I went to the new site and read the news about things happening around the world. It makes me shrug that most of the good news stories are baptisms - that metric isn’t going to change as I’ve mentioned before. I looked around and saw older messages, and a few pictures. The RightTurn folks made a beautiful sight.

I saw the Study section and found materials provided by the church in Boston. The sections are Apologetics, Bible Talks, D-Groups, Quiet Times, and Study Series Materials. I thought it would be interesting to see what was made available.

Some of the materials are quite disappointing. The discipleship study continues the error that one must be a disciple before baptism. The church study is the same “only one physical church”, the one church is determined by doctrine of salvation. These two are related because of the unique addition of “Have the heart of a disciple” added before baptism. Very disappointing to see Kip’s doctrine perpetuated.

The more stuff I read, the more it felt like 1995 all over again. Building Family talks about spiritual family being more important than physical family. The sin and baptism study includes a note that folks leading the study need to know what the person studying believes about their salvation and to determine if that person is, in fact, saved.

Again, we don’t address doctrine years ago so nothing changes. We are teaching bad doctrine all over again, at least in Boston. These days, though, I think some in attendance are smart enough to know better. I wonder aloud, though, how long those folks will keep coming.

Still, the inclusion of the book How to Pray by RA Torrey is encouraging. A couple of the Apologetics materials are pretty good as well.

It ’s funny. You complained the entire trip south, yet you let me be your friend. You didn’t get angry at me very much despite feeling sick for most of the trip and despite a lingering sense of mistrust.

We put you in a stranger’s house for a few months after that. You and she were both guests at first, but after a while, it was just you. Just you, a good friend, and that dog you completely despised. I understand, I’m not a small dog kind of person.

After she and I came back from Rome, the three of us lived in a fancy high rise for a short time. It was, in many ways, the place where you always belonged. You could look down at the entire world from the top floor. You basically owned the house all day as we both left to go to work. I’m sure you miss those quiet days now. Don’t worry, someday soon, those quiet days will return.

When we left to move into a house over a century old, you didn’t complain very much. In fact, you enjoyed the fact that she was home quite a bit. In fact, it was then that we started talking to each other more than ever. You would say hello when I came home and then we’d talk about all kinds of things.

She’d roll her eyes at us, but us guys have to stick together, you know.

When we came home that October night, you wouldn’t leave her side. It took awhile for us to explain it, but all you knew was that she had changed and she was very sad. You brought her a lot of comfort although you didn’t see much of us for a couple weeks. When we got home, you would politely say hello to me and then join her in the living room. She still talks about those times.

And one day, we brought him home.

You complained at how noisey he was and how demanding he was and how he took away time that was rightfully yours. Yeah, I can see your point there. Still, when he was asleep in his bassinet, you came back to comfort her through the tears, just like you had always done for the 13 years previous.

You loved the basement in that old house. Unlike me and her, you could ignore the gunfire. You didn’t flinch that night the police came and asked me what I saw and heard. (You did, however, come up to visit me after he left. Thank you for not telling the cop about the Cadillac in the back yard with expired tags.) We stayed over a year at that house and you were mostly happy there.

When we moved again, you were getting used to it, I think. You took to the new house right away. There was real carpet, real heat, no gunfire, closets, and lots of warm sunbeams. He was still your nemesis, but you could easily escape for the first seven months. After that, you decided to sleep downstairs, away from us.

When we brought her home a few months after that, you pretty much decided that we were crazy. Yet, those first few nights when we came home, you knew something was wrong. You were there for her again. I was glad you were, because I couldn’t be there in the daytime. That was a hard one on all of us, but you gave us so much.

Thank you.

But now, dear friend, I see you hurting. You don’t complain, but I know it hurts a lot. I also know that you are embarrassed about this morning, so I don’t mention it to anyone. I wish I could say it happens to all of us, but you and I both know that is not true. I know that you’re much older than me, but it’s no comfort to me. I wish this circumstance was different.

