Catalyst got run over by a Lasit Walking home from blogging Christmas eve. You can say there’s no such thing as Dougie, But as for Joel and Jesse, we believe. He’d been drinkin’ way too much egg nog, And we’d begged him not to go. But he’d left his medication, So he stumbled out the door into the snow. When they found him Christmas mornin’, At the scene of the attack. There were hoof prints on his forehead, And incriminatin’ dollar marks on his back. Catalyst got run over by a Lasit, Walkin’ home from blogging Christmas eve. You can say there’s no such thing as Dougie, But as for Joel and Jesse, we believe.

You start a blog making fun of a church, and then invite a bunch of your friends to join, you’re going to get posts which you think cross the line. I didn’t think I really had a line that someone could cross, but apparently I do.

And somewhere, between Mission Statement and Ramblings, I stopped being a funny blogger and became a babysitter.

Whatever, I guess I’ll just try to stay on top of it. But please contributors, we are attacking a mindset, not the people themselves. The minute you resort to attacking people personally, you discredit whatever message you are trying to convey.

And Reformed Pope is the only person to have his name published publicly, so he gets all the grief. And then I get the grief… and then my mother calls…. and it’s just not worth it.

(This is way too much work)

(And I think this blog just jumped the shark.)

1 Timothy 5:19-20 (New International Version)

19Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. 20Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.

I don’t know where to go from here.

For me, this blog has accomplished everything I had hoped it might accomplish. I’m tempted to follow George Costanza’s lead and say, “Thank you. I’m out.” Just leave on a high note.

But I figure, the church can not go forever without asking for money. As one member told Reformed Pope the other day, “You are mocking our core belief.”

The church truly believes that if you keep giving them money, God will bless you. Maybe? I don’t know. Job gave a lot of money, and God gave him hemorrhoids.

(Don’t you think that when Job finally got to heavan, he was like, “Uh, God. Next time you plan on proving a point to Satan, could you please just pick an Angel or something. You were killing me down there.”)

I’ve always admired Job’s faith and his commitment to God. Despite being penniless and flirting with death. Did he respond in anger? Did he say, “Lord but I tithed. I gave to Faith Harvest.” No, he simply said:

“Naked I have come from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I always thought the Church should have preached that verse a little more. I think that is a more responsible attitude to have toward prosperity. Maybe God will bless me and give me millions of dollars, maybe he won’t. But I will continue to love Him and serve Him no matter what.

I don’t really have a point here, other than to say, I guess I’ll keep blogging…

I would like to welcome all readers referred here by Willamette Week.

This blog started out as a sarcastic look at how often City Business Church preaches about giving money.

I am reposting an old classic to get you into the spirit of Christmas.

God Bless and Enjoy.

Special Edition Holiday CD!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to present you with the first of what I am sure will be a long tradition of Christmas albums designed by City Business. Each CD comes with a pledge card you can use for your extra holiday tithing. And don’t forget there is still time for that extra Christmas blessing. Immerse yourself in the true meaning of the holidays with these wonderful songs of merriment.

1. Little Tither Boy
2. O Holy Tithe
3. God Rest Ye Merry Businessmen
4. O Come All Ye Faithful Givers
5. What Tithe Is This?
6. It Was Simulcast Upon A Midnight Clear
7. Tithers We Have Heard On High
8. Joy To The West Side
9. I’ll Be Home For Faith Harvest
10. I Saw Three Checks Come Mailing In
11. Rockin Around The Tithe Bowl

For a nominal fee the sheet music to Here Comes Satan Clause can be yours. Now, there is no need to drive a stake in your yard or anoint your doorways with oil from the Holy Land. If you want protection from Satan Claus simply purchase our CD for $20 and play it where ever you go. In case you are not familiar with this holiday classic, we have provided the lyrics for the first verse absolutely free.

Here Comes Satan Clause.
Here Comes Satan Clause.
Right Down Satan Clause Lane.
If You’re Not Quick And Tithe Your Money
It’ll All Go Down The Drain.
It’s Your Fault. You Put A Cap On God.
Your Blessing’s Out Of Sight.
So Get Your Checks In. Don’t Question Us.
This Time, We Know We’re Right.

So don’t delay. You can purchase your holiday CD in the City Business Gift Shop. They are located between the Louis Vuitton Bible Covers and the Limited Edition City Business Starbucks Coffee Mugs.

As we now have eleven contributors on this site, I would like to explain why we are all here. Blog is short for web-log, and a web-log is basically just an online diary. A place to record your thoughts. It’s just that with this blog, our thoughts are more specific and focused on how we feel about CBC. Each of our contributors has had significant experience with City Business Church. Some of it good; some of it not so good. This blog is merely a forum for us to express how we feel about some of our experiences with this church. The best example of what I’m talking about, is the post right below entitled “The day I robbed God.” I thought the post said a lot about the dangers of preaching the law, as opposed to preaching Christ’s message of grace and compassion. In closing, let me say that the contributors all represent a specific age group. A very sought after age group for advertisers, actually. And an age group which is leaving CBC in droves. Why do you think that is?

