According to Frank, you can expect God to protect you when your tithe is paid up. No sooner had I finished laughing at that, than along came this article on Yahoo .

Man says Bibles in pocket stopped bullet 

Tue Nov 7, 10:06 PM ET 

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A 54-year-old Orange Park man credits two small Bibles in his shirt pocket for saving his life when they stopped a bullet.

The man, whose name was withheld because his attackers are still at large, told police that two men who he didn't recognize ambushed him with a rifle as he carried bags of garbage to a trash bin. The two men fled in opposite directions and have not been arrested.

Other than a red mark and a pain in his chest, he was not injured, The Florida Times-Union reported Tuesday.

The man said he was carrying two New Testament Bibles in his shirt pocket to give to friends. Police took the Bibles as evidence.

Watch now, Frank will probably use this story as proof of God's protection. However, expect some minor embellishments as it is told from the pulpit.

Man says Bibles in pocket stopped bullet 

Tue Nov 7, 10:06 PM ET 

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A 54-year-old Orange Park man credits two small Bibles in his shirt pocket for saving his life when they stopped a bullet.

The man, whose name was withheld because his attackers are still at large, told police that two men who he didn't recognize ambushed him with a rifle as he carried bags of garbage to a trash bin. The two men fled in opposite directions and have not been arrested.

Other than a red mark and a pain in his chest, he was not injured, The Florida Times-Union reported Tuesday.

The man said he was carrying two New Testament Bibles in his shirt pocket to give to friends. Upon examining the Bibles, the man saw that the bullet had stopped at Malachi 3:10. Officers at the scene said the man repeatedly thanked God saying "thank God I paid my tithe." Police took the Bibles as evidence.

I listened to PDazzles first Faith Harvest sermon that was appropriately titled Miracle Seed for a Miracle Harvest. It is probably the longest post I have written, but come on…have you ever sat through an entire CBC sermon? Let's begin:

12:14 - Pastor Frank starts out by announcing this will be a 4 part series. Quite honestly if he keeps this topic to only one month I'll be very impressed.

12:15 - Clarifies that Faith Harvest is giving ABOVE and BEYOND the tithe and mentions that Faith Harvest is the only way to accomplish many things that we can't get done with the Tithe. I could stop right there.

12:17 - Talks briefly about Forward Together, proudly mentions that they were able to accomplish 3 of the 4 things they set out to do. They didn't retire the debt completely but they were able to apply 1 million dollars towards it.

Attention CBC members and all who gave to "Forward Together": ITS TIME TO HOLD YOUR PASTOR ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS WORDS. Don't you all remember how important Step 1 was? I do. Retire the debt. Once that happened there would be so much money freed up to do all sorts of things for the kingdom of God. Also, remember how Forward Together came about? Frank felt GOD telling him what he needs to get the church to do and the elders all agreed on these four steps. Don't you think if God tells you to do something maybe you should listen? Maybe instead of spending your money on a cute little ICE RINK in Vancouver you might just want to FOLLOW THROUGH WITH YOUR PROMISES. Enough of that though, back to the sermon.

12:22 - Quotes his first scripture Gen 8:22 "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Follows this scripture with theses statements "The law of the harvest is built into the scriptures", "You can not have a harvest time without a seed time, not in the spiritual and not in the natural", and finally "Seedtime is important because without there can not be a harvest." Excellent work Pastor, take a scripture that is literally talking about planting literal seeds and reaping a literal harvest and make it sound spiritual.  Question? What does the "cold and heat" stand for in your spiritual interpretation?

12:24 - Quotes second scripture Eph 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…" and before anyone has a chance to say "What????" he jumps right into scripture 3: Luke 7:9 "When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, "I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel."

12:24 - He then moves into talking about the 3 levels of faith. Lets see, there's "Faith, Great Faith, and Miracle Faith"… wait a second, what just happened? I'm pretty sure PF just stole my wallet; I couldn't even see it coming. Wow, he should take this show to Vegas. What a magician. Lets watch again, but this time in slow motion:

Random Scripture 1 mentions Seedtime & Harvest, jump to random scripture 2 mentioning how God is ABLE to do all (according to his power), finish with Random Scripture 3, which speaks on faith, and BAM. Homerun (It should have been a walk off home run I tell ya, he could have marched right off the pulpit, rounded third and headed home, but he decided to head back out for an encore.) For those of you who still don't get it let me ‘splain. No there is too much, let me sum up… Frank randomly took 3 scriptures that referenced his sermon topic, quoted them all together and created Faith Harvest (unfortunately proper Biblical interpretation doesn't work quite like that). Moving on.

