Crest or LCMS?

Apparently Protestants are more likely to be loyal to toothpaste than to their denomination.

Thanks to my friend Warren Smith for posting the story.

The first paragraphs :

Survey findings released in January by Ellison Research show that seven out of ten regular churchgoers would be at least somewhat open to switching denominations, with dramatic differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Respondents who attend worship services once a month or more were asked what denomination they attend most often. Then they were asked what role that denomination would play if they could no longer attend their current church. Three out of ten churchgoers say they would only consider attending one denomination – they would be open to nothing else. Another 44 percent report having one preferred denomination, but they would also consider others.

Eleven percent have a small number of denominations they would consider, with no particular favorite among them. Six percent don’t have any particular denomination they prefer, but they do have certain ones they would not consider. Finally, 9 percent say denomination does not factor into their decision of what church to attend.

Denominational loyalty differs strongly between Protestants and Catholics. Six out of ten active Catholics would only consider attending a Roman Catholic church, and another 29 percent prefer this, although they do not rule out other denominations. Eleven percent of Catholics do not show a specific preference for attending a Catholic parish.

In comparison, just 16 percent of Protestant churchgoers will only consider attending their current denomination. Fifty-one percent do express preference for one denomination, but would also consider others. Thirty-three percent do not have any preference for one specific denomination. This is little difference between the loyalties of people who attend evangelical Protestant churches and those who attend a mainline Protestant denomination.

The presence of the Savior ...

The presence of the Savior is the torment of the devils.

Bede, Homilies on the Gospels, 1.13

FORA.TV

This site, Fora TV look extremely interesting. It has many many lectures and interviews with smart interesting people on every conceivable topic. I haven't been able to watch many but the ones I've browsed look intriguing. Of course, I am not endorsing all of the ideas presented but there is alot to explore.

Thou art my Dove

What hellish fiend does not tremble with fear,
Awed by the whiteness of Christ's shining flock?
Sullen, the wolf in the midst of the sheep
Wanders unfeared and forgetful of blood,
Curbing the might of his ravenous jaws.

Lo, by a marvelous change, the mild lamb
Governs the lion, and the gentle dove,
Soaring down from the celestial heights,
Through the storm winds and the wandering clouds,
Drives the fierce eagles in ceaseless pursuit.

Thou art my Dove, all-powerful, O Christ,
Dreaded by vultures that feed on our blood.
Thou art the Lamb white as snow that dost keep
Ravening wolves from Thy sheltering fold,
Placing a yoke on the tiger's fierce mouth.

Prudentius, Hymn Before the Repast, FOTC, vol. 43, 22.

When I was a single man, I had plenty of these ...

Death in the Facebook World

A spoof ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—While checking his news feed for updates on the 438 people in his extended network Monday night, Tom Allessandro, 24, noticed that Facebook friend David Bluvband has apparently died. "Huh, I guess he's dead now," said Allessandro, adding that it seemed like only yesterday when Bluvband, a former coworker of his ex-girlfriend, posted a link to the YouTube clip of "Chocolate Rain." "Boy. That's a shame. Just goes to show you that you really have to enjoy every SuperPoke like it's your last." After an appropriate two-minute mourning period spent reviewing Bluvband's tagged photos, Allessandro clicked "Attending" for an event entitled "Lost My Cell Phone! I Need Your Numbers!!@!."

From the Onion.

Even the smallest of them has not remained

"I believe in the forgiveness of sins."

If this power were not in the Church, there would be no hope; if there were no remission of sins in the Church, there would be no hope of future life and of eternal salvation. We give thanks to God who gave this gift to His Church. Behold, you are about to come to the sacred font; you will be washed in baptism; you will be renewed in the saving laver of regeneration; when you rise from these waters, you will be without sin. All the sins which in the past haunted you will be wiped out. Your sins will be like the Egyptians following the Israelites, pursuing only up to the Red Sea,

What does "up to the Red Sea" mean? Up to the font. consecrated by the cross
and blood of Christ. For, because that font is red, it reddens. Do you not see how the member of Christ becomes red? Question the eyes of faith. If you see the cross, see the blood, too. If you see what hangs on the cross, see what drips down from it. The side of Christ was pierced with a lance and our purchase price flowed forth.

