The UmBlog

I used my Christmas break to read some newer US Civil War (CW) books. I started this hobby of CW reading when a new friend of mine started to initiate a conversation with something along the lines of, "You don't believe the South rebelled to portect slavery do you? No. It was about States rights." So I've been a reader ever since. Everything I read convinces me it was about States Rights, that is the right ot keep slaves and deprive them of rights and privileges that whites had. At the time of the CW Mississippi's population was half African American, but most were property and even if they weren't slaves they couldn't vote to determine that state's constitutional right to own people like themselves. Not that Northern states allowed African Americans to vote either, but abolitionist whites could campaign on their behalf without threat of violence in retaliation. So I read two good books over this little Christmas break. Unfortunately, they weren't ...

John Morehead asks of our Western Church model “Is the church still a church if it doesn’t function like a church anymore?”

I’ve been reading The Heavenly Man , a biography of the Chinese house church leader Brother Yun. He says, I taught that the church should not give in to Pharaoh’s trick, when he tried to convince Moses and Aaron to leave their women and children behind while the men went to worship the Lord (see Exodus 10:10-11). I encouraged the leaders to include their families in their ministry for the Lord, and even to take their sposes and children along with them if possible…The leader of that house church network, however,  disagreed with me. When I finished speaking he privately rebuked me, “Yun, I can’t believe you’ve used your opportunity to teach such a message. Are you trying to destroy my leaders?” Not surprisingly, many of the marriages and families of the leaders from that group are in complete disarray. Many appear to be “successful” in their ministries while ther families are falling apart. For all the strengths possessed by China’s house churches, this area is one of its weak...

Andrew Jones provides a link to a document on house church writer Bob Viola on Five Fold Ministry .

Some notes about Simson’s book, Houses that Change the World. Some are good, some aren’t. Worth Pondering phrases like ”let us now have a time of worship” or ”let us now go into worship” meaning that all have to stand to sing some songs, might be less helpful than they sound, because they are a simple misnomer. ”It is important to note that the New Testament never mentions worship as the very the reason for Christians to come together - they come for mutual encouragement and edifying each other (1 Cor 14:26; Hebr. 10:24-25), but focuses more on the how, and not on the when and where of worship”, says Peter Ignatius of Christian Fellowship in Madras. The New Testament never refers to a meeting of the church as a worship service. Worship, in short, is not so much what we do but how we do it; not so much what we say or sing, but how we are a living sacrifice. (134) Housechurches have the ability to shift the main emphasis from public religious behavior to the semi-privacy of homes. (135) ...

This story Not your typical Vineyard Church is pretty cool. Make sure you click through some of this church's links like this one , where they write, "Vineyard Central is, in reality, a collection of home churches."

From Simson’s book, Houses that Change the World p. 133, HOW TO EMPOWER OTHERS            H OW TO EXPLOIT OTHERS let them function                give them functions believe in them                make them believe in you delegate authority                require submission partner with Gods plan for them      make them part of your plans invest in them                use them love them and say so           love the task more than people give them what you have           take what they have discuss with them   ...

This isn't my desire. I just finished the short policy statement from a British group called the Evangelical Alliance Policy Thingy, titled Transsexuality . The waters are murky in the deep end. I think the Commission would agree with the statement quoted here : "McHugh concluded that 'to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.'" A brief book review of the book I just read.

"'table-fellowship cannot be described simply as festive celebration and acceptance.'"

Wolfgang Simson writes in his book , Houses that Changed the World , Jesus sent us as lambs amongst the wolves, not as wolves amongst the lambs. This means that there are lessons to learn from the lambs who have been amongst the wolves. That also means, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to preach the message of redemption from a position of power. More and more Christians are realizing today that there is power in weakness, strength in humbleness, and a powerful mission agency is a contradiction of terms. The lambs he refers too are the growing churches in oppressed lands such as China, Ethiopia, Russia, Vietnam, Sudan, and Cuba.

I'm linking to Part 2 but Part 1 is good too. I like this statement by Grudem, "Another widely-respected British Evangelical leader fifteen years ago said to me that the battle between cessationists and non-cessationists in England is over. The cessationists have lost. Or the charismatics have won. I'm not sure exactly what he said but it was something like that. And that's the case, I think, in almost the entire world outside the United States."

This is a warning to people like me who can't resist doctrinal pugilism.

