“you are the salt of the earth.  but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  it is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” mt 5:13

working in middle school ministry, i see dozens of different types of personalities in students with countless skills, talents, passions, and dreams.  but the longer i work in ministry, i can see essentially two types of students: one group is enthusiastic about their love for the Lord.  they invite their friends to things, not because they might get a prize for doing so, but because they truly think that being at church, growing in christ, and serving others is the best thing that they and their friends could be doing with their time.  it’s easy to be around this type of student.  hear me clearly: i’m not equating enthusiasm with being an extrovert.  i have some students who are super enthusiasic about their faith, but are really quiet. 

the other type of student is, for a lack of better terminology, a drag.  they’re often forced to come to church.  they are easily distracted, they like to distract others, and they’re not interested in serving other people.  they may be enthusiastic about certain things in life, but not so much about their faith.  again, this isn’t dependent on personality.  i have some super extroverted students who never exhibit an excitement in their relationship with christ.

i’m not trying to slam any students in my ministry.  i love them all–truly.  but i can totally relate to what jesus is saying in matthew 5:13.  students that are “salt” are easy to be around.  they aren’t perfect, but they exude a christlike attitude.  people want to be with them.  other students want to be like them.  they are useful messengers for spreading the gospel.

on the flip side, the students that have lost their “saltiness” can actually do damage to the gospel.  when new students that aren’t christians visit our community witness the behaviours of those that aren’t salt, they don’t see what’s so special about being a christ-follower.  the cause of the gospel is weakened.

i firmly believe that every student in our group has the potential to be salt.  i have watched as some of our group have grown into it.  unfortunately, i’ve also witnessed some of our students fall from being salt to losing their saltiness.

my prayer today, for this blog on the mount, is that i will be an example in my community of what salt looks like.  i don’t want to be the dead weight.

what about you?  what christ telling you on the mount?

yes, it’s wednesday, and someone needs to carry on the “photo in need of a caption” tradition abandoned by our ex-blogging cohort ysmarko.  therefore, since i have chosen to carry on this tradition (although marko only did this weekly for a month or two), i think the weekly post needs a new, shorter name.  i shall call it pinoac–”photo in need of a caption.”

if i get at least 10 comments, i’ll send a prize to the winner.  here’s the one for this week:

once a week, i’m planning to start reviewing products, books, resources, websites, etc. 

for this first resource review, i’ve chosen to bring you a great inductive bible study on the book of james called hear and do by barry shafer.   this is a 10 week curriculum put out by ys/zondervan and we’ve chosen to use it for our summer sunday school this year.  normally we put together all of our own stuff, but in the summer it’s nice to take a little break and either enjoy or suffer through someone else’s work.

fortunately, hear and do is a curriculum that both our students and our teachers are going to enjoy this summer.  let me break it down for you a bit.

what you get:  the book (about 250 pgs) comes with a companion cd-rom that contains all the pdf files of the lessons so you can print them off each week versus copying them from the book.

content:  as mentioned before, hear and do is an inductive study in the book of james.  one of the great benefits of hear and do is that it tackles head-on the difficulty of trying to teach the same lesson to middle school, high school, college students, and smaller groups.  rather than giving one very general lesson for each week that you the youth worker has to adapt to your age group, shafer provides essentially six different lessons for each week: middle school, high school 1 (younger hs), high school 2 (older hs), college age, coffee house (smaller group), and a talk outline if you wanted to use the book for a series rather than a study.  as a part of the lesson, students are given a ‘journal page’ to follow along.  plus there is a companion site online that provides more study material, media suggestions, etc. 

what makes this great:  as a full-time youth worker, one of the things i’ve enjoyed the most about this curriculum is also one of the simplest things: i don’t have to copy out of the book and i don’t have to go online to print off the lessons.  having the cd is helpful.  i saved all the files in one folder on my computer so all i have to do is click on it and print.  secondly, there is just enough in each lesson to fill an hour.  i don’t have to rush to get through it, i don’t have to skip anything, and i’m also not left dancing a jig to fill the last 10 minutes of class.  lastly, and this is important, the activities listed for the middle schoolers (85% of the time) are not too kiddy or cheesy.  almost everything for middle school students is written to the stereotype of middle schoolers versus the reality of a) what middle schoolers are actually like and b) what they can handle in terms of content.