Therefore, baptism is signified by the sign of Christ, that is, by the water in which you are immersed and through which you pass, as it were, in the Red Sea. Your sins are your enemies. They follow you, but only to the Red Sea. When you have entered [the water], you will escape; they will be destroyed, just as the Egyptians were engulfed by the waters while the Israelites escaped on dry land. And why does Scripture say: "There was not one of them left"? Because, whether you have committed many or few, great or small sins, even the smallest of them has not remained.

But, since we are destined to live in this world where no one lives without sin, on that account the remission of sin depends, not solely on the washing in holy baptism, but also on the Lord's daily prayer which you will receive after eight days. In that prayer you will find, as it were, your daily baptism, so that you may give thanks to God who has given to His Church this gift which we acknowledge in the Creed. Hence, when we have said: 'I believe in the holy Church,' let us add, 'and in the remission of sins.

Augustine, Sermon 212, FOTC, vol. 38, p. 128-129.

Finding Jesus in the water

Here is the sermon from last Sunday, Baptism of Our Lord. Don't listen if you think humor or jokes are absolutely forbidden in the pulpit.


Finding Jesus in the Water, Sermon for Baptism of our Lord, Series B, 2009.

The earth has a foreteaste of baptism

In the unfortunate infancy of the human race, when
the world was growing foul with an undescribable squalor
of vices, and stank in its entirety with horrible crimes, and
was tending almost to cloud up the great brightness of the
sky with the smoke of its wickedness, for forty days and
nights rain was poured out to purify the earth.

This happened that the world (which should have been already
on the point of perishing, since it was but a creature) might
rejoice over this second birth by such a baptism; that it
might know that it owes the fact of its existence not to
nature, but to the gift of its Creator; that the earth, the
source of our body, might have a foretaste of the very
form of our baptism; and, finally, that the earth, which
previously was producing men born for death, might produce
them now as men reborn unto life.

Peter Chrysologus, Sermons, FOTC, Vol. 17, p. 273.

Cool, Calvinist and Cussing

Here is NYT piece on a popular pastor in Seattle who combines typical evangelical, suburban, user friendly church marketing with R Rated speech and a throw back form of strict Calvinism. Guess what? It's popular.

A few snippets:


Even the skeptical viewer must admit that whatever Driscoll’s opinion of certain recreational activities, he has the coolest style and foulest mouth of any preacher you’ve ever seen.

Mark Driscoll is American evangelicalism’s bête noire. In little more than a decade, his ministry has grown from a living-room Bible study to a megachurch that draws about 7,600 visitors to seven campuses around Seattle each Sunday, and his books, blogs and podcasts have made him one of the most admired — and reviled — figures among evangelicals nationwide.

Conservatives call Driscoll “the cussing pastor” and wish that he’d trade in his fashionably distressed jeans and taste for indie rock for a suit and tie and placid choral arrangements. Liberals wince at his hellfire theology and insistence that women submit to their husbands. But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”

Yet his message seems radically unfashionable, even un-American: you are not captain of your soul or master of your fate but a depraved worm whose hard work and good deeds will get you nowhere, because God marked you for heaven or condemned you to hell before the beginning of time.

In His Stead

This is an article of mine published in Touchstone, back in 2006.


In His Stead

On Being Paid to Act Like Jesus

What do pastors do all week? Being a pastor, I get this question every now and then. A few weeks ago, I was visiting a prospective family who had visited our congregation, and the husband, who was not much of a churchgoer, asked me, “So, what do you guys do all week?”

I am always a little nonplussed when someone asks me this. This fellow was a banker with a strong corporate mentality. I wanted to answer, “Well, I sit around a lot and read the Bible and pray and think about God and Jesus and people like you and me.” Which is literally true.

