Hey everyone!
I decided to catch up with the times, and start a blog! I went to a workshop at the ABC-GRR Annual Gathering that talked about using recent technologies, such as blogs and websites, and they talked about how a blog can be an effective outreach tool for a church in today's day and age.
It was explained at the workshop that a blog is different from a newsletter column, in that blogging is a conversation, a way to log (the word "blog" is short for "web log") thoughts and feelings, and through comments people can make, have interaction with other folks sharing their thoughts and feelings.
One feeling I'll share with you right now is the feeling of starting to relax! I am on vacation from the hospital starting today, 10/8, through Friday, 10/17, and I'm going back to work there on Monday, 10/20. As I've said before, I'm not going anywhere much, except for a weekend trip to Ohio to officiate a wedding for a friend of ours. I will be taking short trips with Joey to play and, well, give us a chance to get to know each other better. He's such an amazing little guy! Sweet, loving, already a good sense of humor. What a blessing!
Another thought I'll share with you is about the upcoming election. I strongly urge everyone to vote, first, to vote their conscience, and then to vote based on which candidate you think would do the best job in the office for which they're running. I think it's best to vote for someone based on their values, beliefs and qualifications, not on what their opponent says is wrong with them.
On more thing: I'm getting more and more aware of the fact that religion is fading in America. There is more and more permission in our culture for religion, especially Christianity, to be a target of ridicule. There is a movie out now by the comedian Bill Maher, Religulous, that spends 101 minutes "beating up on" religion in general, and on Christianity in particular. I haven't, and won't, see the movie--I don't feel I really need to--so I won't comment on the movie itself. To be honest, there are folks who do some pretty goofy things in the name of the Christian faith. The magazine The Wittenburg Door, a satire magazine put out by evangelical Christians, points that out with a lot of humor, and sometimes with harsh seriousness. We need to realize something, friends: For many people, many more than even up to 20 years ago, it's all but meaningless to appeal to the authority of the Bible or our church to convince people of the truth of our faith in Christ. First of all, in general people don't read or know the Bible nearly as much as they used to. And more and more people refuse to accept the Bible as having any spiritual authority, just because we say God said so. Here's the one thing that no one can argue with, and the one thing that will convince people that our faith is real, that Jesus is real, and that Jesus offers them what the world cannot: Love. That's what Jesus says in John 13: "This is how people will know that you are following me, if you love one another." If we honest-to-goodness love each other, and if we really, I mean really, love our neighbor, and actually obey our Lord and really love our enemies, people will see that our faith in genuine, and they will want to come along with us!
That's it for now. More later. Post your comments--let me know what you think!
Pastor Andy
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- Pastor Andy
- I am an ordained minister with the American Baptist Churches-USA, a parish pastor and a board-certified hospital chaplain. I am married, and I have four children, one of them married--no grandchildren yet.
3 comments:
Andy,
congrats on both vacation and blog! I envy you the former. I write to agree with you nad expand a couple thoughts you expressed. I agree everyone needs to get out to vote and vote their conscience. I would further encourage people to look at candidates records and actions. As a segue into the second point you make that I agree with, people today especially politicians, think nothing of saying WHATEVER they want in order to get elected. I encourage people to look at the actions behind the words to guide their vote. The second point I allude to is the secularization of America. I don't feel any Christian needs to see Religulous to experience Christian mocking and out right bashing. Why pay for the experience you can enjoy every single day on network TV, news and virtually everything Holloywood has to offer. We, as Christians, are the only group who do not enjoy the protection of the so called Hate laws. We, as Christians are the only ones who do not enjoy equal opportunity of acceptance. We are the last group it is still ok to ridicule and hate. I despair...until I remember He is still in charge. Congrats again on the blog, thanks for the opportunity to share with you. I'll get off my soapbox now.
I agree with you, Larry, that Christians are one of the last groups that it's still okay to "hate on". I don't go quite so far as to say that we don't enjoy the protection of Hate Laws, but I take your point, and it's a valid one. And I too don't feel I need to spend $10 to be told how stupid someone thinks I am. On the other hand, I think we need to be aware of what "the world" is saying about us, because if we're not showing the love Jesus commanded us to show, the non-believing world has been in a way "commissioned " by Jesus to be our "warning" light, to tell us we're not obeying Jesus. The late Francis Schaeffer, who in the 70's helped a lot of evangelicals like myself know that it's okay to be both smart and a Christian, wrote in his short book "The Mark of a Christian", that the world has been given the right and even responsibility to discern whether or not our faith in genuine, by seeing whether or not we love each other. He said that based on the fact that Jesus said, in John 13, "By this all people will know if you are my disciples, if you love each other." (my paraphrase) Schaeffer was right.
Thanks again, Larry. Stay tuned--I might blog something that really toasts your bread, and we can have a really fun discussion!
Oh yea--one more thing I wanted to say in response to your comment, Larry: I agree with you also that remembering that God is in charge is truly something that gives us courage and comfort. I will add that it's possible that now that Christianity is getting less and less to be assumed to be part and parcel of our culture, maybe true Christianity will start to emerge, the Christianity that comes from an honest-to-God, hard core commitment to Christ and to living like His followers, not something that easy for people to claim because they were born into it, either by family or by culture. In other words, it can become more of a clear and sometimes costly choice, like it was in the New Testament and like it is now in some parts of the world, not just something that one identifies with by birth or default.
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