drawbacks:  if you’ve not done much inductive stuff with your students, it will take them a few weeks to get adjusted to the format.  you may hear things like “boring” and “this is like school” but as they get used to the format, they’ll see that they actually have more of an opportunity to interact and talk(!) than they might in other formats.  so ignore them at first.  give it a chance.  they will adjust.  especially if you work with middle schoolers–remember that they are creatures of habit.  no matter what you change your format to, they will complain at first.  so don’t give in.

cost:  if this resource wasn’t already packed with value, the 10-week study sells new for $16.99.  you can buy it from amazon here or from ys/zondervan here.

scott’s rating:  4.75 out of 5 stars.

one of my favorite blogs to check out is the fuller youth institute blog which takes the time to sift through a lot of great studies to find the ones that are most pertinent to those of us in youth ministry.  check out this excerpt from today’s posting:

…researchers have found that it’s not uncommon for some texting kids to send hundredsof  messages per day.  But it’s not the act itself that is raising new eyebrows, but its potential impact on adolescent development.  In particular, the task of individuation, or developing autonomy from parents and personal agency to make decisions in the world, is threatened by texting.  That’s because parents are not only the recipients of many of these texts, but the senders.    One psychologist noted that while adolescents are working at the task of autonomy, “if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

Well said.  So what’s a parent to do?  Part of the problem is that parents feed the exchange back and forth — what mom wouldn’t be flattered by being invited into her daughter’s shoe selection process? — and sometimes use it as a substitute for real-presence parenting.  Another part of the problem is that many parents are just as frequently on their own phones.  The article highlights one girl whose parents were shocked when she sent over 14,500 texts in a month.  She points back at her mom’s “addiction” to her iPhone.  Ouch.  It’s indeed a challenge when we’re modeling the same obsessive behavior we ask our kids to stop (Facebook, anyone?)

this is some pretty compelling stuff.  i know that in my work with students, i see a lot of well-intentioned parenting via phone.  i haven’t really ever concidered  how this might affect the development of the students in our group.  normally i feel like i’m combating a lack of parental involvement in students’ lives, not an over-inundation of parental guidance.  i think the key phrase in this excerpt from the post is that text-parenting is sometimes seen as “a substitute for real-presence parenting.”  certainly all of the students in my ministry could benfit from an increase in face time with their ‘rents. 

how do you see this working in your ministry?  what’s your take?

it wouldn’t feel like wednesday without a photo in need of a caption.  since i don’t have the authority to send you “the ys book of yer choice,” the winner gets a $5 giftcard to starbucks–sorry i’m in youth ministry, too.

here it is, give it the ol’ ysmarko try:

the blogosphere has lost a great voice for youth minstry today.  ysmarko has decided to pull the plug on his blog.  in fact, he described in his last post today that he’s also pulling the plug on facebook and twitter.

marko’s blog is the only one that i read every day.  i have others that i read a couple of times a week.  hopefully someone can fill the void that’s left in both his thoughtfulness and humor.

i’m planning a ysmarko tribute “photo in need of a caption” contest for tomorrow.  it wouldn’t be wednesday without it.  be sure to check it out tomorrow morning.

we’ll miss you on the internet, marko!

i hardly consider myself a web guru.  if you were to ask me to write something in css or html, i’d have to take a rain check.  in fact, the longer i spend on the interwebs (as tracie jordan would call it on 30 rock) the more i realize how little i really know about it.  like i mentioned in an earlier post, i don’t have a smart phone, i don’t have an ipod touch, and i just started texting seriously a year ago.  i just got on twitter a month or two ago.  so compare me to the average web junkie, and i can’t come close.  as i’ve said before, my accountant father-in-law is more technologically in the loop (in some ways) than i am.

that being said, i’m becoming increasingly convinced that the church must start legitimizing the internet as a place for genuine community.  it’s true that nothing can replace face-to-face contact, a heartfelt conversation over coffee.  but in a world where people are increasingly estranged from one another due to the busyness of the 21st century life, the church would be wise to start offering valuable community online for the times inbetween personal interactions.  unfortunately, the church of late has been behind the curve when it comes to technology and has, in general, been skeptical of its use in community life.  even if a church is 100% on board with integrating the web into their community, many churches simply can’t afford the time or money to do so.  and even churches with the money often aren’t well-trained or equipped with the knowledge to use the web.

it’s high time that we start annointing web 2.0 as a primary outlet for community within our congregations.  the truth is that most people in our churches are already using the internet in their daily lives.  utilizing the various, often free tools that the internet has to offer seems like it should be a natural step.

