Christine Rosen held an online chat

last Tusday for her new book, My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Childhood. The chat was held on Washington Post.com. Sensing a wonderful opportunity, I disguised myself as a young City Christian student and posed the following question:

Portland Oregon:  Do you feel Christian Schools can be beneficial? I know your parents pulled you out of school, but don’t you think it is still a safer experience than public schools?

To which Ms. Rosen responded:

Christine Rosen: I think for many parents Christian Schools are an appealing alternative to the public schools in their area. This was certainly the case with my parents. One major difference today is the rise of the home-schooling movement, which was not as widespread when I was growing up. As for whether or not Christian schools are safer than public schools, it really depends on the schools in question. But for parents who want a particular kind of education for their children, they are an excellent alternative (cost permitting) to public school.

Let’s be honest, her answer is boring and safe. She would make a good politician. And if I was a good reporter, I would have asked a couple of follow up questions. Questions like, "Don’t you think that homeschooling is really just prison, except your mother is the warden?" 

And

"What do you mean, homeschooling was not as widespread when you were growing up? Homeschooling is not exactly rocket science. It really only requires one simple step. When your kids get up in the morning to go to school, you make them miss the buss. BAM!! Your kids are homeschooled. It’s really that simple."

A year ago, I blogged about the Northwest Breakthrough Conference. Specifically, I questioned City Bible’s decision to charge attendees $20 to park, since there was not really any other way to get to the church. And thus, the church was basically adding a $20 fee to attend the conference.

This year I am happy to report that City Bible has listened to my complaint and is now providing free shuttles to the conference. The shuttles are available at the airport and various hotels around the church.

And in order to clear up any confusion, here is City Bible’s new parking manifesto:

• Automobile parking passes are available $20. A parking pass guarantees you a place to park on the City Bible Church campus. These parking passes are available only for the first 250 requests for conference A and the first 250 for conference B
• If you are staying at one of the listed hotels, please use our free shuttles
• If you live in the Portland area, we encourage you to use public transportation.
  Please use our free shuttles from Leatherman, 12106 NE Ainsworth Circle
  Portland, OR 97220 (off 122nd and Airport Way).

I have got to be honest. This seems like a pretty good response. Obviously, City Bible still does not have to charge for parking, but I have begun to realize that these conferences are held for primarily one purpose, to make money. And charging for parking fits nicely within that purpose. Yet to their credit, City Bible is at least providing alternatives for those who cannot or do not want to pay for parking.

Lastly, the conference also includes a seminar on Mr. Damazio’s new book titled, 14 Tests All Leaders Must Face.  I guess during the seminar, Mr. Damazio goes through the 14 tests that all leaders must face. Someone let me know if rebellious bloggers make the list. Somehow I sincerely doubt it, but I would really appreciate the recognition for all my hard work.

I recently had my friend One Love over for dinner and we spent a lot of time talking about CBC and why I blog. He made the comment that in business if a customer ever takes the time to write a letter to complain then you KNOW something went wrong. So what happened to me to make me want to spend so much time writing letters to the CBC complaint department (they don’t have one so this blog is filling in)?

I’ve done some soul searching and have found that there were definite "hurts" in the past. These so called hurts turned into anger, which led to bitterness, which eventually became depression. After a couple of years I realized that the only person I was hurting was me. The church, the pastors, the people…none of them were affected by my anger, the only one hurting was me. Once I figured that out, I realized that I needed to get past the anger and bitterness and move on. I did.

So where does that leave me?

I have forgiven but not forgotten. I don’t see how I can. You call that bitterness, I call it…well… I call it wising up and finding a new place to grow.

So where does that bring me?

This brings me to a place of grace… A place of grace.

3 years ago, grace didn’t mean that much to me. I understood it to be something that God had for sinners (and by "sinners" I of course meant "people who didn’t call themselves Christians"). Now I see grace as the foundation of my daily life. It’s really what allows me to be a follower of Christ.

Coincidently, I also now see myself as a sinner, and let me tell you how refreshing that is. Once I was able to give up my attempts to be perfect, I was able to begin building a relationship with a God who loved me for who I was and not for whom I was trying to be. God didn’t change, my perspective of God changed, and I needed that to fully understand salvation.

So, right now you’re thinking ‘That’s great Johnpaul, but isn’t this blog supposed to be funny? And what does all this have to do with why you blog?

Allow me to tell a long story that illustrates my problems with CBC.

While @ CBC I found out a certain "leader" of mine had been having an affair for the past year. I’ll skip the details, but when I talked with him about it, he didn’t seem upset that he had cheated on his wife, but seemed more embarrassed by the fact that it had been with an unattractive woman (in my opinion).

On the flip side, when I talked with the non-Christian woman that he had had the affair with she started crying, and instantly started apologizing to ME. She told me that she hadn’t been able to sleep at night, and that she felt so badly for what she had done to his family. She was going crazy and didn’t know what to do.

My wife and I were told by CBC leadership that we were not to talk to ANYONE about this. They said that they wanted to "protect" this family and the less people knew about it the better.

Here we have a situation where the Christian man who should have the answer (grace) was caught up with not wanting to appear weak. He couldn’t apologize to anyone he was "leading", because the church feels it is more important to protect your image than it is to rectify a wrong (I think they call that UNITY). At the same time there is a woman who doesn’t have any clue what to do, she is crying out for help and there isn’t any coming. It’s awfully hard to tell someone about the grace of Christ when they’ve been screwing around with the "preacher".

You see, this was a perfect opportunity for the power of God’s grace to be shown. He could have stood up and said "Guys, I blew it, but thank God for the Cross." He could have made it a true testimony of God’s love and forgiveness, but instead he tried to sweep it under the rug (on the advise from CBC elders).