I don’t know if anyone has already developed this idea into a full fledged para-church ministry with a paid staff, solicitation campaigns, and Statements of Faith. Both books on home church that I read or am reading emphasize an apostolic beginning to a home church. That is a high hurdle of a concept for me. What if you just want to fellowship with your neighbors and break bread with each other and pray for each other and your neighborhood? What if it doesn’t matter what they do on their Sunday mornings? What if you want to have your neighbors over for the purpose of glorifying our Father, for seeking the arrival of our Father’s kingdom and the doing of His will in your neighborhood as it is in heaven, for asking for His provision together, for seeking and granting forgiveness and encouragement? But what if it is church building/denomination/affiliation independent? What if it is hospitality dependent? And Holy Spirit dependent? What if it gathered around a substantial meal that includ...

been reading a book online by Wolfgang Simson of Dawn Ministries. His book is called Houses that Change the World which can be found halfway down the page on Dawn Ministry's Resource Centre This is from p. 70 Children and Housechurches Since housechurches are spiritual families, children are a natural and important part of the housechurch, just as they are a source of constant joy - and embarrassment - in a natural family. Children are needed to humble us with their questions, break up our endless ”adult” discussions, bring us constantly down to earth from our pious clouds, and act as natural evangelists and bridgebuilders. They also help us to prove the fruits of the spirit - patience, for example -, and will serve as heaven-sent spies to spot any trace of religious superstition and hypocrisy in us in an instant. Children have a ministry which is at least as important to us as we as adults have a ministry to them. They are, in short, as important to housechurches as they are t...

The Voice of the Martyrs - News

Ben Witherington comments at the Jesus Creed � When Christmas falls on Sunday . Scot has an analytical commentary to conclude "so what if churches scale back on Sunday?" Dan Edelen draws the same conclusion . Both are used to Christmas Eve services anyway. And this might be the issue. If everyone is sued to the Christmas service being on the Eve's night 6 out of 7 years, why change it for the 7th year.

Another unprovoked attack in our country's history that resulted in a war with a tremendous loss of life and limb. Its amazing that the Chinese can't seem to remember what we did for them. If the US hadn't intervened, China would have become Japan at large. China was Japan's version of Manifest Destiny. If none of these things mean much to you, get a book out of your library on the Pacific Theater of WW2. Unfortunately, my local library isn't helping me remember which ones I've read lately.

Barefoot Rick is in his 3rd winter of barefoot running. This is my first. It snowed last night. But I got out there at lunch time, 34F. I tried to keep my bare feet on the blacktop of the road and off the wet stuff. Got a couple miles in. Got my 2nd ever piece of glass in my heel. The first time it happened, this summer, I stopped and flicked it out real easy. This time, my feet were numb so I didn't notice it until I got back in the locker room. It was worked in a little bit. Came out in the shower though. I never did a marathon this year. I realized I needed to learn how to run barefoot before I trained to run a marathon barefoot. Maybe next year.

that is not my blog: Is Everyone Set? : "Anyway, we’ve been dialoguing for the past few weeks (The J-Man doesn’t “teach students,” he “dialogues with colleagues”) about all the latest cutting-edge missional approaches, and I must admit that I’ve been struggling with the new relational inculturation methodologies—mostly with how to spell them, but also with how to mine them for good conversation-starters for the heathen I meet at Starbucks. (“Is that a pentagram on your forehead? Did you know that there are technically five gospels, if you include Q?”)"

So some churches are scaling back or even closing to let staff have the day off. At Get Religion the reaction to this news is Put Christmas back in the church . Ben Witherington is on fire over this. He writes, "What we are dealing with here are churches whose priorities are so askew that they somehow think it is more important for the church to serve the wants of the physical family than the other way around. This is a far cry from the pattern of the original disciples of Jesus who were seen leaving homes, relatives, jobs to come and follow Jesus. What kind of message does it send to our culture when churches close on one of its highest holy days? That it is o.k. to stay home and do one's own thing even on Jesus' birthday?" I guess it all depends on what following Jesus really means. If it doesn't mean woshipping him together as a family and giving gifts like he did but instead means having to dress up and drive and deal with parking and weather instead of Sabba...

A Christian women's apologetic blog that i respect has a short Harry Potter movie review with a thumbs up .

Present Testimony Ministry is a "simple church" church planting ministry. He notes some important sub-cultures that form among House churches... The Glorified Bible Study. The Special Interest Group. The Personality Cult. The Bless-Me-Club. The Socially Amorphous Party. The Disgruntled Malcontent Society. The Unwritten Liturgy Driven Church. Its a negative article. He has more articles on his site that i haven't read yet. I did read his book, Rethinking the Wineskin. It had really great stuff, but was very weak when trying to reconcile Biblically defined church offices/titles/ leadership with everyone being led by the Holy Spirit. He came close to denying the former to retain the latter. I see this in a lot of emergent church ecclesiastical experimentation. One method endorsed by many is situational leadership. We have all had bad experiences with bad leaders. But the New Testament is written by leaders with instruction to leaders with title...

to Andrew Jones, TallSkinnyKiwi: Hammett on Emerging Church 4.1 . Keep up the good work Andrew. I think I will tie this post and a couple others together then draw some conclusions.

My blog is worth $564.54 . How much is your blog worth?

This movie is so haunting, I'm unable to express myself in response to it. It was disturbing for the right reasons. How can a movie about children in war not be disturbing. So I linked to Netflix member reviews. I hope you watch it. However, I'm also wondering which Christian charity works among Iraqi Kurd refugees? I'd like to help.

Read this great little book by Randy Alcorn today. He runs Eternal Perspective Ministries . I just started teaching a class on money management at church last night, and of course God is letting me know how little I know. But Randy has a bunch of great links I want to reproduce here. The Good Steward Generous Giving Sound Mind Investing and Needs Met