how is your church utilizing the internet?  are they using social networking?  do they blog and ask for feedback?

i’ve been thinking about going back and at least skimming through doug field’s book your first two years in youth ministry again since i’ve been in full-time youth ministry now for a full two years, two months, and two days.  i’ve been involved in youth ministry in a volunteer or part-time capacity for almost five years, but i went ahead and read doug’s book when i first started working full-time.

needless to say, i’ve learned quite a bit about youth ministry, student culture, church culture, and honestly–a lot about who i am and where my strengths lie.  i could write a 1,000 word post about each of these subjects, but what i wanted to do was reflect a little bit about what i’ve learned about implementing change.  this is something that i’ve been in the process of learning since i first started in full-time middle school ministry, but has been a recent issue since our ministry is in the middle of some fairly big changes and so is our staff.

here are three bits of advice i’d pass along to any church ministry newbies as well as any veterans who care to hear it:

1)  change should be done with people, not at people.
in other words, always involve yourself with a team and allow that team to not only take ownership of changes, but also have a genuine ability to direct the course of the decisions being made.  at the end of the day, someone has to pull the trigger and make a decision, but there should be a process set in place before that happens that allows for honest dialogue and open feedback.  my experience in church to this point has been mixed.  sometimes change has happened to me, other times i’ve been able to contribute.  i always feel better about the decision being made when i feel like i was a part of the process–even if the ultimate decision isn’t something that i’m 100% comfortable with.  i’m doing my best to exemplify this openness model in our middle school ministry.

2)  change is (and should be) slow.
typing the ‘and should be’ part of that statement was physically painful for me.  by nature i’m the type of person who likes to make a decision and get it done quickly.  the unintended consequences of that can be deadly.  leaders who try to change things too quickly may end up running over people and leaving them stranded behind them.  believe it or not, people want change (barack obama sound familiar?) but people want it in small doses (tea party rallies sound familiar?).  remember that there is too much of a good thing.  i’m learning to be patient in implementing change: in reality, that’s the only way to ensure its long-term success.

3)  always think ahead.
i’m learning now that it’s easy to get caught up in implementing today’s change that i forget that i need to start the groundwork for the change i want to see implemented a year or two or three from now.  if you’re always focused on today’s problems, you’ll never be able to prevent tomorrow’s.  guy kawasaki recently spoke at the catalyst west coast conference and he put it this way: ‘jump to the next curve.’  always be looking for that next thing so that you won’t spend time playing catch-up, because remember, change is slow.  i’m in the process now of thinking where our ministry may be a year, two years, and even three years from now so that i can start moving the pieces for change so whoever is calling the shots then can have an easier time of enacting that change.

alright, you may not have learned anything you didn’t know.  even so, you probably read something you aren’t doing.  i know i’m certainly still on the learning curve.  change management, at least in church, is one of the most important skills to refine.  if you want to be successful, you have to know how to implement change while staying a part of a team, avoid running over people, and not getting too caught up on today’s issues.

i’ve come to the conclusion today that facebook is trying to become my therapist.

the most obvious example of this is when i first log on to facebook. 

it used to say at the top where you type in your status “Scott is…” and then i would fill in the blank as to what i “is.”

now, it says: “what’s on your mind?”

what’s on my mind?  does it really want me to answer that?  i would contend that it doesn’t.  nor does the facebook universe want to know what’s on my mind. 

unfortunately, many people do write what’s on their mind.  best not to do that.  we don’t want to know.  rather, write something witty, pithy, or funny.  tell us that you did something interesting, wrote something interesting (like this blog), or plan to do something interesting.  but for heaven’s sake do not tell us what’s on your mind.

i don’t want to read a quote from the song that’s stuck in your head.

everyone is tired, so don’t write that.

don’t tell me about how you hate your boss/spouse/friend/parent.  you should keep those thoughts to yourself.

you see, in the end, facebook is not a therapist.  it’s a network.  so if the computer asks you what’s on your mind, you don’t really need to say it.  say something else.  say something funny.  facebook is your chance to interact with the with the whole internet world, don’t blow it.

and if you really do need to tell someone what’s on your mind… grab a coffee with a friend or get a real therapist.