Saturday, I have to transition you again. This time, though, we won’t be joining you. I know you want to do this alone, but I wish you weren’t leaving so soon. I just wish that you knew it was coming. After all you’ve done for her for these 17 years, I just wish it wouldn’t be a big surprise to you. Unfortunately, I cannot change that.

Thank you for noticing that I am feeling sad tonight. I appreciated the quiet time we shared downstairs while the kids and she are asleep. Maybe you know, I dunno. I mean, I saw the xrays. We both know you haven’t been eating. Anyway, you haven’t purred in quite a while, but you purred a good twenty minutes earlier.

For a brief time, I almost forgot.

I don’t know what our time will be like this week. I dread Saturday in some ways. Our children are so fond of you. I am, too.

Let me say this while you are asleep tonight:

Goodbye old friend. May your suffering end. Tell grandma that we miss her, too.

Five minutes into my trip, I realize I went to the wrong school, so I decide to stop and get my bearings and go to the correct school. I pull into a parking lot to hear some nurses remarking about the ugly green color in the sky. They scramble as the head nurse shouts that they are going to evacuate.

It looked like a normal thunderstorm in the distance to me. Then again, I imagine the head nurse lived here for awhile. I wanted to go home, but duty called and I hope to get to the school, .75 miles away, before it rains really hard.

I’m within sight of the school when visibility changes to zero. The car in front of me is no more than 20 yards away from me, but I can only see the brake lights when he/she pushes them. At some point, the rain actually increases in intensity and I hear hail bouncing off the roof of the car. I pull off into a parking lot to wait out the storm. I found an open place sans trees. You may think I’m stupid, but I’ll explain the rationale.

I was in an old section of town. Many of the trees there are huge and 100+ years old. This equates to being a lightning magnet. I’m grounded in the car, but the flaming branch hitting the car is not a pleasant thought.

Anyway, I put the car rear facing the wind and pull the emergency brake. I have one of those cars with a raised back end so that the car slopes downward. This means that unless I face it just right, hail cannot directly strike the back glass.

So you’re saying to yourself, did you actually think through all of this? How long did it take. Yes. Ten seconds. It happens when you live here for awhile. You get 10 minutes warning at best when these storm form and move in. I had two.

So here I am in a parking lot somewhere only vaguely aware of my location. The hail starts coming now in sheets. It is so loud in my car that I am plugging my ears. The radio was up to 9 and I still couldn’t hear it. I don’t really see anything, but I presume that branches are flying around.

At this point, I decide that I should just turn around and go home when I get the chance. Yes, wait for the hail to stop. Wait for the horizontal rain to stop. Wait for the car to stop inching forward - yes the emergency brake is on.

Five minutes later, it all stops. The wind is gone, the hail is gone, the rain is gone. The car is fine and surprisingly undented. I am surrounded by tree limbs and look up to see that I had turned into a parking lot beside an open field. Driving through the branches, I see the other cars creeping along waiting for the sky to open again.

No surprising to folks that know me, I also realized that I am lost. Somewhere in the rain while trying to make my way east, I somehow ended up going in some other compass direction.

Now I realize that my biggest enemy is flash flooding. I try to call home, but the cell tower for my carrier is disabled. (When I later discovered that some places had winds of 115 mph, I understood why.)

Seeing the number of trees and tree branches in the road, all I am trying to do is drive west and north. I just need a numbered street to get my bearings and make my way home. It would take a long time, but eventually it would work. What followed was an odyssey of high tension and failed hopes. As I tried to make my way, the gas light came on. I laugh out loud because it just strikes me as too funny.

The high tension came from confronting impromptu rivers at familiar intersections. Watching a truck plow through one of those intersections, I realize that my car won’t make it through unless I want water to come up to the door handles. North and west, I tell myself. Just drive north and west.

