Since we've been showing some good YouTube clips lately (and I live in California), I thought I'd share this.  This woman has been in the news a lot lately so I'm sure most people have heard it by now, but nevertheless it's still interesting.  Whether you agree with her or not, at least she spoke up for her beliefs while millions were watching and basically gave up her dream of becoming Miss America.   I don't think beauty pageants are the forum for a political debate but glad to see she didn't coward away from the issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XMvviFbkf0

You know this. I know this. But sometimes it's nice to be reminded. 

Here are two nice stories that show real Christians acting like Christ.

The first is a story of a family who adopted a severely disabled and neglected girl. Police found the girl in a roach infested room only three years ago. 

– "Bernie and Diane are humble, unpretentious people who would rather picnic on their deck than eat out. They go to work, go to church, visit with their neighbors, walk their dogs. They don't travel or pursue exotic interests; a vacation for them is hanging out at home with the family. Shy and soft-spoken, they're both slow to anger and, they say, seldom argue.

They had everything they ever wanted, they said. Except for a daughter.

But the more they asked about Danielle, the more they didn't want to know.

She was 8, but functioned as a 2-year-old. She had been left alone in a dank room, ignored for most of her life.

No, she wasn't there at the video arcade; she was in a group home. She wore diapers, couldn't feed herself, couldn't talk. After more than a year in school, she still wouldn't make eye contact or play with other kids.

No one knew, really, what was wrong with her, or what she might be capable of.

"She was everything we didn't want," Bernie said.

But they couldn't forget those aching eyes. " – 

THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (Great article. And won the Pulitzer Prize this afternoon)

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece 

The second story is about the coach of a Christian High School football team who encouraged his fans to root for the other team. 

– "This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth." –

COACH ASKS FANS TO SUPPORT THE OTHER TEAM

http://digg.com/d1gbkb

I'm still not particularly motivated to blog about religion or the church. But I promised I would continue to blog, so here's another fun Youtube clip that should make you smile: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY 

I've got a lot of these, definitely enough to get us through June.   

I am currently involved in a Los Angeles church plant.  We are having our second annual Easter celebration this weekend and I've found it quite easy to invite people to this event.  People I would never expect are actually interested in going to a church gathering because of Easter.  So this got me thinking:

 - Why is it that people find it acceptable to go to church on Christmas and Easter, but not on a regular basis?

 - Would more people be open to God if the stigmas associated with "church" and "Christians" did not exist?  Where do all those stigmas come from anyway?

 - I wonder what would happen if churches spent less time focusing on money, position, programs and numbers, and more time on reaching out to people, letting them be whoever they want to be?

 - Have Christians been more of the problem rather then the solution?

 - What are the top things that keep people away from church and ultimately God?

Hmmmm, any thoughts? 

The one thing I've learned about JP is that, he'll be back. 

He's a City Business addict. He wants to quit. He just can't. It's easy for him to stop now, because the blog has slowed down and not much is happening. But trust me, when something big happens, he'll start blogging again.

I don't feel sorry for anything I've written. It was all in good fun. And the arrogant leaders up at City Bible needed somebody to mock them.  

I renewed this blog address for another year, precisely because I wasn't ready to quit. So check in from time to time. And if something big happens at City Bible or the City Church, know that we'll be here to comment.  

I always knew my time here would slow down when I had a major life change. It was easy to blog at my old job, because I had my own office and a lot of free time. My current job is really busy and I'm in a cube. It's tough to write tithing jokes, when your boss is closely monitoring your work product. Heh.  

(Side Note: I'm currently writing two blogs for work. My company has several blogs, but mine are by far the most successful. And I want to thank the readers here for my success. If you weren't reading and commenting, I wouldn't have developed the skills that I did. This blog never made me any money, but the experience I got here, helped immensely at my current job. The head of technology at my job recently asked in a meeting why I was so good at blogging. I was like, "mmmm, I have some experience with blogs." So, thank you. Seriously, thank you.)  

Also, ever since Obama won, I stopped feeling the need to mock the Evangelical Community. I feel I got a victory on a much larger scale than I could ever imagine.    

That said, I'll try to be a little more pro-active. And I promise I'll write something once a week. Even if it's Sunday and I'm hungover.   

So, no regrets. And to all the readers, "Keep the Dream Alive" 

Mr. Johnpaul,

Excellent post man and really, really good points.  Although I'm sad to see you go, it's been a true pleasure reading all of your witty writings over the years and hearing someone say the exact same things that are in my head.  I hope you are at true peace with your decision.  And I hope you know that you've reached farther into the lives of others then you actually realize.  Finding this blog (and helping launch our church) have been the two greatest things that have happened to me in my spiritual walk because they helped set me free from years of mind altering, falsified religion. 