no one really believes me when i say this, but i promise it’s true: i’m really just not into getting ’stuff.’  in general, i don’t care to have the latest, greatest, flashiest thing.  i like to stay current and i like for the stuff i have to work, but other than that, i’m ok.   i like durability in my technology purchases, especially since i’m pretty rough on stuff.  however, despite the fact that i’m not a ’stuff’ person, i still dream of owning a few fun gadgets, and i thought i’d share my top three with you today–just in case you want to get me something.  just kidding.  anyway, here it is (starting from my least coveted item):

3)  Dell Inspiron 530
ok, i suppose this isn’t really fair to be on my wishlist since it’s something we actually need, but i’ll be honest, i’ve not been this excited about a household purchase in a long time.  you have to keep in mind that our current computer starts to reboot itself before it even finishes booting up.  yeah.  it’s messed up.  so the dell we’re looking at makes the wishlist simply because i can’t wait until we finally find the exact one at the right price.  i suppose i could have put a macbook or something at the number three, but let’s get real folks… i’ll never have the cajones to pay that much for a computer.

2)  Apple iPod Touch with 3.0 software
now, the 3.0 software hasn’t come out yet, but when it does, the ipod touch will reach new heights.  yes, i realize i’m like two years behind on the ipod touch making the wishlist.  nevertheless, it’s finally there.  my father-in-law has one, and let me tell you, i’ve never been so jealous of an accountant before.  quick story: we were sitting at the dinner table debating what ‘chitlins’ were last night.  as we’re having this discussion, allison’s dad appears to be playing around with his ipod (how very 12 years old of him, so we think).  sure enough, he whips out the recipe for chitlins.  hilarious.  on a side note: chitlins are intestines.  disgusting.  i digress… these apple gadgets are just too cool, and the apps are simply amazing–not like the ‘apps’ for facebook, which are just annoying.

3)  Amazon Kindle 2
i’m practically having a panic attack as i’m writing this.  the kindle 2 is probably the most fascinating little gadget i’ve ever seen.  it’s basically an e-book reader, similar to ones made by sony and others, but it’s taken to new levels by amazon.  to my own amazement, i’ve become something of an avid reader over the past three or four years, reading a couple books a month (before that, i think i’d read a total of six books, most of those being berenstain bears).  this little device can hold 1,500 books, is connected to the internet 24-7 using ‘whispernet’ 3g technology so you can download new material in 60 seconds or less, is connected to wikipedia and the oxford american dictionary so you can look-up words you don’t know or research a topic more in depth, has the ability to ‘highlight’ text on the e-book and write in annotations that are uploaded to amazon.com, has an mp3 player, can read the book to you… *quick breath here* ok… has thousands of books already available for download with more added daily, has magazines and newspapers available to download, is connected to over 1,000 blogs, and most books are $9.99 or less.  ok, if you don’t want one of these things now, you’re crazy.  just watch the video below, and trust me, you’ll want one:
).

alright, that’s my short wishlist for 2009.  we’re definitely buying the computer, because we need it.  other than that, if i get one of the two other things this year, it’ll be a huge victory for me.  which of the two do you most recommend?

if you grew up in a southern baptist church, a bible church, or some other conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical (gosh, that’s a lot of adjectives) church–then you’re all too familiar with the d word.  no, it’s not that four-letter word that you’re tempted to scream when you spill your morning coffee while driving.  rather, it’s one of the few theological terms that gets indoctrinated into you as a child, and drilled home in the adolescent years: dispensationalism.  now, if you grew up in a less-conservative, mainline (less adjectives, phew) church, you may have never even heard the term.

for the new-comer, dispensationalism is a way of interpreting the scriptures by dividing the bible into (usually seven) sections with the assumption that God treated different people in different ways at different times.  for example, the way that God treated noah was different than the way that God treated king david–because david had the mosaic law and noah didn’t.  of course, i’m oversimplifying it, but this is the general idea.

however, clumped together alongside reading the bible through the lens of dispensations is a firm belief in the rapture, followed by the great tribulation, followed by the 1,000 year reign of jesus on the earth, followed by judgment day.  dispensationalists are led to these conclusions based on the pre-determined dispensations as well as their interpretation of revelation and daniel.

i’ve noticed that over the past several months, i’ve dedicated a lot of space to tim lahaye, jerry jenkins, and left behind bashing.  i felt that i owed the blogosphere an explanation for the criticism.

is it that i hate dispensationalists?  no.

it is that i think that all dispensationalists are crazy?  no, only some: see here.

is it that i think that dispensationalism is dead wrong?  not entirely.

