A good and important analysis by Jed Babbin of the Republicans' chances in this year's elections.  Basic point -- that political consultants and talking heads are the bane of America's politics. Fire the consultants, and start leading from the heart. If Jed Babbin is saying anything here, it's that the further the GOP gets from the leadership style and convictions of Ronald Reagan, the more likely it is that the GOP will again become the permanent minority party in America.

 

    PEORIA, Ill. — The "Bigger Church, Bigger Impact" conference wrapped up on Friday, leaving participants feeling drained and dejected.
    "I came here thinking my church was doing all right. Now I see we're so dinky and dumb, it's not even funny," says pastor Steve Irvine of Reno, Nev., who went to his hotel room and cried after each session.
    Several faith-filled conference speakers shared how they grew their churches to tens of thousands of members with various ministry techniques. In the foyer afterward, many participants wore tight grins. Some broke down on the spot.
    After paying $400 to attend the conference, pastor Ryan Delacourt of Eugene, Ore., left feeling "about three tons worse" than when he came.
    "I don't know why I go to these things," he says, noting that his church has been trying to break the 100-member mark for twelve years.
    After the conference some pastors hit the local Cracker Barrel restaurant to commiserate. Some vowed not to return.
    "If I want to be this depressed again, I'll rent 'Apocalypse Now,' or read my e-mails," quipped one. •

(From LarkNews)

I was in a group study of Ephesians a number of years ago, and at the outset of the study the leader said that the theme of the letter was "unity."  Well, fine, the theme of unity is within Ephesians, but "unity" itself is only specifically mentioned in chapter 4, verses 3-6, and from the passage "unity" isn't something we build, but rather is built upon the person and work of God in His gracious work of salvation -- we are simply urged to "be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit."  But I digress.  I recall that in spite of the leader's identification of "unity" as the theme of Ephesians, despite the fact unity is only mentioned in four verses of the letter, as we progressed through book, the theme of the believer being "in Christ" emerged as the overall theme of Paul's letter.  In fact, terms such as "in Christ," "in Him," "through Christ," and the like, appear over 30 times in Ephesians.

Norwegian police find Munch's "The Scream"
Reuters/yahoo ^ | 08-31-06

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian police recovered "The Scream" and another stolen masterpiece by Edvard Munch on Thursday, two years after the works were seized from a museum by gunmen....

 

"The next Republican that tells me I'm not religious I'm going to shove my rosary beads down their throat," railed Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE).

...done in love, of course.

Sen. Biden's quote is pulled from an article in The American Spectator about the Democrats' born-again efforts to appeal to conservative Christian voters.

While all decency should conclude that it is still too early to be cranking up the 2008 election campaign, in truth the campaign has been underway since the Wednesday after the second Monday in November 2004.

I have an early preference, but I'd like to think (if I can delude myself) that I have an open mind about who should move into the White House when George W. and Laura move out.  In the spirit of open-mindedness, check out Evangelicals for Mitt.  He has a lot going for him -- good on social issues, innovative on difficult issues (enacted a viable program to expand health care to the uninsured in Massachusetts without resorting to a single-payer system), elected governor in one of the deepest blue states in the nation, and he even looks the part.

Among the letters to the seven churches in the opening chapters of Revelation, Jesus Christ has words of praise, but also words of warning for the church at Ephesus. He commends them for the fact they had suffered and yet endured persecution; they did not abide immoral behavior; and they took a stand for sound teaching, opposing apostasy and false teachers. Any evangelical congregation in our day would likely be pleased with such a commendation for standing firm in the faith.

But Jesus also communicates a word of warning. While acknowledging all they had done to defend the faith, even to the point of suffering for their position, nevertheless Jesus says they are deficient in a more important area: they had left their first love, namely, Himself.

The serious warning in the letter to the Ephesian church – the realization which on reflection should cause the contemporary church to take notice – is that it's possible to suffer for being a Christian, to be a stalwart defender of sound doctrine, an opponent of false teachers, a champion and example of moral living, an opponent of the influences which eat at the surrounding culture, and yet to completely miss the point. It's possible to give an appearance of being sound and solid on the outside, and yet to leave or neglect Christ. In the case of the Ephesian church by the time John was given the Revelation, they had gotten completely off track on the one thing that is most important to the church.

(For the full article, click here.)

 

(By the way, is it “Eutychus’” or “Eutychus’s”? If the latter, it’s too late now.)

