Category Archives: About Us

And we’re back!

Posted on by
15

It looks like the site is back up and running.

To all who were concerned: the WordPress software was just really old and needed to be updated.  I didn’t quit. And no one pressured me to stop the blog. It was merely a maintenance issue.

Also, thanks to everyone who offered to chip in and help support the blog financially. I really appreciate it. This is actually a fairly cheap site to run. And unlike some pastors, I am not looking to you all to support my lavish lifestyle of PBR and burritos. So, I’m fine on that end. But truly, thanks.

Hopefully over the next couple of weeks, I will be able to tweak the theme and get the blog looking somewhat like it’s old self. And with the updated software, it will make blogging easier and more fun. So, expect more posts for the next couple of months or until I burn out again. (which, in all honesty, could be tomorrow).

Happy New Year!

Allow Me To Shamelessly Promote Myself

Posted on by
21

You know what is awesome? When I ignore this blog and then only show up to promote myself.

But here I go:  

So, I moved back to Portland, Oregon and am currently attempting to start up my own legal practice. As such, if any of you have a legal question, please feel free to contact me. I am only too happy to help readers of this blog. 

I also created a website for my practice and I am creating links to my website to help improve my search engine results.  Thus, here is a link to my website, Morton Law, LLC.  As a bonus, if you click on the link, you can see my intense intimidating lawyer face.

Thanks as always for reading and commenting. I may not play as active a role as I used to, but I continue to remain impressed with the level of participation from you readers.  The "Warning Against Church of the Harvest" post is only a couple of dozen comments away from being the most commented post on this blog. Well played, folks. Well played. 

How to Protect Your Children from Atheists

Posted on by
6

Included in the link below is a helpful pamphlet I stumbled across that teaches young children how to avoid Atheists.

What Should You Do If You Find An Atheist in Your Neighborhood

The pamphlet advises children to:

"TELL A PARENT OR PASTOR RIGHT AWAY & AVOID TALKING TO THEM"

The pamphlet also includes this gem of a description:

Atheists are often very grumpy and bitter and will lash out at children or they may even try to trick you into neglecting God's Word.

Coincidentally, this happens to be an apt description of my brother Jesse, who, as you likely guessed, is a devout atheist.

As such, I will be mailing this pamphlet to my sweet nephews and neice, along with a picture of angry uncle Jesse, so they can learn to avoid him and let the adults handle his (usually drunken) antics.

God’s Annointed

Posted on by
14

We've touched on this issue before, but this comment from Chip is one of my favorite defenses of the church:

I think some of the people writing this stuff should remember the account of David and Saul. Saul tried to kill David but David was very careful not to harm God’s anointed. Also I guess these people writing have no issues, no sin or any other problems in their lives. Hope their not living in a glass house.

This is exactly how cults are started. Can't criticize the leader: He's God's Annointed. By that logic, the children abused by Catholic priests should just suck it up and keep their mouth's shut. Because, you know, the priests are God's Annointed. And sexually abused children need to be very careful not to harm God's Annointed.

Here's the deal: If being a Christian means I can't criticize any leader in the church, then I'll pass on Christiantiy, thank you very much.

Money, Money, Tithing, Prosperity

Posted on by
19

Greetings, fellow Netizens! It is I, Belteshazzar, your newest and latest contributor to all things tithing here at City Business Church. I've been a long-time reader and commenter here and the Mortons have kindly asked me to lend a hand in creating new content. I've been commenting under the name Former Inner Circle Member (FICM), which was a rather vain moniker I'll humbly admit. I've decided to change my alias for a couple of reasons, mainly to get rid of the old awkward one, and also I was jealous of the other bloggers for having such cool super-hero sounding names. In the end, I chose "Belteshazzar" because it's a pretty good hint as to my true identity without giving it away completely. I have good reasons for remaining semi-anonymous, so I will neither confirm nor deny any guesses. If you think you know who I am, look me up on Facebook or email, I'm not hard to find. If you don't know who I am, well, it's probably not important.

I was a part of Bible Temple/City Bible Church for over 10 years. I went to a Christian High School and aspired to be in full-time ministry so I promptly went to Portland Bible College. That worked so well, after my first year I quit to spend the next year working off my tuition debt and figuring out what the heck I was going to do next. But I was still drinking the kool-aid and spent the next decade working my boney butt off trying to please God and the leaders of the church. Man, I did it all, youth ministry, music, mission trips, outreaches, small group leader, started a student group on my college campus, and spent 3 services on Sunday and 2 nights a week in meetings, on top of working at a Christian company and going to a real college. I did everything but actually take a paid staff position at the church. I say all that so that when people have reason to question me or the legitmacy of my complaints at CBC and MFI, or as they call it my "lack of unity", I want people to know that I'm not making this stuff up because I was offended by some off-hand remark or don't understand how things really work there under the big bubbles. I tried it all, and despite all the normal dysfunction of being in a church being run by imperfect people there is one "doctrine" they still teach that I am unable to forgive. I've forgiven all the other petty things done to me or said about, heck, I really don't care what they think of me. But I can't help but feel righteous rage that they still teach and promote tithing and prosperity over the Gospel of Christ. It's something I won't back down on, and I'm not about to apologize to them or anyone else for criticizing, mocking, or satirizing the teaching of tithing=wealth.

So, in the spirit of that, I'll leave you with something I hope you will think is funny or at least though provoking. There was an episode of South Park a few years back where the kids discovered that the Underpants Gnomes were stealing…well, underpants . When confronted, said gnomes gladly shared their business plan:

1. Collect underpants

2.  ?