disagreeing with something you were raised with is incredibly difficult.  i think it’s fair to say that no single issue has caused me more personal grief than wrestling with the end times position of dispensationalism.  since i was a child i have been both fascinated and frightened about the rapture, the anti-christ, and some beast with eyes under its wings. 

 i can remember waking up late on a saturday morning, not hearing anyone in the house, and dc talk starting singing that ’you’ve been left behind’ song in my head.  every earthquake was a sign of the times.  every sketchy world leader was a potential antichrist.  this was so troubling for me as a kid.

as i got older, i started reading daniel and revelation for myself.  i started to look at the pieces of the puzzle as they had been taught to me and i started trying to put them into the mold provided by scripture and it always seemed like a stretch.  there were too many things that just didn’t add up for me.  certainly i couldn’t match the tribulation chronology with the book of revelation–at least not without some real mental gymnastics.  but i never knew any different.  i always assumed that when the end of time comes, it will be just as tim lahaye described it.

not until i came to college did i even fully recognize that there are whole other ways of thinking–from people who actually believe in jesus.  it’s not like these people are islamic or something.  these are bible-believing, christ-following, born-again, evangelical (in the true sense of the word) christians.  for the first time, i started hearing of new ways of reading the scripture and interpreting revelation.

at first i was angry with these people.  were they stupid?  didn’t they realize that the bible is divided in seven dispensations, and that if they don’t watch out, they’ll be left behind?

this, of course, was unsustainable.  it all changed when one of my fellow classmates, bradley, became my friend.  he was no longer the guy across the room who breathes too loudly during tests.  he was my friend.  someone i loved to spend time with, eat with, talk with, pray with.  i had to accept that he had become a God-fearing, jesus-loving christian by some other method of biblical interpretation.

second response: anger at my upbringing.  how dare they keep this information from me?  how dare they indoctrinate me in a way that kept me more afraid than anything else?  how dare they!?

of course, this way of thinking also proved unsustainable.  i love the lord because of my parents (who are dispensationalists) and the church community that loved me and raised me (also dispensationalist).  clearly it’s a foolish thing to curse the ones who loved and nurtured you in your love for the lord.

and so emerged my third response, the one i still find myself in: cautious acceptance of both.  i don’t totally disagree with all things dispensational, but to fully associate myself with that way of thinking would be to go too far.  to call myself reformed would also be a stretch.  i call myself reformed-sympathetic.  i understand why reformed people think the way they do–and on some issues, we agree.

the problem is, when it comes to end times stuff–i no longer officially hold a position, which seems wrong.  i know jesus is coming back, and i know that there is a coming judgment.  i know that at the end, there will be a renewal of all things.  other than that, you’d be hard-pressed to get an opinion out of me.  it would seem wrong to forever divorce myself from my pre-millenialist past, but i find my self further and further from accepting that point-of-view everytime i read the bible.

so why the sarcasm?

tim lahaye’s book scared me as a child, and i see cheap jabs at his expense as some form of payback for the damage left behind did on my psyche.

the strangest thing of all of this, though, is that i’m not the only person in my generation who has had this estrangement.  i’ve met a handful of people from evangelical backgrounds who experienced the same sort of lahaye-induced nightmares and have since left the dispensational fold as a result.

how about you?  what’s your theological history?  why do you intrept the bible the way you do?

saw this today, you determine if you think it’s credible info.  check out the interactive map for yourself here.

many have undertaken the task of comparing christianity to buddhism, islam, judaism, and other world religions.  but many people don’t realize the wide variety of beliefs we have among the christian tradition alone.  sure, you’ve heard of methodists, baptists, and episcopalians… but what’s the difference anyway?  well, to help you out, i’m writing a list of comparative denominations.  enjoy:

baptists (southern):
baptism:
by immersion, when you’re a believer.  it’s a public display of an inward conversion.
free will/predesitination:
they’re big on free will.  God pretty much doesn’t predestine anything, except who you’re going to marry and if you’re going to get a good parking spot at the mall.
end times:
generally they’re believers in the dispensational, pre-millennial, rapture theology–you know left behind theology.  i know i always like to get my theological education from christian fiction.
church organization:
baptists churches have a congregational model where everyone votes on major things–but they have a board of deacons (and sometimes elders) that govern smaller things.  also, the senior pastor carries a lot of power in baptist churches.
distinguishing characteristics:
high emphasis on conversions, world evangelization, and politically conservative issues like abortion.  they focus also on the inerrancy of the bible with a literal interpretation.
related denominations:
reformed baptist, progressive baptists, national baptists, free-will baptists (like 1,000 other variations also exist; the common thread is often a focus on baptism by immersion)