Eutychus appears only once in scripture, yet his place in the Biblical narrative stands out. We read of Eutychus in Acts 20:7-12. From the record, we learn that Eutychus is a resident of Troas, where the Apostle Paul is conducting a week-long series of meetings. We read that one evening as Paul is speaking, “he prolonged his message until midnight.” (I’ve known preachers like that.) As the night wears on, and Paul drones on, we read that Eutychus, who is sitting in a window sill on the building’s third floor, “sinks into a deep sleep.” Now, at this point, I’m right with Eutychus! Seriously, which one of us hasn’t nodded off during a long-winded sermon? His mistake wasn’t falling asleep, but falling asleep while seated in a third floor window sill. In his stupor, he fell from the window, broke his neck (or some other vital part of his body), and died. Obviously, the story doesn’t end there. Paul ran down to the body of young Eutychus, threw himself upon him, and proclaimed, “Do not be troubled, for his life is in him.” Sure enough, Eutychus lives. Paul then returns to the third floor of the building, and continues teaching until dawn. If anyone else fell asleep during Paul’s prolonged sermon, we can be sure they didn’t do so in a window sill.

One of the things which distinguishes the Bible from other historical religious books, and what, to me, provides a proof of the Bible’s authenticity and authority, is that whether one reads of Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or of David, or Jeremiah, or the people of Israel in general, or of John, or Peter, or even of Eutychus, what one sees is real people, as people tend to be – they’re genuine, with real foibles, with real weaknesses. When I read the Bible, I see accounts of people who are just like me, and just like people around me. They are presented with no pretense, no effort to spin and polish their images, no attempt to turn them into mythological heroes. But what we also see in the Bible is a God who is loving and faithful to His word, and faithful to his promises to His people. Despite their failings and weaknesses, despite their “humanness,” God’s love and patience toward His people is unwavering. He is also resolute in working out His plan for them and in them, and that plan is to restore humanity to its original state, where men and women walk with God, are in constant fellowship with Him, deriving from Him their motive and power for living, where their spirits are the dwelling place of His Spirit, and they, like Jesus, live only to do the will of the Father.

Had Eutychus simply died, had that been the end of his story, he would have been a tragic figure. But by God’s grace and mercy, Eutychus was brought back to life. As a result, he’s something of a comic figure, and as a result I can identify with him. Mel Brooks once said that, "Tragedy is me cutting my finger. Comedy is you getting eaten by a tiger." I bump my head, and I can assure you it isn’t funny. But watch a video of some hapless soul sliding off a roof and disappearing into a bush next to his house, and that’s comedy! So the account of Eutychus is one that make us (me at least) laugh.

Eutychus is a biblical figure who represents lack of pretense (imagine falling asleep while listening to the great apostle Paul, falling out of a windown and breaking his neck – the biggest pratfall in all of history!). He also serves as an example of the focus of God's love and grace. But for God's intervention, Eutychus would have been a tragic figure; because of God's intervention, he's a hilarious example of God's favor and blessing. So should be the effect of God's intervention in our own lives.

That’s my perspective as I launch this blog. Some of my posted comments will undoubtedly be serious. Others will highlight the hilarious and the absurd. But all comments will be without pretense, will be genuine, and will, I hope, reflect God’s favor, blessing, and the grace He’s given to me, the grace He extends to all who put their trust in His Son.

Fifteen of the most successful faith-based programs in the country (compiled by World Magazine):

BOB ROACH'S PLAN FOR CIRCUMVENTING A DEMOCRAT

Where did all these Democrats come from? They grow thicker and thicker and act more and more outrageously at each successive election.

Now yesterday they had the presumption to elect S. H. Dwinelle to the Judgeship of the Fifteenth District Court, and not content with this, they were depraved enough to elect four out of the six Justices of the Peace! Oh, 'Enery Villiam, where is thy blush! Oh, Timothy Hooligan, where is thy shame! It's out. Democrats haven't got any.

But Union men staid away from the election - they either did that or else they came to the election and voted Democratic tickets - I think it was the latter, though the Flag [a local paper] will doubtless say it was the former.

But these Democrats didn't stay away - you never catch a Democrat staying away from an election. The grand end and aim of his life is to vote or be voted for, and he accommodates to circumstances and does one just as cheerfully as he does the other. The Democracy of America left their native wilds in England and Connaught to come here and vote - and when a man, and especially a foreigner, who don't have any voting at home any more than an Arkansas man has ice-cream for dinner, comes three or four thousand miles to luxuriate in occasional voting, he isn't going to stay away from an election any more than the Arkansas man will leave the hotel table in "Orleans" until he has destroyed most of the ice cream.

The only man I ever knew who could counteract this passion on the part of Democrats for voting, was Robert Roach, carpenter of the steamer Aleck Scott, "plying to and from St. Louis to New Orleans and back," as her advertisement sometimes read. The Democrats generally came up as deck passengers from New Orleans, and the yellow fever used to snatch them right and left - eight or nine a day for the first six or eight hundred miles; consequently Roach would have a lot on hand to "plant" every time the boat landed to wood - 'plant' was Roach's word.

