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Easy Come, Easy Go

Monday, November 16th, 2009

The economy’s been hard on everyone. But what to do about it? Stick what’s left of our money in our mattresses? Buy Dodges and Chevys in the hopes that GM and Chrysler will be able to pay back their government loans? Ask the fed for an individualized bailout plan?

Robinwood Church in Surf City, Calif., had a different thought. The church — with a little help from an anonymous donor — decided to give $10 to the first 100 people through its doors yesterday, along with orders to spend it.

Now, $10 isn’t enough to send anyone to college or pay their mortgage. But it is enough to help stimulate the local economy a bit, and that’s exactly what the money was intended to do, according to The Orange County Register. And, while some folks who walked through Robinwood’s doors tried to turn the gift down, Robinwood was having none of it.

“We made them take it,” said Executive Business Pastor Robert Black.

Most of the congregants spent the money in local eateries after the service. And, with Robinwood contemplating turning the giveaway into a monthly event, you can bet restaurant owners around Surf City are feeling a bit more blessed these days.

Tags: church, economy, Money, Poverty
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The Gospel of Optimism

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Joel Osteen

Joel Osteen, wildly popular and somewhat controversial purveyor of the so-called Prosperity Gospel, granted an interview with Time magazine recently. The magazine assumed that perhaps some of the sheen of Osteen’s message might’ve lost some of its glint, what with the recession clinging tenaciously to most folks’ pocketbooks.

Not so. Attendance at his Lakewood Church in Houston is up 10 percent, and this spring he preached in a sold-out Yankee Stadium. His message sounds as relentlessly optimistic as ever.

These days there are so many things trying to pull us down, with the economy and the swine flu. I really think there’s something [that affects people] on the inside when somebody tells them, like I do, God’s still in control. He’s got good things in store for your life. And when you trust, when you believe, you can see amazing things happen.

I’ve always thought the Prosperity Gospel, as I understand it, was kinda bunk, and suspected that those who pedaled it were too pollyannaish for my taste. A quick trip through the New Testament will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that getting right with God doesn’t guarantee a life on easy street.

But, being the optimist I am, what Osteen says in this piece resonates with me. I believe its the height of folly to assume God will monetarily reward us if we’re good Christians. But I do believe that God cares for us and (all things being equal) likes for us to be happy. And I do believe he does have great plans for us — though the greatness is in the plan, not us.

But I gotta be honest with you — I’m not overly familiar with the Prosperity Gospel or what Osteen (or others) teach. Are any of you know a little more about this topic than I do? Fill me in, if you would. I’d love to hear from you.

Tags: church, evangelism, Joel Osteen, poor, Poverty, prosperity gospel, recession, rich
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Pain in the Pulpit

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Suicide, in some church cultures, is still considered to be the unforgivable sin. Some consider it to be the ultimate rejection of God’s ultimate gift. While many other churches don’t go quite so far — the deed may be wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily risk a person’s immortal soul — there’s still a powerful taboo when it comes to this most violent, most heartbreaking act.

Yet even pastors are not immune.

The Religion News Service recently offered a story (published here in USA Today) that tried to explain why pastors sometimes commit suicide. The conclusion, probably, shouldn’t surprise us. Pastors have one of the most stressful, most thankless jobs around. And when things go wrong, very often they have no one to turn to:

A pastor is like “a 24-hour ER” who is supposed to be available to any congregant at any time, said Steve Scoggin, president of CareNet, a network of 21 pastoral counseling centers in North Carolina. “We create an environment that makes it hard to admit our humanity.”

It’s a job that breeds isolation and loneliness—the pastorate’s “greatest occupational hazards,” said Scoggin, who counsels many Baptist and other ministers. “These suicides are born out of a lack of those social supports that can intervene in times of personal crisis.”

Tags: church, clergy, pastor, suicide
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Mending Fences?

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion. Photo courtesy ACNS Rosenthal.

The big news on the religion beat yesterday was a stunning announcement by the Roman Catholic Church, welcoming disenchanted Episcopalians back into the Catholic fold with few stipulations.

“Under the new structure, groups of Anglicans can move into a local Catholic Church that will be headed by former Anglican clergy, who can ease them into Catholicism without their having to kiss goodbye their own pastor or the rites they were raised on,” according to Time magazine.

The move is thought to be less an olive branch to the granddaddy of European Protestantism (the Anglican Church, and subsequent Anglican Communion, was founded in the 1500s by England’s Henry VIII) and more a response to recent decisions by the United States’ Episcopal Church, and giving its more conservative adherents another place to go, spiritually speaking.

The American Episcopal denomination, thought to now represent 2.2 million folks, has opened its doors to openly and active gay clergy, which has infuriated much of the wider Anglican communion and alienated more conservative Episcopalians within its own churches. Many parishes — indeed, entire Episcopalian dioceses — have since aligned themselves with other Anglican authorities worldwide.

It’s telling that, when I was covering religion for a secular paper in 2006, the Episcopal Church in the United States represented 2.7 million believers, meaning that the denomination has lost about 500,000 members in the span of three years.

But the Catholic Church is also reportedly shrinking. And really, it feels as though Christianity as a whole in the midst of a critical discussion related to human sexuality. Decisions made over the last 10 years, and decisions coming down the pipe for the next 20 or 30 more, will have a massive impact on how Christians worship, interpret the Bible and deal with worldly changes for centuries to come — a frustrating but fascinating crossroads.

Tags: Catholic, church, conservative, Episcopal, gay, homosexuality
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Still Commissioned

Monday, October 19th, 2009

We call it The Great Commission: Two thousand years ago, Jesus told us to spread the Gospel to every people on earth. And I think it’s fair to say that we’ve done a pretty good job so far. For centuries, Christians have circumvented the globe with Bibles in hand, preaching the Good News, to the point where Christianity’s now the largest religion in the world. It’s booming in Africa, Asia, South America — so much so that Christian leaders on these continents are now sending missionaries to us, the growing secular realms of Europe and North America.

It almost seems impossible that there could still be people who’ve never heard of Jesus.

Almost.

Six short-term missionaries from Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston spent some time in the Canary Islands this summer, helping with weeklong children’s camps. It’s good work — the sort of good work I love to talk about in this blog. The Baptist Press was on hand to tell me all about it.

One night, Candra Pennington, one of the missionaries, was reading quietly when one of the children walked up to her and asked her what she was doing. When Pennington answered she was reading her Bible, the child asked, “What’s a Bible?”

For me, that’s a pretty strong cautionary message. We shouldn’t assume that folks already know what we’ve been tasked to tell them. The Great Commission is still in effect.

Tags: Baptist, Bible, church, missionary
Posted in Body Parts, church news | Permalink

A Different Sort of Bonfire

Friday, October 16th, 2009

The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., is hosting a good old-fashioned book burning coming up on Halloween. What’s going into the fire? Playboys? Catcher in the Rye? Harry Potter?

Actually, the church is burning Bibles — translations Pastor Marc Grizzard considers “Satanic.” That’d be pretty much all biblical translations, incidentally, except for the King James Version. Also on the hopper: Books by such heathens as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Charles Colson and others.

I tried to check out the church’s Web site to see what else the church might have to say, but there seems to be something wrong with it. Perhaps church members are perhaps redoing the site to take out that pesky word “grace” from the church’s name.

Tags: Baptist, Bible, church
Posted in church news | Permalink