Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be. A review was done here, and I like the following quote:

“Some of us long for teaching that has authority, ethics rooted in dogma, and something unique in this world of banal diversity,” DeYoung writes. “We long for Jesus—not a shapeless, formless good-hearted ethical teacher Jesus, but the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of the church, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of two millennia of Christian witness with all of its unchanging and edgy doctrinal propositions.”

Forgive me, I am totally geeked up about this!

I am 100% pro-life, no questions asked. I believe in the right for the unborn to live in each and every circumstance. Having said that, I like the stance the following quote makes:

Each of the Coburn Seven counts himself pro-life. If a bill came to the Senate floor that would save millions of unborn children, one assumes that pro-life members would push to improve it, accept a few necessary compromises and then enthusiastically support the legislation. It is difficult to imagine why pro-life legislation involving millions of Africans should be viewed differently.

- Author, columnist, and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, criticizing Senators Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss, David Vitter, Jim Bunning, Richard Burr--Republicans who have signed a hold letter preventing action on the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). (Source: The Washington Post )

Some argue for the unborn while doing nothing for those already born, others fight for those out of the womb while caring less than nothing for the unborn. It's not an either-or, it's a both, we don't choose one or the other. God extends His unfailing and unconditional love for both, and desires that we do the same.

I was very intrigued and quite honestly disheartened by this article. What did Rouse do wrong? I would think that what he did was taking high road, but coaches like Coach K (who I am starting to lost some respect for) seem to disagree:

"If one of my assistants would tape every one of my conversations with me not knowing it, there's no way he would be on my staff," Krzyzewski told "Outside the Lines" in 2003.

Furthermore, I'm not sure where I stand on terms of Bliss "reintroducing himself to college basketball." I'm all for second chances, but this just doesn't seem right. Rouse languishes in a graveyard shift, broke, while Bliss speaks for Athletes in Action and is dabbling with getting back into coaching. Is this one of those issues where the Kingdom just doesn't make sense? Shouldn't Bliss reach out to Rouse, who all I've talked to did the right thing? Your thoughts?

This article angered me, and I found a lot of truth in the following:

If Al Sharpton is itching to picket something, he should organize a protest outside Malone's house, since the National Fatherhood Initiative says two out of three African-American children grow up without their father in the home.

Roger Clemens' alleged seedy indiscretions -- including a possible sexual relationship with a 15-year-old -- are nothing compared to what Malone has done. Malone reportedly impregnated Bell's mother when she was 13 and he was a sophomore at Louisiana Tech. Malone is lucky Chris Hansen wasn't around and he didn't have to answer to the authorities.

And what hypocrisy:

Absentee father certainly isn't the image most have of Malone -- especially in Summerfield and Salt Lake City, where he's revered. In fact, in 2003 Utah governor Mike Leavitt presented Malone and his wife, Kay, with a special declaration to "commend and thank Kay and Karl Malone for their incredible service, friendship, and generosity to the state of Utah." In the press release, Malone's frequent visits to sick children were praised, as well as his Karl Malone Foundation for Kids, which aids children and families in need. It makes his apparent reluctance to be a father to Bell that much more astounding, especially when you consider that Malone also grew up fatherless. Malone's father committed suicide when he was 3.

More good news out of the Congo, from the Economist, in an article titled "Atrocites Beyond Words." A high(or low)light:

Most victims, as ever, are women and girls, some no more than toddlers, though men and boys have sometimes been targeted too. Local aid workers and UN reports tell of gang rapes, leaving victims with appalling physical and psychological injuries; rapes committed in front of families or whole communities; male relatives forced at gunpoint to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters; women used as sex slaves forced to eat excrement or the flesh of murdered relatives. Some women victims have themselves been murdered by bullets fired from a gun barrel shoved into their vagina. Some men, says a worker for the UN's Children's Fund (Unicef), have been forced to simulate having sex in holes dug in the ground, with razor blades stuck inside.

The idea is to help draw world attention to the plight of civilians, whose suffering is at least as extreme as anything witnessed in the better-publicised conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur.

This doesn't surprise me given the description Gourevitch gave of this area in his book "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families." I am appalled that the world community allows this to happen, yet not surprised that once again the UN is not only not doing anything to help these people but also, according to Gourevitch, probably at least partly complicit in setting up these conditions and not bringing the perpetrators to justice.