Let me tell another story.

My wife and I are at The Well Church; we’ve only been there for a couple of weeks and Erik, the head pastor gets up to tell us that he had to go down to California to dissolve a church that had been planted out of The Well (embarrassing right?).

As it turns out, this pastor, in California, also had an affair. When Eric went down for the final service he said it was one of the most powerful meetings he had ever been in. The pastor got up in front of the congregation, told everyone what he had done, asked for their forgiveness, and thanked God for His grace.

How powerful is that testimony?

I know I’m your pastor, but I screwed up. I’m not perfect. God still loves me as much today as he did yesterday, and when you screw up He’ll treat you the same.

Wow. Tell me you don’t want to know a God who loves us regardless of what we do? A God who doesn’t care how much money you have, what kind of car you drive or where you work.

I used to believe (and I never would admit this because I had been taught all the right responses, but this is what I really thought) that God died on the cross to save sinners and once those sinners were saved they needed to live a perfect life. Now…I realized that no one could live a perfect life, but the goal was to keep all your sins down to the little things. Anger, greed, gossip, dishonesty, you know the things that we can all smile and justify.

I now see that we are all sinners. I’m no less a sinner now then I was before I knew Jesus (remember, it only takes one sin to be a sinner), And every day I rely on the Grace of God. I’ve written another song to help illustrate God’s love: Sung to the tune "Jesus loves the little children"

Jesus loves the alcoholic,
the drug addict, and the queer.
Red and Christian, black and GAY
Jesus loves them all the same
Jesus loves the little sinners of the world.

This is why I blog. I don’t really care how much City Bible Church teaches on giving. I don’t really care that they want nine campuses. I don’t really care that Frank "wants to see more Mercedes and BMW’s parked in their lot". What I really care about is that I never once heard the truth behind the "Gospel of Jesus". I was always taught that the Cross was for the unsaved, and that’s why I’m upset.

This story is only one example of many that show how mixed up Christianity can really be. Whether it’s the Youth Pastor who thinks it’s good to lie about the first time he kissed his wife or the Elder who claims his biggest problem is "Vanilla Ice Cream" (I’ll save that story for later), if you put your image above all else, you are destroying the message of Christ.

Which is, simply put:

WE NEED HIM, BECAUSE WE ALL SCREW UP AND NONE OF US COULD MAKE IT TO HEAVEN WITHOUT HIM.

Ok, at this point only my mother and the guy who had the affair are still reading, so I’ll end by giving you an updated version of THE TWO QUESTION TEST.

Do you want to find out if you are going to heaven when you die? Answer these two questions and see:

Question 1: What is the "Gospel of Jesus Christ"?
Question 2: Why do you believe this?

We at City Business are big believers in freedom of speech. We believe people should be free to communicate openly with each other, even if that communication is offensive.  For this reason, we have allowed our readers to comment anonymously, and we have let them say pretty much whatever they want.

Personally, I do not mind if you attack me or the blog. I don’t even mind if you attack my family. Because, hell, I do it all the time. However lately, I have begun to feel that some of the comments are crossing the line. (I am not sure what that line is. But like Justice Stewart, I know it when I see it).

Our comment section was getting too much Financial Blessings and not enough Jiminey Cricket. And frankly, that is never a good thing. I am not sure what Financial Blessings has against Jiminey, other than perhaps he feels threatened by intelligent women. But whatevs. I am over FB. And I am over his comments.

So here is what we are going to do. From now on, the first time you comment, we must manually approve it before your comment is live.  Then, as long as you use the same name, from that point thereafter you can post the comment without having to wait for us to approve.  You can use fake names and fake email addresses; you just have to keep using the same ones. This is not an attempt to find out who is commenting or to control all negative comments. It is merely an attempt to maintain a certain level of quality in the comment section.

And just so you know, I want City Bible members to comment on the blog. WWJD and Master Story Teller are welcome to comment. In fact, I hope they do.

But FB is out. NO MORE SOUP FOR YOU!

Today I received three different contributions

from three different readers. I guess the readers are trying to keep our blog funny and upbeat. And I for one appreciate their help.

Today’s first entry is from, you guessed it, Graphic Arts Anonymous. This individual contributed the Honorable Mentions for yesterday’s logo contest. Yet, he felt he had still failed to capture the essence of the logo with his first entries. So today, he has submitted the picture to your left.

I am not exactly sure what it stands for. I suppose if you go to CBC it is symbolic of a non-tither. However, I prefer to think of it as City Bible’s wallet after they pay Davis Wright Tremaine to sue the owner of this blog. (Yes, the rumor going around is that DWT is suing the blog. We’ll keep you posted if anything develops.)

TITHING FACTS

Second, I also was sent an interesting set of tithing facts from a young mother in Oregon. These facts were collaborated by the US Department of Commerce.

After much prayer and thought,

I have decided to withdraw my application for City Bible’s logo from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Because while I enjoyed myself immensely thinking about owning the logo, in reality it is not mine. I did not pay for it, and I did not ask someone else to copy NBC’s logo and give it to me as my own.   As I can tell from the IP addresses commenting on our blog, City Bible employees and students, are some of our most faithful readers. (Thank you) And since you are reading, I just want you to know, the logo is yours. I wish you the best. You can use it for your new magazine and website.  You can use it to convince other people to give you money. And most importantly, you can use it to manipulate others into staying at your church.  All those neat flashing colors are so hypontic.  And to cheer me up, I am posting this extra picture of Rachel Bilson. No real reason, other than it makes me smile.  I may try to trademark it as my own logo… ..we’ll see how it goes.

We got a late entry for the logo contest; a kind of before and after logo.

Before I tithed:

After I tithed: