Preachers Trained Buy Social Media?

"Where will the next generation of leaders find this deep biblical grounding? So many potential next-generation leaders have been discipled by social media, the public education system, and even the modern workplace to think in unbiblical ways.
For our movement to stay healthy, we must develop leaders—in our youth ministries, colleges, church internships/residencies, elder-training programs—whose minds are so thoroughly drenched in Scripture that they even dream biblically."

Matt Proctor

Stiffy Spines Versus Iffy Spines

"When cultural tempests buffet, believers are tempted to bend on biblical truth, “blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Ephesians 4:14). We need leaders with Scripture coursing through their veins to teach it boldly, stiffen our spines, and keep us faithful to God’s Word."

Matt Proctor

There Ain't No "u" In Team

Things only poor controlling leaders say.

The guys complained to Shaq, 

"Kobe ain't passing the ball."

So Shaq said he'd talk to him.

Shaq "There is no 'i' in team Kobe"

Kobe "I know but there is a 'm' , 'e' in that mother f@@er..."

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To quote a cartoon..... 

"There is no "i" in team!

There us no "u" in team either!

So if i ain't in the team and u ain't in the team, there is no M F-ing team."

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Do what you know is right to do, or has integrity. 

You don't have to agree to mediocrity, nor serve mediocrity to be a team player. 

There are many terrible teams. Teams that will have you wasting your life in tasks that are fruitless, or even worse, a concession to something you shouldn't conceed to. 

Bluntly, I've fround the leaders who would use this phrase (no i in team) are the least likely to be the ones I want to emulate or follow.

If being on a team requires that one must agree to time wasting fruitless activity that bothers your conscience, then that team demands to much. 

Don't agree to mediocrity, don't agree to violate your conscience.

Shaq video

Never Loved, Regardless?

 Doug Robinson:

There is a notion that if one if bright enough, well read enough, wise enough, that one can earn the respect and affection of non-believers and bridge the gaps between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this world.  That one can reject and be unlike all those foolish Christians who put their feet in their mouths and embarrass the rest of us.  

Problem is the biblical narrative tells us otherwise....... There is the trap once again, thinking that wise thinking people can avoid the conflicts with the spirit of the age and win over our adversaries through thoughtful reasoning!  

......Jesus failed on many levels to do that.  St. Paul was no slouch in the field of apologetics and where did it get him?  The bible teaches the need not for mere reasoning in search of common ground, but that men and women are lost and blinded and need to be converted from the ways of death to the paths of life  Sometimes notions of apologetics avoid that hard truth..

Jesus said: "Do not be surprised when the world hates you. They hated me first." 

A Christianity that wants to be loved by all men is bereft of loyalty to King Jesus. The real Christian loves his enemies because he actually has enemies who do not love him because they hate God.

  —Doug Robinson, August, 2018

Teethy Gospel Sharing?

“Christianity is not a modern success story. It is to be preached with love and tears into the teeth of men, preached without compromise, without regard to the world’s concept of success. If there seem to be no results, remember that Jeremiah did not see the results in his day. They came later. If there seem to be no results, it does not change God’s imperative. It is simply up to you and to me to go on, go on, go on, whether we see the results or whether we don’t. Go on.”

― Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City

The No Religion, Religion

"What if our main battle as a church TODAY, Right Now... isn't battling a secular worldview..... we are actually battling another RELIGIOUS worldview....
It isn't SECULAR or atheist worldview AT ALL.
We are fighting false religions and false religions of many different kinds. They have exchanged true religion not for NO religion, but for idolatry. We are in a country full of idolaters. They are not "secular people", they are religuous idolaters."

- Ben Witherington lll - ( Loose Paraphrase)

Dog's Bark At The Church

"The moon walks in brightness, though the dogs bark at it."

Matthew Henry

Psalm 2

Speaking of Church and Kingdom

"Those that did evil raged at the light"

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"Why do men oppose religion but because they are impatient of its restraints and obligations?"

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Psalm 2 Matthew Henry! (Worth reading Psalm 2 first)

The Eight Million Way!

"The way of the most
is neither the best,
the wisest,
nor the safest way to follow:
better to follow the eight in the ark than the eight millions drowned by the flood and damned to hell."
- Matthew Henry -
Commentary on 1 Peter 3

Tremble At No Other Name

“I will tremble at no other name
My heart's surrendered to no other reign 
I will bow at no other throne
Rest my heart at no other home 
Let these hands lift no other crown 
Let these knees fall on no other ground
Draw these eyes from the gold that won't shine
You turn this life from water to wine,” 
I tremble. I tremble, Lord In your presence,
- Lauren Daigle

Gate Post Compromise?