12:26 - 3 levels of faith. Faith, Great Faith, Miracle Faith. Makes the following statements: 1. Great Faith believes our God to be a good God and all things are possible. - TRUE 2. Great Faith believes God desires to bless his people with great provision financially and spiritually. - Uh, Frank…? He does go on to mention that he has "proven it by scripture, by my life…" and many other ways, but fails to actually tell us HOW he has proven it.

12:29 - "You are not going to have the kind of  "more than enough" resource if you don't learn kingdom principles and kingdom thinking." Says something about sowing and reaping. Sow in famine sow against your mountain. Whatever that means.

12:32 -"Either this law of the harvest is right or it's wrong there is no in between. It's either a doctrine of scripture or it isn't a doctrine of scripture." Which I translate to say "Either you are going to give us money and continue to attend CBC or your not, there is no in between".

12:34 - Quotes someone unnamed saying "Great Faith is the empty hand of the soul that reaches out to God and returns full'.

12:39 - Tells everyone to "Open your hands a little bit". They have Prayer asking God to fill their hands with provision. Tells them to "bring it in, right now, bring it into your life. Place your hands on your heart". I think they are supposed to have just received provision, but I'm not sure how… they haven't had a chance to give yet.

12:42 - "Your tithe… is always the tithe… is always the tithe. It's 10%. It never changes even though the cost of living goes up and percentages go up and everything goes up, God still only asks for 10%. God doesn't increase that with the economy. Kinda makes tithing sound like a good deal…except that "Your 10% is always 10% is always 10%." The percentage doesn't go up, but the dollar amount does.

12:45 - Mentions Malachi 3. Naturally

12:46 - Offering is free will out of your heart. You should be a joyful giver and every person should be a receiver. When you sow you should expect to reap. When you sow your tithe you expect protection, you expect the covenant to work, windows to open. You should always pray that over tithe / offering. Again I'll translate "Give to get, give to receive, give to collect"

12:48 - If you have no expectation it dampens the "rhythm of giving" (I would love to hear a sermon on that alone). Many people do not get this; they give and give but never expect to receive. (Damn fools) So their giving is not with much expectation from the king.

12:50 - Tells story about a King and Giving/Receiving.

12:54 - God wants you to prosper. Prosperity is a gospel of scripture. God wants us to prosper with purpose so we can have more than enough. If we don't have any money above the tithe we can't: help the community, open other campuses, give out food boxes. If we're poor how do we feed the poor? How can we do that if we don't have anything to give? God wants us to have more than enough. This makes me sick. He asks the congregation to "give until it hurts", but CBC can only give out of the excess offerings. What the eff are they tithing for? TRY CUTTING DOWN ON SOME OF YOUR EXPENSES AND YOU MIGHT JUST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO HELP THE POOR.

12:56 - He gets a little weird at this point: It's a faith offering. A specific offering with sacrifice. You dictate where the Lord will bring the harvest back. Target your giving: i.e. Give your house money, get a blessing in your house. It could be your business, your family, anything. Whenever you sow your mind needs to be directed somewhere.

12:57 - Quote of the night: It's a spiritual principal "You can't buy the blessings of God but this gives him something to work with". Right, and when I go to SUBWAY for lunch I'm not buying a sandwich, I just am giving Subman something to work with….

12:59 -Faith Harvest is:Given out of a willing heart, Given out of the stirring of the Holy Spirit, Given out of your own special treasure. It Starts with what you have and is a Sacrificial offering. "All good giving hurts." (I knew that was coming).

1:02 - Faith Harvest is motivated by grace not guilt. Not Competition orpressure. (Get ready for a runner up quote of the night…) "I [Frank] am always on the edge when it comes to preaching on money because I want you and need you to be stirred up. The church has opportunity and needs money but doesn't want you to feel pressure from what I am saying but wants you to have grace."No…… No pressure felt here. It's not like you would spend an inordinate amount of time speaking on giving or anything.

1:04 - "The best definition of grace is divine enablement. God gives you the generosity into your spirit that you need. God implants in your heart the spirit of giving" Yes, a truer picture of Grace could not be painted. Forget Jesus hanging on the cross and bearing our sins, Grace is all about Giving.