presbyterian (usa):
baptism:
infant baptism–baptism is seen as a dedicating the child into a covenant of grace.
free will/predesitination:
predestination is perhaps most at home in the pc(usa) and pca.  some presbyterians don’t even believe in the need for evangelism because they see it as pointless outside of the ministry of the church.
end times:
this is not a major topic with presbyterians–but when pressed, most will defend an amillienalist position.  they believe christ returns once, and then the judgement.  they interpret all apocalyptic literature (daniel, revelation) in a metaphorical way.
church organization:
presbyterian churches are structured similar to the american government, actually.  each church has it’s own ’session’, a group of elected leaders, who vote on most issues within the church.  the church then has elders, elected out of the session, to govern the church.  there are sub-committees that manage smaller issues, elected out of the session.  each local church belongs to a ‘presbytery’–a regional board with ordained (lay and ministerial) leaders elected by the churches.  each presbytery belongs to a broader ’synod’ which has a board that governs over the presbyteries and keeps them in balance.  then every other year, representatives from all the synods and presbyteries attend a general assembly which has an elected moderater, committees, etc that make denomination-wide decisions that are voted on by the assembly.  the record of all the rules are found in the book of order.  ammendments from the general assembly are added and a new edition comes out annually.  phew.  that took a while to write.
distinguishing characteristics:
they’re a stuffy, dying denomination mainly because they’re not diverse (generally), not missionally focused, and liberal in politics and theology to the point of insanity.  that being said, i still have a lot of hope for some their related denominations (see below).
related denominations:
pca, epc (evangelical presbyterian church–this a charismatic, evangelical branch of the presbyterian church.  i think this is the future of presbyterianism).

methodist:
baptism:
methodists adhere to the believer’s baptism, but you can choose from the modes of baptism buffet: sprinkling, pouring, or immersion.
free will/predesitination:
though many of their beliefs are ‘reformed’ (coming out of the anglican church) they chill on the free will side, which is something that makes them different from episcopalians.
end times:
there is no official position for methodists; they’ll land on whatever side, but most american methodists are pretty conservative on this issue so there are a lot of pre-millenialists.
church organization:
there is more structure here than with a baptist church, but not so much as a presbyterian church.  methodists have a high emphasis on moving their ministers from congregation to congregation, which makes their denomination a bit strange.  they havea higher church model with bishops, archbishops, etc–modeling their original anglican roots.
distinguishing characteristics:
they’re pretty conservative as a denomination (generally speaking), but they were one of the first american denominations to ordain women for ministry.  they also played a key role in the development of one the first black denominations in america.
related denominations:
ame (zion), church of england, episcopalian.

episcopal:
baptism:
infant baptism.
free will/predesitination:
episcopalians have a very reformed point-of-view.  they were influenced by both luther and calvin, and so they model that in their adherence to predestination.
end times:
like the presbyerians, this is not a key issue, so you’ll see some variation here–but most are amillenialists.
church organization:
they have a high church structure like the anglican and methodist churches with bishops, archbishops, etc.  yes, they wear robes.
distinguishing characteristics:
this is another stuffy denomination that is exceedingly liberal.  they ordain both women and practicing homosexuals.  they have a very liberal interpretation of scripture.  this is bad news for the episcopalian church.  however, like the mainline presbyterians, they have some hopeful, young branches.
related denominations:
church of england, methodist, african anglican mission in america (long name, but this is a denomination that’s based out of rwanda of all places.  very cool denomination.  the bishops wear robes, the congregation wears jeans and flip-flops.  i know, right?)

christian church/churches of christ/restorationist church:
baptism:
immersion, immersion, immersion.  jesus was immersed, you’re gonna be immersed.  some more radical restoration churches believe that baptism is necessary for salvation.  some even more radical churches believe you have to be baptized in their baptismal to be saved.  yup, it’s crazy.
free will/predesitination:
f-r-e-e will.  all those who believe in predestination are going to hell.  ok, i may be getting unfair here–but only a little.
end times:
you’d think that these folks are hard-core lahayists like the baptists, but they’re really not.  some of them are big on the left behind theology, others not so much.  some of them are amillenialists.  there’s quite a bit of freedom here.
church organization:
congregational to the core.  some of them don’t even want to admit that there are other churches like theirs.  just kidding.  but seriously.
distinguishing characteristics:
they believe that if it was practiced in new testament bible times, we need to practice it.  communion every week.  for the the conservative churches of christ: no music during church, ever–it’s a sin.  no joke.
related denominations:
i kind of listed them all in the heading.  to be fair, because they’re congregational, there is H-U-G-E difference from church to church.  some really are nuts, others are indistinguishable from a baptist or non-denominational church.