"When you start pushing on the gate posts of the narrow gate, to try and make it wider, so you can get through. There is usually more at work in your life that needs addressing."

Paraphrase of a statement I heard on a podcast.

Don't Preach From The Word?

Preach the word!
Don't preach from the word!
Don't preach about the Word!
Preach the word!
- Dr. J.Vernon McGee

KNOW IT IS.....

I don't believe the Bible is the word of God.
I know it is the word of God."

Dr. J. VERNON MCGEE  

Let The Lion Out

"When you got a lion in the cage, you don't need to put a guard there to protect it from the pussycats in the neighborhood. The lion will take care of himself if you just open the cage. The word of God is like that today."
Dr. J. Vernon McGee
He was very old then with cancer.

What Ya Preachin?

“Fear God and you’ll preach to transform people; fear people and you’ll preach to transform God.”

Dr. Dustin Messer

Most Wanted List!

UNCOMFORTABLY SO! 😆

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"My main ambition in life is to be on the Devil's most wanted list."

Leonard Ravenhill

Not Knowing Jesus's Self Revelation?

"We have so many professing believers who have not read the whole Bible. They don't actually know Jesus as he revealed himself to us.

For people who bear the name of Christ, we're really ill-informed about who he is and what he offers us and how he teaches us."

Rachel Jankovic

Air-Brushed Faith?

"Some clergy have simply "airbrushed sin out of their language. Having substituted therapy for spiritual discernment.....
" Sociologist Robert Bellah makes the same point decrying the tendency in evangelical ranks to "thin the biblical language of sin and redemption to an idea of a Jesus as the friend who helps us find happiness and self-fulfillment."
.....responding to the market means more than 'airbrushing a word here or there; it changes the very character of the church."

The Body, Charles Colson.

Becoming A Usless Thing!

COMPROMISE IS COSTLY

A. W. Tozer

Christianity today is so entangled with this present world that millions never guess how radically they have missed the New Testament pattern. Compromise is everywhere-but actually no real union between the world and the Church is possible. When the Church joins up with the world it is the true Church no longer but only a pitiful hybrid thing, an object of smiling contempt to the world, and an abomination to the Lord! Nothing could be clearer than the pronouncements of the Scriptures on the Christian's relation to the world. The confusion which gathers around this matter results from the unwillingness of professing Christians to take the Word of the Lord seriously. This whole thing is spiritual in its essence. A Christian is what he is not by ecclesiastical manipulation but by the new birth. He is a Christian because of a Spirit which dwells in him. Only that which is born by the Spirit is spirit, no matter how many church dignitaries work on it!

Come Out Of Our Christian Caves

I hope to help strengthen the Church to stay strong in a collapsing culture,” he proclaimed. “We will not be silenced because we have to speak. We have to be prepared to take the consequences."

Lutzer said it is "not necessary to have freedom of religion in order to be faithful," adding: “Just ask the martyrs. They were faithful without freedom of religion."

"I pray churches would be strengthened to say, ‘We're not going to submit just because we're under pressure,'" he concluded. "Jesus predicted that these days would come. And therefore, we are going to stand and take the consequences rather than retreat into our caves and say, ‘We cannot speak because of all the cultural pressures.'"

- Erwin Lutzer

Racism IS First And Foremost A Sin Problem

It is first and foremost a sin problem.

Nailed it!

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“What people must understand is that we're living at a time when the conflict and the racial accusations that are being made are intentional, with no hope or desire of any reconciliation or mutual understanding,” he said. “Jesus offers solutions. Christianity says we really don't have a skin problem; we have a sin problem. Churches need to lead the way in this.”

- Erwin Lutzer

They Will Take Their Children To Church

“For Karl Marx, oppression was the key to history. He wanted to see the nuclear family destroyed because, he said, men will oppress their wives, parents will oppress their children and take them to church. God is the ultimate oppressor, and thus, we have to deal with this oppression.”

- Erwin Lutzer

The Word Stands Alone And Above Us

Instead of allowing Scripture to stand alone, we interpret it in a way that is consistent with the culture. I want to challenge Christians: Will we interpret the culture through the lens of Scripture? Or will we interpret the Scripture through the lens of culture?

........The Church is being shamed into silence because we don't know what to say," he said. "We fear that we will be misunderstood and vilified."

