My sister up in Oregon sent this story to my wife, and I thought it might encourage some of us. I know it did me.  

17-year-old Brian Moore had only a short time to write something for a class. The subject was, What Was Heaven Like? Brian later told his father, Bruce: "It's the best thing I ever wrote."  It also was the last.  

Brian's parents had forgotten about the essay when a cousin found it while cleaning out the teenager's locker at Teary Valley High School. Brian had been dead only hours, but his parents desperately wanted every piece of his life near them…notes from classmates and teachers…his homework.  

Only two months before, he had handwritten the essay about encountering Jesus in a file room full of cards detailing every moment of the teen's life. But it was only after Brian's death that Beth and Bruce Moore realized that their son had described his view of Heaven.

"It makes such an impact that people want to share it…you feel like you are there," Mr. Moore said.  

Brian Moore died May 27, 1997, the day after Memorial Day. He was driving home from a friend's house when his car went off Bulen-Pierce Road in Pickaway County and struck a utility pole. He emerged from the wreck unharmed, but stepped on a downed power line and was instantly electrocuted.  The Moore's framed a copy of Brian's essay and hung it among the family portraits in the living room.

"I think God used him to make a point. I think we were meant to find it and make something out of it," Mrs. Moore said of the essay.

She and her husband want to share their son's vision of life after death. She said, "I'm happy for Brian. I know he's in Heaven. I know I'll see him."  

Brian's Essay:  

THE ROOM

In that place between wakefulness and dreams, I found myself in The Room. There were no distinguishing features except for the one wall covered with small index card files. They were like the ones in libraries that lists titles by author, or subject in alphabetical order. But these files, which stretched from floor to ceiling and seemingly endless in either direction, had very different headings. As I drew near the wall of files, the first to catch my attention was one that read: "Girls I Have Liked." I opened it and began flipping through the cards. I quickly shut it, shocked to realize that I recognized the names written on each one! And then without being told, I knew exactly where I was…  

This lifeless Room with its small files was a crude catalog system for My Life.

Here were written the actions of my every moment, big and small, in a detail my memory couldn't match. A sense of wonder and curiosity, coupled with horror, stirred within me as I began randomly opening files and exploring their content. Some brought joy and sweet memories, others a sense of shame and regret so intense that I would look over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching.

A file named "Friends" was next to one marked "Friends I Have Betrayed." The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird: "Books I Have Read," "Lies I Have Told," "Comfort I have Given," "Jokes I Have Laughed At."  Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: "Things I've Yelled At My Brothers." Others I couldn't laugh at: "Things I Have Done In My Anger," and "Things I Have Muttered Under My Breath At My Parents." I never ceased to be surprised by the contents.  

Often, there were many more cards than I expected. Sometimes, fewer than I hoped. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the Life I had lived. Could it be possible that I had the time in my years to fill each of these thousands, or even millions of cards? But each card confirmed this truth. Each one was written in my own handwriting. Each was signed with my signature.  

When I pulled out the file marked "TV Shows I Have Watched," I realized the files grew to contain their contents. The cards were packed tightly, and yet after two or three yards, I hadn't found the end of the file! I shut it, shamed, not so much by the quality of shows but more by the vast time I knew that file represented.  

When I came to a file marked "Lustful Thoughts," I felt a chill run through my body. I pulled the file out only an inch, not willing to test its size, and drew out a card. I shuddered at its detailed content.  

I felt sick to think that such moments had been recorded. An almost animal rage broke on me. One thought dominated my mind: No one must ever see these cards! No one must ever see this room! I have to destroy them! In insane frenzy I yanked the file out. Its size didn't matter now. I had to empty it and burn the cards! But as I took it at one end and began pounding it on the floor, I could not dislodge a single card. I became desperate and pulled out a card, only to find it as strong as steel when I tried to tear it.  

Feeling defeated and utterly helpless, I returned the file to its slot. Leaning my forehead against the wall, I let out a long, self-pitying sigh.  

And then I saw it…the title bore "People I Have Shared The Gospel With." The handle was brighter than those around it, newer, almost unused. I pulled on its handle and a small box not more than three inches long fell into my hands. I could count the cards it contained on just one hand.  

And then the tears came. I began to weep. Sobs so deep that they hurt. They started in my stomach and shook through me. I fell on my knees and cried. I cried out of shame, from the overwhelming shame of it all. The rows of file shelves swirled in my tear-filled eyes. No one must ever, ever know of this room! I must lock it up and hide the key. But then, as I brushed away the tears…I saw Him.  

No! Please! Not Him. Not here. Oh, anyone but Jesus! I watched helplessly as He began to open the files and read the cards. I couldn't bear to watch His response. And in the moments I could bring myself to look at His face, I saw a sorrow deeper than my own.  He seemed to intuitively go to the worst boxes.

Why did He have to read every one?

Finally, He turned and gazed at me from across The Room. He looked at me with pity in His eyes. But this was a pity that didn't anger me. I dropped my head, covered my face with my hands and began to cry again. He walked over and put His arm around me. He could have said so many things. But He didn't say a word…He just cried with me.  

Then He got up and walked back to the wall of files. Starting at one end of The Room, He took out a file and, one by one, began to sign His Name over mine on each card. No!, I shouted, rushing to Him. All I could find to say was No! No!, as I pulled the card from Him. His Name shouldn't be on these cards. But there it was, written in red so rich, so dark, so alive.

The Name of Jesus covered mine. It was written with His Blood.

He gently took the card back. He smiled a sad smile and began to sign the cards. I don't think I'll ever understand how He did it so quickly, but the next instant it seemed I heard Him close the last file, and He walked back to my side.  He placed His hand on my shoulder and said, "It is finished." I stood up, and He led me out of The Room.

There was no lock on its door.  

There were still cards to be written.

 -joebib

Larry Norman died Sunday in his home in Salem, Oregon.

Frank Black, of the Pixies, remembers Larry:

"Larry was my door into the music business and he was the most Christlike person I ever met," former Pixies singer Frank Black said Monday upon hearing of Norman's passing.

I am only vaguely aware of Larry Norman. But if Frank Black liked him, he must have been a pretty cool guy. 

Larry's Wikipedia Profile is fascinating, and includes this clip on Larry's relationship with Contemporary Christian Music:

Larry Norman's relationship with the wider Christian church, and with the Contemporary Christian music industry, has been contentious for a number of years. According to Portland news/radio station KXL, Norman's early social positions caused a stir among many conservative Christians. His views against racism and poverty caused him to receive multiple death threats in the 1970s. A widespread ban on Norman's music, which is largely still in effect today, existed in Christian stores. This ban was due not only to Norman's social positions, but his preferred company as well. Said Norman in a separate interview:

"The churches weren’t going to accept me looking like a street person with long hair and faded jeans. They did not like the music I was recording. And I had no desire to preach the gospel to the converted."

When asked if his 1969 album Upon This Rock was a "Christian" album, Norman responded:

"No, it was not a Christian album for those believers who wanted everything spelled out. It was more like a street fight. I was saying [to Christians]…This album is not for you."Commenting on Christian music in 1984, Norman said: "I'm pleased with what's happening in England and Europe…but I'm not totally thrilled about the commercialisation of Christian music in America." Two years prior to the 1984 interview, he had complained that Christian music generally meant "sloppy thinking, dishonest metaphors, and bad poetry" and stated that "I've never been able to get over the shock of how bad the lyrics are."

Sounds like my kind of guy.

A reader noticed that the New York City Church held their second grand opening this past weekend.  This time the grand opening is at Times Square Arts Center in Midtown Manhattan.

Initially, I had a bunch of snarky comments about how they're running the church like a Mattress Store, with a bunch of Grand Openings and Going out of Business sales. But then I started to sort of feel bad for them. I hate to say it, but I'm kind of pulling for this group.

They are clearly struggling as this is their third location in less than six months. And trying to start any new business in Times Square has to be tough. I still think they made a mistake opening a church in the most expensive city in America, espcially when your home church is 3000 miles away. But, you know they really don't need me piling on.  So, I have to say, I'm starting have a change of heart. Part of me wants them to succeed.

Of course, part of me also wants them to fail miserably, so I'm not that changed. I guess I just feel bad kicking them when they're clearly down.

Good Times!

YBOR CITY —A southwest Florida church issued a challenge for its married members this past Sunday: Hanky panky every day.

Relevant Church head pastor Paul Wirth says the 50 percent divorce rate was the catalyst for The 30-Day Sex Challenge.

“And that’s no different for people who attend church,” Wirth said. “Sometimes life gets in the way. Our jobs get in the way.”

Oh, and the flip side of the challenge? No rolling in the sheets for the unwed.

Church member Tim Jones and his fiancee agreed to take on the challenge, though he acknowledges it’ll be a tough month. But he added: “I think it’s worth trying to find out other things about each other.”

It would be nice if pastors stopped treating sex as some type of taboo subject. I think you can take a conservative stance on sex, and still recognize that everyone is having it.

I am all for promoting abstinence, but uh, as someone who graduated from a Christian Highschool, let you me tell all you parents out there, it is not a very effective message.

(Thanks Chris)

Is this a vision of things to come for City Bible:

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (AP) ― Dwindling donations to the Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park have prompted its high-profile pastor, Mac Hammond, to put his private business jet on the market.

Church spokesman the Rev. Brian Sullivan says Living Word has also cut its hourlong Sunday morning television broadcast to 30 minutes to save money.

He says the church has fallen $40,000 to $70,000 short of its weekly budget in recent weeks. Sullivan says the church is adjusting its budget accordingly.

Sullivan says the church's problems could be a combination of the recession and the recent bad publicity about churches preaching the "Prosperity Gospel."

The prosperity churches are based on the idea that success in business or personal life is evidence of God's love.

Late last year, the U.S. Senate asked six churches to submit financial documents because of complaints about the lavish lifestyles of their ministers. Hammond was not among them.

Sullivan says the church is aggressively marketing the jet, and that the money raised from the sale would be reinvested in the ministry.

My guess is something similar happens to City Bible, except replace Jet with "Vancouver Campus" and "217 Campus".

(Thanks to BK for sending this in.)

Reader MH, sends in this link where Charles Barkley claims that conservatives are just fake Christians, arguing they judge people too much.

This is the inevitable backlash that happens when a religious group ties itself too closely to a political party.

You can find further evidence of this in an interview by the author of UnChristian, David Kinnaman, where he explains why younger Christians believe Christianity no longer follows the examples of Christ. He says:

In fact, even the term “evangelical” is often completely misunderstood, seen to be someone who is just a political activist for a Republican-type cause.

Quite frankly, I think it is the leaders of the Evangelical movement that are doing the most damage, not Evangelicals themselves. Nevertheless, Christians need better PR.

I just came across this insightful article from the Christian Post that talks about how, according to a new Barna study,  a majority of Christians now believe in the validity of worshiping God in non-traditional church settings. It states: 

“'Often, people feel as if their worship and ministry are confined to what is routinely done because those patterns have a biblical basis or mandate,' explained George Barna, co-author of the new book Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of Our Christian Practices.'

'But when you research the origins of church practices, and study the practices of the early church, you discover that most of our current church practices have ancient cultural origins, with no biblical basis.' 

Six alternatives were considered by most adults to be ‘a complete and biblically valid way for someone who does not participate in the services or activities of a conventional church to experience and express their faith in God.’  

Non-Church alternatives include engaging in faith activities at home with one’s family (acceptable by 89 percent of adults); participating in a house church (75 percent); watching a religious television program (69 percent); listening to a religious radio broadcast (68 percent); attending a special ministry event, such as a concert or community service activity (68 percent); and participating in a marketplace ministry (54 percent).  

In the past month, the study found that while 55 percent of adults had attended a conventional church, 28 percent of all adults who did not attend a conventional church did, however, participate in an alternative activity to express their faith in God.” 

I found particularly interesting the part that mentions how a majority of IC Pastors of Protestant churches remain opposed to house churches, specifically those Pastors who: earn more than $75K per year, are African-American, or are Charismatic/Pentecostal. 

I guess these SPs haven't seen Acts 8:3, 20:20; Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15, etc.

Pretty interesting stuff.

The entire article can be read HERE. 

-joebib 

Today I heard a man in the 700 Club studio audience ask Pat Robertson two questions about men’s ministries: (1) Why is there such a lack of men’s ministries today in so many local churches? and, (2) What can be done to attract men to a church-based men’s ministry? 

Pat skipped the first question and said the following about the second: If you’re going to have a men’s ministry, then you need to organize it around what men like to do. Do manly things like go to the gym and do karate. One men’s group is focused around hunting; they meet together and eat game. You can’t have an effective men’s group by expecting men to sit around and play tiddlywinks or knit. 

I would like to submit a response to the question which Pat chose not to address: Why is there such a lack of men’s ministries in so many local churches? 

In my former home church, our senior pastor allowed a men’s ministry to hold its meetings on the same evening as the mid-week service. This seemed like an ideal night to get men together since most would be coming to church with their families anyway. Interested men would meet in various houses and places near the church at about 6:00pm but had to be dismissed around 7:00pm-7:15pm in order to attend the mid-week church service. The meetings were a great success. The men, of all ages by the way, so enjoyed the meetings that they requested of the senior pastor that he allow them to skip the mid-week service and stay in their men’s meeting groups until the church service ended. After all, they reasoned, what was happening in the men’s groups was personally ministering to them more than what was going on in the mid-week church services! As I remember it, there was a great groundswell of support for this idea from most, if not all, of the men. 

After several months of great meetings, something terrible happened. The senior pastor abruptly ended the meetings. I do not remember the reason that was publicly given as to why the pastor decided to end the meetings, but I do remember that whatever it was did not strike many of us as the full story. When the announcement was made to the groups, we felt very disappointed; we thought, what could we do to reverse his decision since we were not church staff leaders? 

I would like to submit two reasons why I think that this senior pastor closed down the men's meetings.   

(1) I suggest that the men’s’ meetings became a political threat to the mid-week service. If the men would rather attend men’s meetings more than corporate church meetings, what if this attitude spread to the women, too? What would happen to the mid-seek service?

(I don’t think that economics played as much of a role because they could still take up collections in the individual groups, but one ever knows for sure on this one.) 

(2) I also suggest that the level of transparency evidenced in the meetings became an emotional and psychological threat to the pastor. He was not raised in an era where church leaders were open and vulnerable about their struggles. The men in the meetings shared honestly about the issues that regularly affected them: women/marriage/family, money/career, and, of course, sex. 

Recommended reading: Leon J. Podles, The Church Impotent: the Feminization of Christianity (Spence Publishing), 1999.

Our buddy, Senator Grassley is still at it:

From this weeks US News & World Report:

Grassley sent requests to six televangelists last fall seeking information about such things as credit card spending, offshore accounts, and airplane and car purchases. To date, only one ministry has responded to Grassley's satisfaction. So he is redoubling his efforts.

Last week, the senator was planning to send a second request for information, along with further justification for his probe. "It is the same thing I have been trying to accomplish with all of my investigations," said Grassley, "and that is to make sure that tax laws are complied with."

He said he wanted to make sure that churchgoers were not being "played for suckers."

Ummm, too late.

Here are some more of your City Bible/Bible Temple tithe dollars at work:

From Ex-City Bible Slave,

After I left BT, I and some of my collegues went on to become youth leaders at another church in Portland. This did not go over well with some of the youth leaders who stayed at BT, because they felt we had abondoned them and “stole” some of their kids. This made for a strained relationship and very little interaction between our youth groups.

However, during my few years at this other church our kids were asking about going to Generation Unleashed (held at BT) and wondered why our youth group had not yet attended. So we decided to put our differences aside (after all it was about the kids and not us) and take a small group of kids to the event. One of the members on our team even offered to teach a daytime workshop, which was initially ok’d.

This is where it gets interesting. The first night we where there the head youth pastor for the conference came up to us during worship and asked to speak with us. He took us to another room and told us that we were not welcome there and that the senior pastor himself wanted us to leave. He personally escorted us to the door. Our speakers name was removed from the brochure. We were blatenly ousted from the even for now reason and with no explination other then this mans pride. We thought he must be crazy. We did nothing wrong. There were thousands of kids there from all over the city and he singled us out just because he did not personally like us.

After the night was over we did not go back there and later had a meeting with some of the BT leadership. We were fed all sorts of lies and told never to come back again. The level of arrogance, anger, and downright evil message these “leaders” were directing towards us broke my heart. I could not believe what I was hearing and seeing. I thought, “has Chrisitanity really come to this?”

And from My Little Pony:

In terms of my personal worst experience (with CBC-ers), I was a victim of a brutal crime and the elders’ position was that it was my fault, that I must have somehow had a crack in my “covering” and been on “a bad path” and otherwise made myself vulnerable to this trauma.

My closest friends “took the party line,” decided I had done something to deserve the brutality I had experienced, judged me utterly, and ostracized me. In hindsight, I know their theology was fear-based, and they had to tell themselves I had done something to deserve what happened…otherwise, they would have had to believe that anything could happen to them, too, regardless of how strictly they adhered to their lists of do’s and don’ts.

At the time, it devastated me, but only briefly, because ultimately it drove me into the arms of Jesus, where I discovered the truth about Him and Christianity. While I don’t wish to ever re-live what happened to me, I praise God for the fact that it catapaulted me out of that wicked s ystem and into the truth.

Three years later, and the stories are still pouring in. Seriously people, there is a big problem with City Boobie Church. And it goes way beyond, bitterness. It's a problem with leadership. And a specific leader at that. I don't want to name names, but it rhymes with Shcmazio.

And I know, they have cool worship, and three campuses, and a Jesus-endorsed coffee shop in the lobby, so yeah, it's probably just me.