I ended up in a neighborhood north of my home. I knew I was a little over a mile away, I just had to get to a major road. I find the numbered street and make my way west so that the numbers will go up to 90. At 90th street, I’m on a major highway that leads home. I get close only to find perpetual tree blockages. Even heading north, I cannot find a way out, so I head east. I eventually end up at a major road three miles north of home.

At this point, I should mention that there are no working stoplights on in the city at this point. I had been in neighborhoods driving through smaller rivers, so I forgot about that. I turned left (at great risk to life and car) thinking that it was west. After more tree, river, and stoplight issues, I ended up a half-mile EAST of my home. I finally made it to a street that was more or less clear and made my way home (Blondo Street).

I turn onto the street leading home and discover a large tree in the road. I try to drive around it only to find all roads in my neighborhood with big trees in the road. So, I make it back out to Blondo so that I can drive around the block on major roads to enter the street leading to my home from another direction.

From Blondo, it is full stop. Creeping forward I remember that, oh yeah, the I’M REALLY OUT OF GAS LIGHT has been on the entire time. Gas?!? Is there a gas station open at this point? I’ve been driving for an hour, do I really want to get home or stop?

Turns out that there’s no working gas stations anyway. They are out of power. Plenty of gas, just no delivery mechanism. In any case, I finally make it around. The other end of the major street leading to my home also has a tree down blocking the road. This one has a power line entangled in it as well.

At this point, I laugh again. I had enough sense to park the car at a small insurance company and turn off the engine. Yes, I’ll walk home, but at least the car isn’t burning more fumes while I’m appreciating the humor of all of this. I notice the half-inch deep hail in the parking lot. I think to myself, I made it through all of this only to get a head injury slipping on ice in June six blocks from home.

Delicately walking through hail, I also delicately make my way around the fallen tree. There was a path around the tree, through lots of soft mud. I actually walked through someone’s backyard to avoid the tree, power line, and mud. Walking down the road, calls are barreling down the road trying to escape. Whereas I couldn’t get in because of the trees at both ends of the road, they cannot get OUT. Yelling on their cellphones, I think that they have no idea.

I finally make it home only to see leaves pasted to the front of the house and a huge lake for a driveway. Fortunately, my neighbor’s driveway is high and dry, so I walk through it and a little water to get to my front door.

No power.

Who cares?!? I finally made it home. The gas grill is okay, so we’re set. Grill everything, relax at home, chill, relax and have a great time.

An hour later, I ask my wife, What do you mean there’s no meat in the refrigerator?

I should be there at least from Oct 19 - 21 for a conference. It will be only me, and not the family for now.

You have been warned.

Otherwise, it’s not so much that there’s a lack of things to write, just writing somewhere else for now. So here’s my ICoC post for now. Who knows when another may come along.

In regards to the ICoC, no major change is going to occur for quite some time, if at all. As a group, reform was largely missed, though some individual locations have done quite a bit. There is no atmosphere for a new Kriete Letter as the monolithic whole is now three parts (four if you count Kip’s group). As a whole, churches appear to be growing.

Three metrics have been presented thus far to demonstrate ‘health’ in the ICoC as a whole. These are numerical growth, increased intra-denominational cooperation, and lack of harshness. The metrics I look at are quite different, but that may or may not be the subject of another post. I will not see things the same as many others, and I have come to accept that. I can help change things locally to a limited extent, but even then, it is not always worth it. As such, there doesn’t appear to be much reason to write about either ICoC, the historical ICoC, or Kip’s group. A discussion would likely devolve into arguing over definitions of words, which should be avoided.

One thing of note that can be said is more of a side note. The Drabots are in Portland talking to Kip’s Portland Church. The Drabots and Johnsons are long-time friends. From a personal perspective, it is encouraging that friends can reconnect though on different sides of an ideological difference. However, it also points to a problem in how we dealt with Kip in the first place.