3. Profit

With a little rearranging, we get…

1. Tithe

2. ?

3. Prosperity

For all the Bible quoting they do about how God will bless you if you give, phase 2 seems to be remarkably absent from this business plan. Next post, I discuss how tithing could actually be costing the church money in the long run.

A little history

Posted on by
3

I found this old post I had written awhile back and never posted. It begins to touch on the social awkwardness of my youth which ultimately lead to the formation of this blog. Anyway, here is a little Morton Family History.

I grew up in an extremely anti-abortion Christian family. My father was heavily involved in the "Operation Rescue" movement which led to our family spending most weekends outside of an abortion clinic. I learned to love protesting and I learned to hate abortion. At the age of 12 I started "Rescuing" (blocking doors to abortion clinics so that patients could not get in) right next to my dad. If you want to see a bunch of riled up heathens, let your 12 year old take a stand against abortion. I couldn't begin to count how many times I heard someone yell out "Your parents are brainwashing you"…yeah, whatever.

My mother spent a couple years (approximately) picking up a group of kids every Wednesday and driving them down to an abortion clinic on Broadway where we would stand out with our signs and take a lot of abuse. I have 3 fond memories of these Wednesday trips (actually 4, but now that I am married I shouldn't mention how much I enjoyed getting crammed next to Jessica Zimmer in my mom's minivan)…anyway, those three memories in no particular order are:

  1. Having a dirty diaper thrown at me from a car passing by. It missed by a mile.
  2. Being told every week by a complete stranger that they "wish my mother would have aborted me"…to which I would often respond, "She's standing right there, you can take it up with her".
  3. When Portland Trailblazer Danny Ainge drove by, stopped his car, honked and waved!!! I still get goosebumps thinking about it. Later, during our homeschool English class my mother had us write letters to Danny thanking him for his support. A couple weeks later my brothers and I all received autographed pictures of him. I still have mine and consider it to be one of my most prized possessions (us homeschoolers are easy to win over).

When you are insulted as much as the Morton Family was, and for such a long and consistent period of time you begin to get tough skin. Combine that with the fact that we were home-schooled and didn't actually have any friends that weren't named Morton and you can begin to see where the social issues would start to set in. In fact the most outgoing activity that we ever did were these Wednesday Protest Trips.

I'm struggling now to remember some of the signs we used to hold…Abortion Stops a Beating Heart…Be A Hero Save a Whale, Save a Baby Go to Jail (which my father did frequently)…then there was always someone holding the extremely grotesque picture of an aborted baby (Hey Mom, I've got some real anxiety issues related to seeing or hearing about sickness… and this bloody fetus is helping at all!)

Anyhow, i don't want to drag this story on for to long and by now you may be wondering how we avoided a life of bombing abortion clinics and instead chose a life of anti-CBC blogging…well, the truth is…CBC is far more fun to pick on than those pesky Pro-Choice'ers. And really, a protest is a protest… I love them all…I do miss dodging diapers though.

Hood to Coast

Posted on by
6

I'm running in the Hood-to-Coast relay this weekend with some friends and family, and thus won't be blogging much for the next several days.  I'm both excited and horrified at the prospect of running from Mt. Hood to Seaside, Oregon. But I subscribe to the theory that you only get one life and everybody dies, so you might as well challenge yourself, try new things and see what happens. (and by "see what happens", I mean, regret ever signing up for this thing)

In the meantime, let me leave you with this fun little article sent in by reader, FICM. The article from Christian Post proposes the theory that everytime we watch television or movies in our home, we allow terrorists to visit our family. It's a classic, why people think Christians are Crazy, article. And I certainly heard similar sermons when I was a child. It's so ridiculous, I like it.  

Best quote:

Take the practical steps to remove these terrorists from your home. Limit T.V. viewing. Screen the media your kids want to engage in before you let them do so. This includes T.V., movies, and music. Be careful not to let them have T.V.’s in their bedrooms. Instead of family movie night, have family game night. Not only can you do that, but you must. It is the only hope your children have in the midst of a culture that is bombarding them with missiles of deadly assault at a velocity once unthinkable but now a bitter reality.

Love it!

The New Kid On The Block

Posted on by
21

Hello Bloggers!

I have been invited to join City Business Church as a registered user allowing me to post along with our fearless leaders Catalyst and Reformed Pope (who I attended high school youth group with back in the mid 90s).  I have been a huge fan of this blog since its inception and posted as far back as 2004. Recently I felt God urging me to begin speaking out again so I am pleased to have this opportunity and I will do my best to bring new ideas and prospective to the forefront.  For those of you who know me (formerly ex-City Bible Slave) I look forward to having some in depth discussion about faith, grace, and the call on young people to start a new reformation in the church.  For those of you who don't know me, I look forward to sharing my many good, bad and crazy experiences with you.  I am 30 years old, been married for 9 years, have a 1 year old daughter, grew up in Portland, Oregon, currently live in Los Angeles, California and work in the legal affairs department of a movie production studio.  I truly believe it is time to take a stand against false prophets, heresy, and the destructive Word of Faith/Prosperity lie infiltrating American churches today.  Now I know there will be plenty of haters who try to bring me/us down as they always do, but I'm used to dealing with ego maniacs and never shy away from a good debate.  I know God has bigger things in store for us and this blog, so lets pull together and usher in some change to these destructive places that call themselves a church. Looking forward to a lot of fun.

Sincerely,

The Reformer