Back in early 2001 times were tough. This particular day spirits were exceptionally low. I had a crappy job, I was depressed, it was Monday and I couldn’t even find my Bible.

My wife and I were financially strapped. I was earning very little and the stress was taking its toll. Despite my situation, I was a tither to the core. Come hell or high-water that 10% found its way into the offering basket. The magic 10%, my church believed in it, my pastor preached it and I put it into practice. I also went the occasional extra mile with my open-hearted gifts to missions. I won’t even take blogging space to mention my generous gift of $200 that I made to faith harvest that year.

Due to lack of finances I couldn’t afford to take my wife out and my 2 credit cards were maxed out. Something had to be done. So on that life-changing Monday after years of faithful tithing I abandoned all good conscience and took the plunge. We decided to lower our monthly giving to the church down to a measly 3%. That’s right folks, a whopping 3%. That’s a full 7 less than 10.

Finally the fateful Sunday arrived. I walked through the doors to the sanctuary with my head held low; feeling the kind of shame only a non-tither could feel. With fear and trembling I dropped the check into the offering bucket and tried not listen to the passionate requests from the pulpit for more money. I was well steeped in the doctrine of tithe, and was well aware of the consequences of forsaking such important New Testament…uuuh I mean Old Testament teaching. Here’s mine and yours favorite Bible verse:

“Mal 3:8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 *You are cursed with a curse…*”

And boy did I ever know this teaching. You better obey this one or you will have robbed God and unfortunately find yourself under Malachi’s curse. It was well known to all that this sneaky curse had leaped the pages of the Old Testament, made its way right passed Christ, the cross, the new covenant and found itself a staple teaching in the American Mega-Church. Damn curse, it’s unstoppable!

And so I awaited my punishment. For a month I slept with one eye open. I knew it was coming, I just didn’t know when and how. I waited and waited . . .and waited.

About a month later at about 3am my wife and I lay peacefully asleep in bed. Suddenly an intensely loud crash filled the air. I sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open, convinced that judgment had finally caught up with me. THE CURSE OF MALACHI WAS UPON ME AND MY HOUSEHOLD . . . AAAAAAAAAARGH!!

But, my fellow bloggers do not be afraid, neither be thou dismayed, it turned out to be a false alarm. Some intoxicated driver had lost control of his car and ended up hitting the side of our apartment. No one was hurt.

In time, despite the occasional nightmare of God showing up demanding back payment plus interest, I felt pretty good. I got a better job and paid down the credit card debt. These days I even give pretty darn close to 10%.

Not sure what this story really proves, but it is interesting to note that the only change that giving only 3% had on me was that I had 7% more to spend on bills. Funny how that works.

Because the ushers bring such an enormous amount of cash to scroog, CBC has decided to create a new policy. It is TIP YOUR USHER! you have heard right tip your usher is now in effect. Now just because there a little pushy with the tithe bowl and they like to flash there six shooter alot don’t feel pressure. because if you dont have cash that’s fine that’s fine they would be more than happy to take your credit card and print you out a receipt. some people might think that this is crazy, but I say SIGN AT THE X.

Following the recent success shared by the Defense of Marriage Coalition comes a new coalition for the pastors of Portland to join. It seems we’ve successfully eradicated homosexuality by virtually making it illegal to be a homosexual. We started with a goal to eradicate the most notorious sin on God’s hierarchy of sin list, and I think we succeeded brilliantly! We’ve opted to ignore infidelity, divorce, pornography, incest and abuse as threats to the marriage covenant and chosen to concentrate solely on those tens of gays and lesbians who for some reason want to get married. Yep, the Defense of Marriage has come and gone now that the threat is finally over, and we heterosexuals can finally get back to what we do best, breaking half the marriage covenants we enter in to. Now comes a new coalition to join. The Defense of Honesty Coalition. That’s right lying, cheating and all other forms of dishonesty will not be tolerated! We will start by taking all the pastor’s names and the name’s of their churches, then we’ll publish them in the Oregonian so that liars know which congregations they are not welcome in. Then we’ll send out spam and junk-mail to all our church members asking them to support our coalition and our measure with monetary donations (don’t forget to still give to Pay if Forward Together Campaign, Faith Harvest and your tithe). If we come up short on funds we’ll just ask pastors to dip into the churches piggybank and maybe we’ll take a $200,000 "loan" from CCLI, that we’ll be sure to pay back, because there’s a lot of revenue to made in founding coalitions. Once we’ve made liars feel just about as awkward and unwelcome in our sanctuary as possible, we’ll begin with anti-liar rallies to really drive home the point. Once we’ve legislated our brand of righteousness and imposed it on this unbelieving world, we’ll retreat to our sanctuarys and wait for them to pour in by the thousands. We here at the Coalition Foundation truly believe that if He were alive and walking the Earth today, Jesus would join one of our many coalitions, because He feels as strongly as we do about those disgusting sinners…those dirty, dirty sinners!

If you want to write about the posters on this site. That is fine. We will allow comments, with in reason, that bash us. However, we will not allow anybody talking about anyone’s children. (Just for the record, Mom, it was not my children being mentioned.)