This past Sunday at the church I [Jonathan Storment, @Stormented] serve, we started a new Easter series called “Jesus Throws the Best Parties” For many people, partying is seen as a way to escape reality or it is reduced to something for 5th grade birthdays or college students with over-active hormones and their parents’ credit cards. But there are better parties than these. And Jesus knows how to throw them. As strange as it may sound, parties are one of... Read more
In our last post on the rise of the Nones, we looked at James Emery White’s The Rise of the Nones to describe what the Nones are like. But the question is How did the get there? What precipitated the rise of the Nones? White calls it the “perfect storm” and sees two storms: The first storm combined Copernicus (the cosmological attack), Darwin (the biological attack), and Freud (the psychological attack). Each, in his own way and at different levels, led... Read more
Source: Helen Felumlee, of Nashport, Ohio, died at 92 on April 12. Kenneth Felumlee her 91-year-old husband, died the next morning. According to the Zanesville Times Recorder, Kenneth had his leg amputated 2.5 years ago due to circulation problems. Ever since then, Helen became his main caretaker. She continued to look after him until three weeks before her death, when she grew too frail to care for him. The two hadn’t slept apart in 70 years, the family said. Once many years... Read more
Ronald Osborn (Death Before the Fall) finds the cosmic theodicy provided by C. S. Lewis as an effort to think through the problem of death and suffering in creation both thought-provoking and insufficient. The conflict with rebellious non-human powers is almost certainly part of the picture, one with strong biblical basis, but it doesn’t provide an answer to the most significant questions – how these powers originated and why God permits them to wreak havoc. Certainly it can’t be because... Read more
A man named Pete tells the story of his uber-gifted mother who could teach, her womens Bible study classes were exploding in interest and size, she was asked to teach a “mixed” audience and when she began a few men got up and walked out, but her husband leaned over and said, “Preach the Word, honey..” because there are lots of people here eager to hear you speak. The book is called She Can Teach: Empowering Women to Teach the Scriptures... Read more
Check out these food hacks, and here’s one. Ever have trouble getting food stuffs into your taco? Use a fork. Read more
As the book says, “a growing number of Americans are starving for an alternative to negative, closed-minded, judgmental, partisan, antiwomen, antiscience religion. Instead, they are searching for a positive, grace-filled, open-minded, gender-equal faith option.” Where are they finding this? Can they find this? Martin Thielen, in his new book (quoted above), called The Answer to Bad Religion is not No Religion: A Guide to Good Religion for Seekers, Skeptics, and Believers, sketches his approach to ministering to the Nones, and his... Read more
If you listen to some, the “Nones” are changing the landscape of American religion, but in listening to others — well, I was conversing with a knowledgeable person not long ago and this person had never even heard of the “Nones.” That person was in religious publishing. We need to take a good look at the Nones and to do this we will look at James Emery White, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated (BakerBooks, 2014).... Read more
By John Blake, CNN (CNN) – If the Rev. John DeBonville could preach a sermon to lift the souls of churchgoers across America, his message would be simple: Stop dressing so tacky for church. DeBonville has heard about the “come as you are” approach to dressing down for Sunday service, but he says the Sabbath is getting too sloppy. When he scans the pews of churches, DeBonville sees rows of people dressed in their Sunday worst. They saunter into church in baggy... Read more
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Jesus Creed
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