We excommunicated Kip as a person without repudiating his doctrine. In other words, it was dealt with as a personal issue, addressed as a personal issue, and treated as a punishment to a specific person. It can be argued that his doctrine could not be repudiated because the issue was really his inability to accept less than kingship. While that is true, the main issue is that we did not address our own doctrinal problems. Quick action needed to be taken (and I called for it repeatedly) but an unwillingness to deal with what made him our king in the first place (amongst other things) provided very few options. So, it was basically, You said mean things and wouldn’t take them back and Stop taking our sheep. Important things to say, that is true, yet, without any doctrinal examination, it’s not going to really last. As others have said, we ended up trying to make the doctrine of Kip-Lite work (all the same doctrine, but Kip-Free. Now with UPC added for conviction!)

Case in point, Ron is in Portland. Steve Johnson is not Kip. Steve is milder than Kip. Ron’s issue was with Kip, not Steve. Ron and Steve are long time friends. Begs the question Why can’t we preach at each others churches again? Ron and Steve are swapping churches. Charlotte is Kip-Lite and apparently Portland is also Kip-Lite (or 2% reduced Kip), so why the harsh boundary, right?

Kip’s apologists are already using this line of reasoning to suggest that ICoC leaders are nothing more than power-mongers that were jealous of Kip. More than that, they are now able to make it into a doctrinal issue. Most of them are claiming that the ICoC has changed their doctrine about unity, discipleship, and global missions. These accusations are difficult to answer. If similarities are pointed out, the question is Why Did We Split?. In a sense, is could be asked why not fellowship Kip’s churches if everything is mostly the same? If the differences in doctrine are highlighted, the answer is It’s like we said, you changed your doctrine. It is problematic because it would be a new argument from the ICoC. There is no ability to point to the brother’s letter or anything else and say Here are the doctrinal problems.

With all of that said, though, there’s still not much that will change in the next few years. Kip will be on six continents in about 5 years. There will be another Salt Lake type leaving in 5 to 10 years. In 10 years, the numbers will begin to collapse of Kip’s SODM churches. The ICoC will probably settle into 1%-2% growth in the US and double digit growth overseas for the next 10 years.

The only major issue coming for the ICoC is a growing anti-US sentiment. Will it lead to a split? It’s possible. It will probably take place after certain major characters pass away, if it happens at all. It’s too early to say.

All of this has been said before, thus not much from me. If I don’t see you sooner, see you in October in Raleigh.

September 28 is apparently going to be a day of infamy featuring several pastors endorsing political candidates in similar manner as this one did.

The downside for the congregation is that they lose their tax-exempt status. This would wreck many churches, especially larger ones.

What gets me, though, is the week of prayer about this amongst the church leadership. After a week, the team agreed that God had instructed the minister to do this. (Either that or the minister disregarded the team) The minister is also a delegate to the National Republican Party convention. He insists that God told him, not the powers that be in the party. He also was not instructed by anyone at the ADF.

So what is the benefit of this? If the congregation wins, preachers will be able to endorse candidates from the pulpit on Sunday. If the congregation loses, they may cease to exist or live on in a largely debilitating state of being a tax paying entity.

Seems to me that despite considering it for a month, the idea to avoid doing this was never really given much thought. In the end, the minister says a whole lot of “I” statements and very little about his congregation. In the end, he doesn’t trust his congregation to figure out certain things for themselves - you cannot vote for a pro-choice, pro-LGT candidate and remain a Christian.

I suspect that on Sept 28, that message will be repeated all over the country. I imagine very few will support Obama, and none will threaten their salvation if they support McCain.

Still, I do not believe that the GOP chair or even Karl Rove has orchestrated events to bring this into place. This is not a vast conspiracy with roots in the GOP. It’s a moral failing of our culture that is so consumed with our rights, we look past the rights of others. As much as Christianity is about being a part of the culture without conforming to the culture, all of us get tempted to be selfish. All of us get tempted to be upset when any of our rights (real and imagined) are threatened, but passive when others are deprived of their rights. Reverend King was concerned with the rights of the many, but we are not like Reverend King. We look only to our own personal affairs.