A lot of things in this article just don't make sense, do they?

I haven’t been on the web lately, so I had quite a bit or reading to do to catch up on this blog. Well not that I’m done, I can post my reaction to one in particular. On Friday, Adam posted about a Seminar that he went to attended given by Gerry Matatics. I have two problems with what I read.

First, Gerry says that he converted to the Roman Catholic Faith, but he rejects what he terms “counterfeit Catholicism,” which includes “nearly all of the doctrinal, liturgical, and moral changes that have taken place in the Roman Catholic Church in about the last fifty years”. The things that happened over the last fifty years or so were dictated by the Popes that he also claims were heretics, but these are all people who are the “Vicars of Christ”, the people who claim the title only previously given to the Holy Spirit! Isn’t there a problem when a worldwide church is run by one MAN?

Second, I need to hear a reason for denying Sola Scriptura! Sola Fide I guess I can see, since Catholics will say that you are not justified by Faith alone, that it is Faith and Works (which I completely disagree with as well!) both that play the part of salvation. But to say that the Bible isn’t self-authenticating and sufficient itself to be the final authority of Christian Doctrine is a heresy itself. I’m curious to know what more we need, maybe the Holy Authoratative word of the Pope!

It’s probably clear that I vehemently oppose anything Roman Catholic. I don’t hate Catholics, I feel it’s like a disease. I don’t hate someone because they have Aids or Cancer; I love them, but hate the sickness inside!

p.s. I wonder if he ever heard Dave Hunt talk about the Whore of Babylon!

I’ve been going through a bout of depression lately. Or, as Kierkegaard would more accurately describe it, bouts of melancholy. The 19th-century philosopher described such a state well:

“I do not care for anything. I do not care to ride, for the exercise is too violent. I do not care to walk, walking is too strenuous. I do not care to lie down, for I should either have to remain lying, and I do not care to do that, or I should have to get up again, and I do not care to do that either. Summa summarum: I do not care at all.”

When we lay aide all of the hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo of modern psychology and psychotherapy, and refuse to read such nonsense back into the Scriptures, pilgrims following the Jesus Way can still see and appreciate that there’s nothing unusual about experiencing intense periods of grief, loneliness, hopelessness, and despair. Reading through the Word of God provides an abundance of examples of past saints going through their own periods of melancholy.

One of those examples is Psalm 38. King David, described as a “man after God’s own heart,” wrote that he was “troubled” and “bowed down greatly.” He “mourned all the day long,” crying out due to the “turmoil” of his heart.

I can identify with David’s dejected and disheartened state. I doubt I’m alone.

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we think it will. The ideals and dreams that we have don’t always materialize as we thought they would. Disappointments, failures, and rejections seem to be the rule; satisfaction, success, and acceptance rare exceptions. Giving up seems easy. Overcoming appears impossible.

I see no way out of these states of melancholy other than seeking God and the Kingdom of our beloved Savior.

Self-deception can, and does, trick us into thinking we’re alright. Alcohol and drugs can, and do, hide our despair for a short time and make us forget it. Games and sports can, and do, distract us from our misery for a spell.

But only Jesus the Messiah, the Great Physician, can truly heal us from the feelings of sorrow that often rule us. Only He can deal with the root of the problem – that being our sinful state, the fallen world we live in, and our unrealistic expectations of how this vapor of a life is supposed to function.

Only Jesus provides His people with the perspective needed to overcome the grief, loneliness, hopelessness, and despair. Eternal perspective.

Jesus’ solution, His cure, for the melancholy and the depression and the emptiness is simple, yet profound.

We’re commanded to look to Him, not to other people. We’re told to look to Heaven, not this world. We’re to Feast on the Bread of Life, not the manna that’s here today but gone tomorrow. We’re to drink from the Living Water, not the putrid liquids that leave us longing for more.

So let’s commit ourselves to really seeking God during our low times of melancholy. Casting ourselves before the King. Crying out to Him – literally.