well, i hope i’ve helped you navigate the wide variety of protestant churches.  i didn’t even dive into catholicism and eastern orthodoxy.  i didn’t even go into all of the protestant churches!  according to some stats, there are over 20,000 denominations in the world with somethink like five new ones emerging a week.  this is crazy!  does anyone want to go start a new denomination?

actual picture from raptureready.com

it seems that nothing sparks people’s interest more than bringing up the issue of death/heaven/hell/eternity/the apocalypse.  in a know-it-all society, it seems to be the final frontier of theology more or less.  at our church we’re doing a series called ‘forever’ which talks about these very issues.  one of the interesting facts about our church is that it doesn’t hold an official position on eschatology.  we have some ‘pre-’, some ‘post-’, and some ‘ahhhh-’ millenialists.  we have some people who believe that dead babies don’t go to heaven, some that believe they do.  we have some folks who think about heaven almost never, and others who obsess about it.  our pastor has really put himself out there in doing this series, and i’ve been surprised at the response.

here are my observations:

1)  after the tim lahayists starting calling barack obama the anti-christ, an increasing number of folks are saying ‘wait a second…’ when it comes to the ex-popular left behind theology, and so it’s opening up the conversations again.  this may be a good thing, i don’t know.

2)  people are equally curious and nervous about dying.  i’m not sure what happened to the whole ‘death has lost it’s sting’ idea, but at least in our corner of the usa, the idea of death still stings.

3)  i wish people would be equally enthusiastic about topics more pressing than heaven like… mission, holiness, loving your neighbor… but somehow those topics are less sexy.

4)  there is an abundance of theological ignorance in the church.  people say some whacked out stuff that they probably heard on oprah and/or read on raptureready.com.  neither are good sources.

5)  a follow-up to point 3, people don’t read the bible anymore.  even if they read it, they don’t really read it.  they read into it.  they take what they hear from their pastor or favorite televangelist (for good or ill) and read that dialogue into the text.  hmm… there’s a word for this… oh yeah!  eisegesis!

in the interest of full disclosure, i’m pretty accepting of most views about eschatology.  i’ve got three points (straight from the apostle’s creed): a)  i believe jesus currently sits at the right hand of God the father–from thence he shall come to judge the quick (alive) and the dead b)  i believe in the resurrection of the body c) i believe in the life eternal.  how does that flesh itself out?  jesus says, ‘don’t you worry about that.  i’ll take care of it.  you just get yourself to work.  take some risks while i’m gone so that $100 i gave you turns into $100,000.”

where do you stand on this issue?  have you noticed how jazzed and/or worked up people get when you bring up the topic of eternity?

i don’t know about you, but i’m sick of the shrill. 

there’s shrill, annoying people on the right:

and there’s shrill, annoying people on the left:

and at the end of the day, both seem to be missing the point–that the state of our government (no matter who is in charge) is such that the everyday person no longer matters.  each party tries to capitilize on the failures of the other party instead of actually standing for something.

what’s even more disappointing is that even christians have resorted to flat-out insulting one another on the internet:

when can it just stop?

is it so a part of our culture now to insult one another? 

is it acceptable now for followers of Christ to resort to using detestable, sexual insults to express our points?

does this further reflect how people feel safe saying whatever they want to on the internet?

God forbid that i would ever stoop so low to cowardly insult a group of people on the internet that i disagree with using inappropriate sexual metaphors.  it’s a disgrace to the name of Christ.  at the end of the day, i totally respect whatever political views you may have.  i may not agree with you.  i may even think you’re dead wrong.  but no person ever defended their point best by resorting to name-calling, talking over people, taking people’s statements out-of-context, and using the internet to insult freely with invulnerability.  on the same token, you may be someone i agree with.  nevertheless, i will never join you in name calling simply because i agree with you.

it’s a shameful day for the american church.  shameful.