Job well done my friend.  Job well done. 

You will be missed!

Alex

Forgive  me for being melodramatic…I realize that no one has written on this blog for quite some time and for the most part its basically coming to an end…but I still feel like I should make this official. I'm once again quitting the blog.

I know, I know, I know, you've heard it all before but, just for fun, let me try this one last time.

There are 4 main reasons I have made this decision, and here they are (in nice numerical order for easy reading):

1. I've lost interest

There was a time when I was passionate about the writing, the joking, the studying…but now I am just not into it. I've tried to sit down and come up with interesting blogs but there is nothing there. I think this is largely due to the fact that I don't really follow what is going on at CBC anymore and don't really care what they say or do. I've clearly made my position known, I think now it's simply…Enough Said.

2. Pastor Joel Stockstill was healed (through surgery yes, but healed all the same).

I wrote a post awhile back that I did not publish about Prophecy in the Church. In that post I stated that if Joel was healed I would stop blogging and apologize to Donna Lasit and her Violin. Even though I did not post it…I meant it. So here goes:

Donna, I would like to apologize for questioning your prophetic playing of the violin over pastor Joel. I jumped at the chance to make an easy joke and didn't leave any room for God to work. Fortunately, I was completely wrong in this circumstance and, despite my negativity, God was able to heal Joel. I never should have questioned you or made fun of your violin. I was wrong and hope that you can forgive me. Truly.

3. My wife would really like me to stop.

Recently, my wonderful wife connected with old friends from CBC and they expressed to her the pain and hurt that they still felt from all the blogging that was going on. My blogging is clearly standing in the way of any possible restitution between them and, at this point, I no longer want to be the cause of any more friction. I'm sure it will take a great deal of time, but hopefully I can prove to them and everyone that I am truly not angry or bitter with CBC and furthermore that I am done bashing them on this (or any other) blog.

4. Grace and the Gospel

I talk a lot about Grace and how badly we are all in need of God's forgiveness.  Every single day I realize that I am nothing without the undeserved forgiveness from God. I am a major screw up but thankfully the Gospel of Jesus allows me to be. He has chosen to forgive me and every time I make a mistake Jesus stands in between my sins and the punishment from God that I deserve. As I grow to understand this more and more I realize that I need to try to treat others with the same level of mercy as I have been given. I'm real good at treating "sinners" with grace, but I have struggled (and continue to struggle) with giving "saints" any room to make mistakes. I will continue to work through this as I have a very long journey ahead.

At this time, I would also like to offer this public apology to Ed Schefter and the New York City Church team. In looking back I feel I went overboard in my attacks. Regardless of whether I believe what I said or not…I had no business in saying them.  This is another great struggle in my life…I like to say what I am thinking without any regard to other people's feelings.  Somehow I need to figure out how to speak my mind, but in a more sensitive manner.

I've truly enjoyed being a part of City Business Church and feel I have made tremendous growth in my understanding of God and the Bible thanks to the number of wonderful discussions that we have engaged in over the past 4+ years. Thank you all for your support and your challenges…our little group is not afraid to stand up and take any fight and I admire that to no end.  You are all amazing people…although I may not like you if I knew your real identities.

Keep the faith. Keep the questions.

-Johnpaul

Stupid Idiots writes:

You all are a bunch of sad sack idiots that need to get a life……………………………………….

Dumb asses one and all

You think that you are so import that you need a validation code, you think way to highly of your lousy self.

Well what do you know…even after all these years they still come in like this.  If I am reading my Bible correctly, Jesus didn't make the Pharisees too happy either.

Good job people, good job.

A friend of mine (who knows I'm pretty anti-megachurch) sent this article to me today and I had to post it. Although I don't agree with all the points presented here I think there is a lot of validity to what this writer is staying. He believes that the evangelical church as we know it is headed for a major collapse that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West, which will raise intolerance of Christianity to levels many people are not prepared for.

Here's his reasoning:

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

The author goes on to describe what will be left:

Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision. Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

Lastly he considers, if all of this is all really that bad and makes a very valid point in closing:

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century. We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I do agree that many evangelicals have dug a huge grave for themselves over the last few years. With so much focus on the "celebrity" Christian leader I wouldn't be shocked to see this collapse.  I guess only time will tell if they will be buried in that grave.