At this point I think he's gone on a little too long because he starts to reveal the REAL reason he is a pastor. Keep in mind these are his words and not mine… I couldn't make this stuff up really. The whole time he was preaching I kept thinking "Stop writing my blogs for me". Here we go:

1:07 - Remember, his words: "Most everything I do in the ministry right now I will never enjoy it fully. Whoever comes after me will have great inheritance in the Property, in the building, the size of church and staff in the college, everything that I'm doing is really setting up for the next generation." 

There you have it folks. It's all about the size of his church. Well… as the apostle Peter once said… "It's NOT the size of the ship, but the motion of the ocean" (well maybe not the apostle Peter, but a peter said that).

The quickest way I can find to dismiss this principle is to simply ask: WHERE IS JESUS IN FAITH HARVEST?

It's election day, folks. So go out and vote.

Or if you live in Oregon, go put your ballot in the mail.

I recently received the following email from Jordan at Burnside Writers Collective, with a request from our readers.

One of our writers and I are planning on drawing up a book proposal on Christian jargon.  Our only problem is we don’t really know what kind of jargon is used in the pentecostal world, cliché’s and whatnot.

Would you and any of your readers mind giving us a hand?

If any of you have a favorite cliche (and there are plenty) put it in the comment section for Jordan to read.  This should be fun.

Yesterday, Ted Haggard resigned from New Life Church claiming:

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life,"

In addition, Haggard called himself a deceiver and a liar.

Yeah, really.

But my support goes to his wife, who appears to be handling this situation with grace and dignity. Yesterday, she released a letter to the church in which she states:

What I want you to know is that I love my husband, Ted Haggard, with all my heart. I am committed to him until death "do us part". We started this journey together and with the grace of God, we will finish together.

If I were standing before you today, I would not change one iota of what I have been teaching the women of our church. For those of you who have been concerned that my marriage was so perfect I could not possibly relate to the women who are facing great difficulties, know that this will never again be the case. My test has begun; watch me. I will try to prove myself faithful.

I bet she has known her husband was gay for some time. But she's still standing by him, and I find that rather admirable.

…or so says Christian Blogger Marc Driscoll. On his blog, The Resurgance, Mr. Driscoll offers the following analysis of the Ted Haggard situation:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

As an unmarried heterosexual man, I don't think Mr. Driscoll quite gets it. So let me try to explain: Men who aren't attracted to their wives, for whatever reason, usually turn to OTHER WOMEN for sex. Men who aren't attracted to their wives and turn to other men are GAY. And thus, it doesn't matter if Mrs. Haggard looks like Eva Longoria, if Mr. Haggard's gay, he's not going to be attracted to her.

However, Mr. Driscoll doesn't leave us with out hope. Here's his solution:

Churches should consider returning to heterosexual male assistants who are like Timothy and Titus to serve alongside pastors. Too often the pastor’s assistant is a woman who, if not sexually involved, becomes too emotionally involved with the pastor as a sort of emotional and practical second wife. I have been blessed with a trustworthy heterosexual male assistant who can travel with me, meet with me, etc., without the fear of any temptations or even false allegations since we have beautiful wives and eight children between us.

Yes… yes… of course. Excellent. Keeping a young heterosexual assistant around will solve all your problems. Just ask Mark Foley.

(Thanks Chris. This is the best.)

Pastor Ted Haggard has been accused of hiring a male prostitute for the past three years.  And as such, he has resigned his position as President of the National Evangelical Association while a church panel investiages the allegations.

I read about this yesterday, but initially didn't want to post anything because it sounded like a political trick (November Surprise) to depress the Evangelical base. And frankly, I don't care if Ted Haggard is gay. (Of course, cheating on his wife is something I have a problem with.)

But today, Haggard admits that some of the allegations are true.

This is still just a political ploy by the Democrats to keep Evangelicals at home. And when Karl Rove removes Osama Bin Laden's head from a duffel bag at a press conference on Monday, that will also be a political ploy. But for now, this is kind of sad.

Anyway, I wonder if Haggard is a member of MFI. Because if he is, the NEA can expect some nasty letters from Dick Iverson and Wendell Smith, rebuking them for investigating Haggard without consulting with MaFIa first.

 I think we're getting to them.

CBC's latest attempt at inspiring a "Faith Harvest Spirit" written in this weeks bulletin begins with "What, again?". Clearly the members are getting tired of being hounded for money*.

Fortunately I think CBC is starting to wise up a little bit. I don't think they are going to fall for the same old lines used in the past. Why, I've even recently heard of a few members studying their Bible. It's just a matter of time.

The bulletin continues:

    What, again? As we enter this fall season and lay a foundation for our "Faith Harvest 2006" emphasis, some of us may be inclined to ask that question. I am once again reminded of the privilege we have to have leaders with vision, passion and courage.