My hope for myself and for those of you sharing my experience, are expressed again by the words of King David:

“O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to His holy Name…

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning…

O Lord, be my helper. You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”

Two articles (one actually a book review) I came across today that are worthwhile reading:

Why We're Not Emergent

Quitting the Game to Enjoy the Party

Please forgive me my internet friends for having taken so long to post something of substance! I’ve actually intended to post several items concerning the Emergent/Emerging Church, politics and Christianity, and my frustration with women. Hopefully these will all eventually get perfected and published here, but today I want to talk about a seminar I recently attended, presented by Gerry Matatics.

Gerry is the Founder and President of the Traditionalist Roman Catholic apostolate known as Biblical Foundations International. He’s a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, a former-Protestant, and the first ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) to ever convert to Roman Catholicism. In recent years Gerry has adopted a theological position known as “sedevacantism” (to be fair, he uses that term reluctantly when describing his current views).

After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts with a Master of Divinity degree, Gerry ministered in a PCA church. In order to stop his friend and seminary class-mate Scott Hahn from “swimming the Tiber,” he began intensely studying the theology, history, and claims of the Catholic Church. Gerry eventually converted himself, and quickly became one of the most popular Roman Catholic apologists in America, working at the most well known mainstream Catholic apologetics organization, Catholic Answers.

Gerry then made yet another “conversion,” this time accepting the “traditional” Roman Catholic faith. Today, he rejects what he terms “counterfeit Catholicism,” which includes nearly all of the doctrinal, liturgical, and moral changes that have taken place in the Roman Catholic Church in about the last fifty years.

The topic of Gerry’s seminar was “Counterfeit Catholicism: How Faithful Catholics Come to Realize That Vatican II, The New Mass, and Benedict XVI Are Not What They Claim to Be.” His message, according to the presentation, is summarized in one sentence:

“The Roman Catholic Faith and the Roman Catholic Church are the one true Faith and the one true Church, outside of which there is no salvation, but the authentic Roman Catholic Faith and the authentic Roman Catholic Church are no longer found at local Catholic parishes, in the local Catholic dioceses, or even ruling from the Vatican in Rome today.”

Overall, the seminar was an absolute whirlwind. Gerry is the only man in the world I know who can speak faster than me. He spoke non-stop from 7 to 9 p.m., presenting fact after fact in support of his argument, and stayed several hours afterward for a Q & A.

A somewhat humorous aside: Of the 40-50 people in attendance, I was the only non-Catholic in the room, and throughout the entire seminar was surrounded by traditionalist priests and seminarians. How’s that for being outnumbered!

Anyway, here are some quick highlights from the talk:

- Gerry demonstrates that the post-Vatican II Catholic Church teaches and practices some of the very things that have been clearly condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in the past.

- The apostasy of the “counterfeit” Catholic Church should not, according to Gerry, be a surprise to Catholics, given that the apostasy has been foretold by the prophecies of Sacred Scripture, the Virgin Mary, and many saints of the past.

- The Roman Catholic Church has undergone many similar crises in the past and, Gerry says, Catholics should not be shocked regarding the current crisis in the Church.

- Without shame, and with much documentation, Gerry labels every pope since Pius XII – John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I & II, and Benedict XVI – as heretics and “anti-popes.”

- Gerry shows that the Roman Catholic Church’s Vatican II council officially adopted many heretical positions, such as the New Mass, a denial of Biblical inerrancy, and ecumenism.

- There is nothing in his positions, Gerry claims, that are contrary to the teachings of the historic, orthodox Roman Catholic Church. In fact, his current view is the only one logically consistent with the teachings of that Church.

Gerry’s presentation was well-done and very informative. Most of the issues covered were, to a Protestant like me, a bit immaterial, but interesting nonetheless. It was my lengthy one-on-one talk with Gerry afterwards that was the greatest reward of the evening. We discussed in great depth the Protestant doctrines of Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide, views which Gerry once held but now unabashedly condemns as heresies.

Now, while I would love to discuss this seminar further, the reason I post this is to ask for something from y’all. My talk with Gerry, previous (positive) challenges from friends and other circumstances have led me to take on an enormous reading project, one I ask for your prayers and encouragement.

I have begun reading all the classic Christian works, and will work my way through the beginning of the first-century up to the present-day, in addition to studying Roman Catholicism from the lips of its own proponents. My purpose is to better understand the history of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, and to sharpen my owns theological views and practices.

So, in the coming days and weeks and months, please pray for me, question me, and challenge me!