Back to the pastor in the story, I really believe that one must choose to be a minister or a political activist. Delegates have some political power. I do not know how someone can minister to their congregation and wield political power at the same time. As far as I understand, Jesus did not espouse a political solution. Jesus’ message was a personal one. His way of life requires relationship - relationship to God and relationship to each other. In other words, man cannot serve two masters, politics and God.

In fairness to this minister, I believe this is not limited to the GOP. This is the consequence of the admixture of politics and religion. It’s why I believe in the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and the limit of government to establish religion. Even the best and most golden-hearted of us (including King and others) lose our religion in politics. Politics is rooted in the world while faith is rooted in Jesus.

Again, we should be in the world and be politically active to a certain extent. Some may choose to not be politically active, that’s fine, too. But we should not be of the world. There are more important things that the platform of the DNC.

From one of the ICoC forums, a poster identified as Bruford1 says the following:

There is a world of difference between people who love God, and people who love church.

This is listed as one of the lessons he learned from his time in the ICoC. I wish I had thought of that. I agree with it as a standalone statement. It seems to be true from my experience with the 700 Club, ICoC, and other groups.

In case you were wondering, my list was

• Those that pretend to speak for God do more damage than those that reject God.
• Power Corrupts. Power still corrupts. Nice power corrupts nicely.
• God is bigger than I can imagine. He will not be put into a box.
• My life is mine, even as a Christian. He gave it back to me because He trusts me.
• Follow the money.
• Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
• All politics is local.

It’s an incomplete list. I should also have added the two things from a previous post about the good of the ICoC.

The original link was from Preach Mike who makes a valid, if somewhat incomplete point. Look at some of the Delphites and it’s easy to spot the teenagers. By this model, I was a teenager for a while. Hello pot, this is the kettle…

Why incomplete? I think it is incomplete because there is a reasonable assumption that a person’s spiritual history has good and bad elements. However reasonable it is, it is not logical - an assumption that all experience falls between two extremes is the Middle Ground Fallacy. Having said that, the message of the post is reasonable and worth investigating a bit.

I often say that 85% of the historical ICoC (1979 - 2002ish) was bad and/or evil. That’s a high percentage by anyone’s standard. Yes the number is arbitrary, I choose it because it quantifies “a lot” a more clearly. In other words, saying that a lot of what we were was bad/or evil doesn’t express as clearly my thoughts as much as providing a number.

In any case, let me talk about the good from my more recent religious heritage:

• They were very good at making a message portable and easily transferable from any member to another member.
• They were, in some ways, egalitarian in regards to the role of women. (Think communion without a man to introduce the sister speaking.)

I am grateful for these things, really. I didn’t realize until I started working with other churches how helpless the average member of those churches felt in sharing with others. If someone wanted to join, the member would have them call the preacher. QED, problem solved. In the ICOC, our message was supplied with a straightforward way of presenting it to others. I never felt much at a loss of what to say. If I didn’t know what to say, I’d rattle off points from the Word study. Though my theology has changed, I still look for ways to transfer the gospel in easily portable ways.

Women, for the most part, were highly regarded in role. Women preached (albeit only to other women), shared at communion, helped their male counterparts shape ministries, and were generally considered a good resource. What do the sisters think was a common question. The input given was actually considered and usually followed. I appreciate that experience from my past.

I almost didn’t list this one because the role of women in some ways was very rigid. My experience was that this role was tolerated by the wives of leaders because the political reality was that they were running the show. Single sisters controlled who would date more than any of the other leaders. I don’t believe that my experience was universal to the denomination as a whole. This experience was also not the same from start to end.

Anywho, that’s my thought for the day. There is most likely some good in your experience if you look for it.

This is in an unaccessible location on someone’s farm. Meeting postponed.

To understand the madness, look here

I have another one regarding the “Who Is My Brother” seminar (read - the UPC RULEZ!), but I’ve been doing other things lately. Enjoyed beautimous weather and Mahoney State Park this weekend. Life is good all around.