- Erin Lutzer - 

Moody Chicago church

Winsome TRUTH - Not Merely Winsome

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(Presbyterian Church Of America)

"So what’s the PCA’s big issue: Maintaining biblical fidelity, confessional integrity, and mission priority in an increasingly post-Christian culture.......The impulse to be outward-facing and welcoming to our fallen and broken world is a good one, a biblical one. But we must never accommodate error in our attempt to be winsome. This wasn’t the modus operandi of Jesus, the prophets, or the apostles. It mustn’t be ours either. It can never be repeated enough: We are called to speak the truth, with clarity and love. And if ever there was a time for the church to speak with clarity about sexual ethics, biblical justice, and qualifications for ordination, it is now. The future health and mission of the PCA depend on it."

Jon D. Payne | Friday, July 9, 2021

Virtual Churches Place

"Virtual church is better than nothing, but that's

the only thing

it's better than."

- Bill Hickox -

#church #faith #christian #christianity

Ancient Unholiness

"..... feast day of St. Peter Damian, whose famous work, the Book of Gomorrah, warns against a plague of homosexuality and sex abuse in the priesthood.

Damian’s Book of Gomorrah decries the widespread sexual misbehavior, particularly homosexual sodomy, raging through the ranks of priests and monks in the 11th century Church, and asks Pope St. Leo IX to take decisive action to stop it, warning of catastrophic results should he fail to do so.

Damian noted that priests were having sexual relations with their “spiritual children,” those to whom they had given sacramental grace. He approvingly invoked a medieval ecclesiastical law requiring priests who sexually abuse minors to be publicly humiliated, imprisoned, and kept under guard in perpetuity to prevent a repetition of the crime."

Happy When?

"You cain't wait until life isn't hard anymore
before you decide to be happy."

- NightBirde -

Singer

Elbow Problems!

We throw away so may things
that are at our elbow,
and we search in vain
for things
twenty miles away.


- Rex Murphy -

My Troublemakers

"The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’."

- Insight From An Old Farmer -

Non-negotiable

"The Bible is a Book
Filled With
Non-negotiable Realities"

- Canadian Minister

Fighty Leadership!

"Shepherds fighting wolves, are Shepherds loving sheep"

- Joel Webbon

Come Get Your Idol Here

"We cannot hope to walk up their mountain and come down with stone tablets containing a law inscribed by the Spirit of God.

No, if we go up their mountain what will happen is that we will come back down with an idol; one that looks like a carved and grimacing monkey."

- Doug Wilson

Self Fulfillment Church

"What many are looking for is a spiritual social club, an institution that offers convivial relationships but certainly does not influence how people live or what they believe. Whenever the church does assert a historically orthodox position, one that might in some way restrict an individual's doing Whatever he or she chooses, the church is accused of being "out of touch"- as if it's beliefs are to be determined by majority vote or market surveys.

Spiritual consumers are interested not in what the church stands for but in the fulfilment it can deliver."

- Charles Colson. The Body

Up And Down With God?

"When you are DOWN to nothing, God is UP to something!

Don't Cooperate With Clowns!

"The only way out is through a flat refusal to cooperate. If the managerial elites running this clown show have a worldview that allows them to do whatever they can get away with, the first order of business is to refuse to allow them to get away with any of their enormities."

- Douglas Wilson

Jesus Past The Gate

"In truth, Jesus died and was laid away in a tomb. The contradiction of his claim to be Son of God was total. He enters into the full reality of death, not merely walking with us right up to the door only to pull back at the final second, leaving us to walk the dark valley on our own. He comes all the way with us right into the grey, after-death world of funeral parlours and the making of arrangements for the disposing of the body, the world of strained faces, hushed voices and tear-stained eyes. He takes his place within the world of the receding past where death’s destructive power is so real and irreversible; dead … buried … gone."

Bruce Milne, The Message of John: Here Is Your King!: With Study Guide, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 286.

Where is the Higher Voice?

“Many millennials who have turned their backs on religious tradition because it isn’t sufficiently diverse or inclusive have found alternative scripture online. Our new belief system is a blend of left- wing political orthodoxy, intersectional feminism, self- optimization (many even among the churched are guilty), therapy, wellness, astrology and Dolly Parton. Left-wing secular millennials may follow politics devoutly. But the women we’ve chosen as our moral leaders aren’t challenging us to ask the fundamental questions that leaders of faith have been wrestling with thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe in beyond the limits of our puny selfhood? The whole economy of Instagram is based on our thinking about ourselves, working in ourselves. I have hardly prayed to God since I was a teenager, but the pandemic has cracked open inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe. I have an overdraft on my outrage account. I want moral authority from someone who isn’t shilling a memoir or calling out her enemies on social media for a clout.”

- Leigh Stein

Not Enough Bruises!

"One of the biggest problems with modern Christianity - Too many self proclaimed, self published “theologians” and not enough calloused handed, bruised footed, sore backed followers of Jesus."