One day as Roach was superintending a burial the Captain came up and said: 'God bless my soul, Roach, what do you mean by shoving a corpse into a hole in the hill-side in this barbarous way, face down and its feet sticking out?' 'I always plant them foreign Democrats in that manner, sir, because, damn their souls, if you plant 'em any other way they'll dig out and vote the first time there's an election - but look at that fellow, now - you put 'em in head first and face down and the more they dig the deeper they'll go into the hill.'

In my opinion, if we do not get Roach to superintend our cemeteries, enough Democrats will dig out at the next election to carry their entire ticket. It begins to look that way.

From The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 2 1864-1865, (Univ. of California Press, 1981)

Written by Mark Twain in San Francisco, Oct. 1865

CNN will mark the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by replaying on the Internet the cable network's coverage of that day's events.

Viewers can watch how events unfolded starting at 8:30 a.m., minutes before the first reports of an airplane hitting the World Trade Center. The feed will run in real time, as the network showed it five years ago, until midnight.

For the day, CNN will make its online video service, CNN Pipeline, available for free. Normally, viewers pay $2.95 a month or $24.95 a year for four separate video feeds.

Online viewers will be able to watch live reports of memorial services through one of the feeds. So that viewers won't accidentally stumble upon graphic footage from 2001, the replay feed will be covered with a notice instructing users to click only if they want to watch.

"Our users may choose to view the stream of coverage from Sept. 11, or live coverage of memorial services at Ground Zero, or they may click through the numerous interactive elements on the site," said David Payne, senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com. "They have the power to determine the best way for them to remember the anniversary."

**************************

The above report reminds me of the ode to 9/11.  --

They took all the footage
Off my TV
Said it's too disturbin'
For you and me
'It'll just breed anger,'
Is what the experts say
If it was up to me, I'd show it every day.
Some say this country's just out lookin' for a fight
Well after 9/11, man, I'd have to say that's right.
Have You Forgotten...

Darryl Worley

I have a picture in my prayer binder of a solitary Special Forces soldier, flanked on his left and on his right by two fighters of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. It's a photo I scanned from the cover of the book The Hunt for Bin Laden by Robin Moore, about the toppling of the Taliban in 2001. Under the picture I placed a quote from the governor of a province in Afghanistan that was under Northern Alliance control. He said, in a question to a US Special Forces soldier sent to his area by the Defense Department, "Where are all your men? You have come alone? How can you help us defeat our enemy with only one man? The Russians sent tens of thousands...Bush sends us one...What kind of men are these Green Berets that will come alone?"...and then a note, in parentheses: "Fewer than 100 American soldiers were on the ground when Kabul fell."

We're finding that prayer, and the ministry of intercession for individuals, for the church, for our communities, for the nation and the world, is a bit like being part of God's "Special Forces" -- as God trains in the nature of effective prayer, and in using His weapons, we've come to realize that we don't need tens of thousands to punch through to victory, but hundreds, scores, maybe even just a handful. I pulled a quote from the 2004 book A Table in the Presence by Lt. Carey Cash, a chaplain with the first Marine battalion which crossed into Iraq in 2003: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world ever knows of. -- Alfred Lord Tennyson." The spiritual significance of this is something we're learning. And then this:

I've probably watched the movie "Patton" about a dozen times. There's a scene in the movie where Patton orders up a "weather prayer" to clear the snow storm so the troops can receive air cover during the Battle of the Bulge. The event actually happened, and was related in an article in an Army publication in 1951 by Patton's Third Army chaplain, James O'Neill. In the 1951 article, then-General O'Neill wrote,

"Those who pray do more for the world than those who fight; and if the world goes from bad to worse, it is because there are more battles than prayers. 'Hands lifted up,' said Bosuet, 'smash more battalions than hands that strike.' Gideon of Bible fame was least in his father's house. He came from Israel's smallest tribe. But he was a mighty man of valor. His strength lay not in his military might, but in his recognition of God's proper claims upon his life. He reduced his Army from thirty-two thousand to three hundred men lest the people of Israel would think that their valor had saved them. We have no intention to reduce our vast striking force. But we must urge, instruct, and indoctrinate every fighting man to pray as well as fight. In Gideon's day, and in our own, [the] spiritually alert...carry the burdens and bring the victories."

We're finding this to be true whether the battlefield is in Iraq, or in America, or in our home community in California, or in the personal lives of the people we know. The spiritually alert carry the burdens and bring the victories.