A Real Job

But I knew what he really wanted to hear. He wanted to know what, if I punched a clock, would fill up the eight hours a day. So I told him that I visit a lot of shut-ins, make a lot of hospital and evangelism calls, attend a lot of meetings, do sermon preparation, prepare Bible study classes, do administrative work. I tried to list as many concrete “tasks” as I could. I wanted him to think that, indeed, I had a real job just like him.

I could have taken the tack that I have heard some pastors take. I call it the “the ministry is the hardest working occupation in the world” sob story.

Around budget time in the congregation, or when a pastor is being attacked in the congregation, or when things are going south in the church financially or emotionally, some pastors will try out the sob story: “I work eighty hours week, I make calls all the time, I go to the hospital at all hours, I go to many, many, meetings, I am exhausted.” The sob story is effective at silencing critics for a while, but like my answer to my banker friend, it does not get at the heart of what pastors do.

Trying to describe what a minister does is tricky. Often, it isn’t a matter of time spent doing tasks. Sometimes the most important thing I do all week as a pastor is stand in the shower and realize that my sermon has no gospel in it and I’d better dump it in the trash and rewrite it. That insight, which takes a moment, might be the most valuable, cost-effective work I do all week.

Often, the most important things that happen are, to a corporate mind, the most mundane and routine: putting a bit of a wafer in the mouth of a sinner at the altar rail, or saying, “Your sins are forgiven in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

I can hear the thought-gears of that banker grinding at that one. “You mean they pay you a full-time salary with benefits so you can say words that any idiot could memorize and stand up and say?” Well, in a way, yes. They also pay me to preach and teach, and visit, and do some leadership and some administrative tasks.

But, in the end, what I really do is this: I am Jesus to them. I get paid to play-act. I get paid to do now what Jesus did: preach and forgive and bring the Kingdom to sinners. I say the words Jesus said and told us to say.

Playing Dress-Up

There is always a bit of the ludicrous and foolishness to the ministry. There I am on Sunday morning, the guy who, less than eighteen hours ago, went to the hardware store in a ratty t-shirt, ball cap, and dirty jeans, and now I am in God’s place, pronouncing divine judgments. I play dress-up; I wear vestments that are supposed to say to people looking at me that I am not “me” right now, I am Jesus in your midst. My voice is not mine; it is his. I am a paid actor.

But an actor with authority behind him, an actor with the authority of Christ propping him up. I cannot choose the scenes in which to appear. I cannot improvise. At the hospital bedside, in the pulpit, in the confessional, or at the cemetery, I am bidden to speak the lines given me: the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ.

All of this makes the question of what do I do all week and what do they pay me for hard to answer. In truth, I do not earn a salary at all, as most think of it. I may work hard, I may deserve the wages I receive, but the ministers of Christ are not paid or rewarded monetarily for the things they do. Faithful pastors would do them anyway with no money coming on the first and the fifteenth. Faithful pastors are pastors on account of the gospel, not the benefits package.

But the money comes and the check is cashed. The money, though, takes the form of an offering. That is where the pastor’s paycheck comes from anyway: -offerings in the plate. The “paycheck” I receive is not really “compensation for services rendered.” It is a gift. It is a gift given not even to me or my family.

Whether those giving it know it or not, it is a gift given to God. The gift is given in thanks for the ministry, not the minister, a gift of gratitude for the Great Shepherd who is seen in the human foolish shepherds he has sent to represent him, a Eucharist to the Crucified One who speaks through the squeaky little voices of his pastors.

Mosquitoes, a perfect fifth, Gregorian chant and, what else, mating

I heard this story on NPR this morning. It seems mosquitoes make a very interesting musical sound when mating. Together it makes a perfect fifth. A fascinating story.

Listen here.

All things are better in Koine

Ok, all you taking New Testament Greek at the seminary or college ... this one is for you. I have no idea where it came from (I saw it here on Dr. Platypus). Get get your sense of humour and enjoy.