- Todd Hooper

What Love Enemies Means.

Speaking about Jesus' command to love our enemies...

"This is the supreme command in the medium of prayer: we go to our persecutors, stand by their side and plead to God for them."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Got A Better Story?

"When I tried to unpack the first sentence of Genesis, in the context of the broader biblical narrative, what appears to be happening is that there is a proposition that God is guided by love and uses truth to create. It's something like that. And maybe "love" is something like the wish that all being would flourish.

There isn't a better story than that."

- Jordan Peterson

That Bible Book That Isn't A Novel

We read 25 other books a year.

But think it great that we undertake to read the NT, in its entirety once.

Or like most not read it the Old and New Testament even once in a whole lifetime.

"Here, then, is the real problem of our negligence. We fail in our duty to study God's Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy.”

- R.C. Sproul

Half Repentance! Our Favorite Kind.

"It is one thing to plead with God to forgive. 

It is another thing to plead for God to transform.

We must do both in repentance.....

David did not only ask for God to clean his record. He also asked God to clean his heart."

- Joel (some reformed guy I heard and I ain't digging for his last name)

Relishing In An Enemy

"I think a huge part of this is the desire to have an enemy....

It's and easy route to self-righteousness; to have an enemy.....

It's and easy place to put all evil."

- Jordan Peterson -

Education Isn't Neutral

"There is no such thing as a neutral education, because there are no neutral facts.
This is why education is a subset of discipleship."

- Brian Saivé -

New Church Sometimes Required

But I have to say, a bit sadly, that members who cannot thrive as Bible believers in one church, even if it is the church they have always attended, must consider finding a more biblical one. If they cannot find any true concern and room for growth in the Bible where they are, a change must come. If you are a member of a horse-riding club, but the leader never takes the horses out of the stable for you to ride, you have to find another association that accomplishes that purpose. There is no possible logic for you to remain in a church that has abandoned the Bible for its own perceptions if truth. "

Jeff Elliff

Pretend We Like The Bible

"But leaders are not the only ones who can make a difference. Any member with an intense interest in the Bible can speak out about that desire, can meet with others who are interested for Bible study, and can become an instrument for change. It is hard to speak against such actions in any professing church since we all know that a church is at least supposed to be interested in God’s word."

Jeff Elliff

Embarrassed

"But leaders must get over their embarrassment concerning the Bible."

- Jim Elliff

Incorrigibly Religious For Wrong

"Spirituality is dangerous without the use of the God’s word. Man is incorrigibly religious. All kinds of spirituality emerge from man, most of which are condemned by God. How spiritual were the worshippers of false gods in the Bible and how dangerous was the heart-felt worship of Gnostics who emerged in the early church? Worship that is offered to God must be true, fully informed by His word. Using the word to guide worship and life in the church is the way we assure ourselves that our spirituality is accepted by Him."

Jim Elliff

A Good Theologian Should Be A Good Person

Theology is not just simply head knowledge. Theology is a knowledge that actually informs both our hearts and our lives. And so, if someone has knowledge, if they have biblical or theological knowledge, and yet it’s not impacting their life — that is, the way they treat people; that is, the way that they live; that is, the way that they serve God in their life — then they don’t have good theology. I would actually argue that is not theology, because the goal of theology is to apply Scriptures into our life. And so, I would say, in the end, that someone whom we might regard as a good theologian but rather not a good person is not in the end a good theologian.

— Rev. Hutch Garmany

Lost In Church

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5)

"Paul wanted everyone to recognize that things like church membership, and baptism, and a credible profession of faith are not sure signs of saving faith in Jesus Christ. People who have never truly come to Christ in faith also do these things. So, Paul encouraged people in the church to examine themselves, to make sure that they were truly trusting in Christ for salvation. 

Of course, as human beings we can’t know the condition of another person’s heart. We can only see their actions and hear their words. So, it’s often impossible for us to tell who the true believers are. But the knowledge that there may be unbelievers in our congregations should still affect the way we view ourselves and others in the church. We should remember to keep teaching and preaching the gospel to the whole church in order to save those who have not yet come to faith — even though we might not know who they are. We should be receptive to those in the church that are seeking God, not discouraging them from coming to church even though they may not yet have trusted in Christ yet. And we should be inclined to be patient with others, knowing that there is a wide diversity in faith and maturity, even among people who have been in the church for a long time."

- Third Millennium Seminary Course. The Apostles Creed. Lesson 4, The Church.

Can't Escape God

"He’s the God of transcendence; that is, he’s above space and time and history. Yet he is the immanent God; that is, he is so much with us that we cannot possibly escape from him."

D. A. Carson