I'll tell you this much, they've certainly got courage. I would be afraid to stand up and say "Hey, everyone, I know you just finished giving us some 5 million or so dollars, but now we need more."

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8 about the virtue in the area of giving we must embrace to be complete followers of Christ. He writes about the Macedonian churches (note the plural), "…out of their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints.

Notice how they say "we must embrace (giving) to be complete followers of Christ" which is followed by a scripture, but not followed enough. They stop in verse 7 (a little later on), but I'll continue on to verse 8 where it says: I am not speaking this as a command… right, but we won't be complete if we don't give. Notice that they also gave out of "extreme poverty" with no promise of any "blessing". Also, they were not asked to give they gave "Entirely on their own". What they are describing here is truly "Grace Giving" which is wonderful. Faith Harvest, however, is "Selfishness" dressed up as "Grace Giving".

You receive your reward here on earth.

He follows with this charge to us for today in verse 7 (NIV), "But just as you excel in everything - in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us - see that you also excel in this grace of giving."

This is a wonderful scripture for churches to apply during the "offering". It clearly shows that we should give… gracefully. Not under some command or threat or desire for "blessing". Give to give, people… just give to give.

I trust that we never cease to include giving as one of those "graces" we choose to excel in and that we never grow weary in doing so. We recently celebrated a great victory as we closed the door on our Forward Together campaign. Just as Gideon's 300 warriors who paused just long enough to get refreshed before going into the next battle, we have paused and have been refreshed by the Summer season and our Pastors great series of messages. Now let us rise up and go after the next giant on our list of many to come. Let us indeed "excel in this grace of giving".

Ok… hold on… I can't stop laughing… (get a grip Johnpaul)… Alright, here we go.

Did they really just compare "Forward Together" with Gideon's 300 warriors? I'm sure it's going to be real intense next Saturday night as the CBC army prepares for it's next battle…Faith Harvest.

Frank*: Faith Harvest approaches from the east. What shall we do?

Money: Take 3 months to focus on giving, and I shall deliver your enemy to you.

Frank: But Lord, people are questioning my leadership ability. They started calling me Hank Defazio… Hank Defasio… Lord. I can't go on.

Money: Do not fear, my child. For when Faith Harvest has been conquered, your people will see that nothing will defeat you. Your tithes shall multiply 10 fold and all will know that I sit in your wallet.

Frank: I use a debit card.

Money: Whatever, you know what I mean.

*1^st Disclaimer:

I believe it is very important to give money to the church you attend. You should give money to any group that you participate in. Churches would probably be better off just charging a membership fee but since that won't happen, give.

*2nd Disclaimer:

I do not believe that Frank Damazio serves Money, although at times it may appear that he is consumed with talking about it. Frank Damazio is a good and decent man who happens to put a lot of stock in "Earthly Blessings". A lot of pastors do this, it's sad. Frank Damazio is not a crook he is unfortunately deceived. We should pray for him.

What number would he wear?  

The boys at sports blog Deadspin found a website where you can get Christian Throwback Jerseys. Because nothing says I love Jesus, like a clever sports jersey. Deadspin also managed to figure out the real motivation behind the clothes:

And remember, as it was written numerous times in Second Corinthians: Returns of $250 or more are subject to a 20% restocking fee.

(Thanks Chris)

Awhile back, Casual Observer wrote a great comment that I think this blog should take a minute to re-read. I'm not saying that anyone on this site is angry or bitter, but just in case someone who IS shows up….

It is appropriate to act to end harmful behavior. It is also appropriate - and expected by God - to forgive.

I saw a program last night with Charles Stanley, who was talking about forgiving those "who commit evil."

He said that sometimes the evil is committed by those who profess to knowing and following Jesus Christ, and that makes it more challenging to forgive them. I assume this is so because we do not expect brothers and sisters in Christ to commit evil against us.

Stanley pointed out that we suffer double when we do not forgive. First, we suffer from the offense, then we suffer from holding the pain and unforgiveness.

I certainly would expect that the people of CLF (or other churches in similar straits) would have some healing to find, even after forgiving their pastor for what he has done to them.

But that journey starts with forgiveness.

I am praying for the people of CLF that God will strengthen them, give them peace and wisdom, and give them deep understanding in this matter.

Despite his actions, we should all also pray for their pastor, that he will find forgiveness, peace, and renewal. His journey must start with taking responsibility for his actions.

-C.O.