Challies: Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (Part 1.5)

"I know a lot about my wife. I know what she likes to wear around the house, what she likes to wear to church and what she likes to wear when we go out for dinner. I know what she likes to eat and what she hates to eat. I know what books she likes to read, what movies she likes to watch, what web sites she likes to browse. I have all of this accumulated knowledge about my wife. But I think I could have this same level of knowledge about whoever the latest Hollywood heartthrob happens to be. This is exactly the kind of knowledge that you might find in those newspapers and magazines that clutter the checkouts at the grocery stores and it is the kind of knowledge that I might find on the hundreds of gossip blogs that pollute the internet.

I also have knowledge of my wife, knowledge that goes far beyond the facts of preferences, likes, dislikes, hobbies. I have an intense and intimate knowledge of my wife—a kind of knowledge shared by no one else in the world. She and I enjoy intimacy that transcends mere bits of information.

A trend we see today through today’s digital technology is the exaltation of this kind of knowledge, cold facts, at the expense of more intimate knowledge. This is true, I’m convinced, when we take our iPods to church. Quentin Schultze says that we have become like tourists who are so enamored by our mode of transportation that we cruise through nation after nation largely indifferent to the people and the cultures around us. We have our passports filled with the little stamps telling people just how many places we’ve been, but what is the purpose of being in places if we have not experienced them? And what is the purpose of knowing people if we do not care to know them on anything more than a surface level? The trend today is toward these fleeting, surface-level interactions...Click here to read the rest of the article

Of Life, Church, and other issues...

A few months back I began to struggle with a situation, to leave or not to leave, that was/is the question. I had even played around in my mind to be torn between these two worlds because I grown fond of one dearly, and yet the other is where I felt I would be better serving God for a lot of reasons. But after prayer and a lot of thought to the matter finally I had chosen to stay at the one I had grown fond of. It wasn't until I read this from Frank Turk's post on The Tombstone of a Wife, part of his series on why he left his church:

"Let me put it this way: if I was attending a church where I was teaching Sunday school and having serviceable worship on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, but I found that all my fellowship time and discipleship and real acts of public service for the sake of Christ was under the umbrella of another church, I'd seriously consider changing churches – even if I couldn’t teach at the new church. And the reasoning would be this: I am fruitlessly ministering to this body of people, and I am fruitfully ministering with these other people. My Christian life is actually a life in one circumstance, and no so much in the other."

At no given point was I even hoping for this to happen or praying for this to happen until last year when I began attending this evangelistic Bible study on Mondays. There I met brothers and sisters from another church whom soon enough I began to love dearly. Then when this year began something incredible happened, I had been praying for nearly a year that the Lord would grant someone to be my fellow worker in spreading the gospel, and not only did the Lord answer my prayers, but he provided a whole team of my brothers and sisters to join me in this cause of spreading the gospel. Who were these people? my brothers and sisters from the other church.
What began with a desire to preach the gospel turned into an evangelism ministry to reach out with the gospel a group of women on a certain street who have spent their lives selling their bodies in order to survive. My sister V had shared with my and J her desire to reach out to these women and we found out that the three of us shared this common passion.
Months have passed and what started with me going to this Bible study on Mondays, has turned to me having all my fellowship/ministry/discipleship/accountability with these brethren from the other church: "My Christian life is actually a life in one circumstance, and no so much in the other."
What is the next step? 1. Continue to pray, 2. Seek advice from my pastors and even from the pastors/leaders from the other church.
Please pray for me as I deal with this, not so easy situation.

Children Desiring God

The greatest need of the next generations is to know and cherish the infinite value of God.Therefore, we want them to become so saturated with the Word of God that they treasure Jesus alone as the One who saves and satisfies the heart. The goal of our curriculum is to fuel spiritual desire by exalting the greatness and worth of God and His glorious work through Christ.

Is the mission statement of this ministry, Children Desiring God, as we all learned this evening at my church. Two representatives of this ministry Brian Eaton, the Director of the ministry, and Luis Mendez (from the Dominican Republic serving at Bethlehem) came to our church today to inform us all about the importance of influencing the children from birth in such a way that they may come to know and cherish the infinite value of God. To point them in the right direction so they may ultimately be lead to Jesus Christ. They explained that the curriculum of the ministry is a God-centered curriculum saturated with the word of God with the purpose of teaching the children to treasure Jesus as the one who saves and satisfies the heart, and they do that by exalting the greatness and worth of God and His glorious work through Jesus Christ.

One example Brian Eaton gave to us about how people generally teach children was the following: "lets talk about the little boy David who had the courage to take a rock and sling it with all his might at a Giant, so children you too can slay the giants in your lives", "but this is not what we want to do", said Mr. Eaton, "we want to teach the story in the most accurate way possible and teach them that it is about God" (paraphrase) He was explaining that in the story its not about David its about God using David to kill a giant for His name's sake and David did this for God's glory.

It was such an encouraging night for me, for many reasons. First of all it seemed as though I wasn't going to be able to attend church tonight, the crazy stormy weather, the bathroom without water for me to take a bath, no transportation. Thankfully my brother agreed to take me, the bathroom issue was resolved, and the weather it didn't seem too much of a problem. Praise God. Secondly, I work in children ministry at my church and I had been teacher's assistant in a few occasions for Sunday School and I saw the way they did Sunday School and it just didn't seem quite right to me because a lot of it was fun and entertainment and little bible teaching. Well today all those concerns were answered and I'm just so excited to know where this will lead us and how God will transform the way we do children ministry, and consequently these children lives.

One of the things that impacted me was when one of the church members asked at what age it all begins, and Mr. Eaton replied since birth and explained how the curriculum teaches, pastors, teachers and parents how to begin teaching their children since birth about God and gave a few examples how. That was amazing and definitely something to bear in mind for future children and/or spiritual children (for those who are part of the Nursery ministry, like me).

The night was of much blessing to all of us, God is so good and awesome and most definitely deserves all the glory!

Together

In light of what preacher Luis Sena had been talking about the past couple of Wednesdays for bible studies, a Biblical worldview, I decided to go back to the Book of Acts and learn about the beginnings of the church and the first Christians. As I began to read one word jumped out at me, in spanish its unánimes, in english it's the phrase "with one accord".
The greek word is Homothumadon, and it means "with one mind, with one accord, with one passion".
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"All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers."

Acts 1:14
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"When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place."

Acts 2:1
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"And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Acts 2:46-47
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"And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, "Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them..."

Act 4:24
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"Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem."

Act 5:12-13

Want to take a guess at what that one Passion, which drove them to prayer, to praise God, to preach the gospel, to love their brethren, to break bread, attend the temple, etc., is?