Have you seen this video of the tornado that ravaged Alabama. It was of a Biblical proportion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woDUjVIaZ8Y

Honestly, if I was watching this in real life, I'd be pretty sure the apocalypse was just around the corner.   

I meant to post this on Saturday, but my laziness got in the way. 

A few days ago this blog passed the three million hits mark, and I happen to think that is kind of nice.  

The next time someone tells you that Judah Smith/Frank Damazio/Your-Local-Pastor ministers to thousands, and then asks "What do you do?" Just tell them, "I minister to millions." And when they ask where it is exactly that you minister to millions, mumble something about a business church blog and then run away. (Well, that's at least, what I do.) 

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments at City Business, especially some of you long-timers. I can honestly say this blog wouldn't be here without you.

Good times! 

In a shameless promotion I want to encourage all of our readers to go see the movie "Soul Surfer" out in theaters nationwide on April 8.  It is the true story of Bethany Hamilton, a young surfer who had her arm taken off by a shark in 2003 when she was just 13 years old.  She is a believer in Christ and has become an inspiration to millions as a champion surfer with only one arm.  God has used her story to reach people all over the world.

Hollywood studios almost never release family friendly, faith based films that mention the name Jesus Christ in a good way, but this film does so it's important that people get out there and buy tickets to go see it.  If it does well at the box office, it will open the door for more of these kinds of films.

I just received an email from someone who attends City Bible informing me that CBC is selling the 217 Campus and then leasing the property back from the purchaser. Does anyone know why the church would do this? What's the benefit financially?

Below is a comment from new reader, Abigail Bradshaw. I think it illustrates quite poignantly the negative impacts of church and religion. It's long, but very heart felt and well worth the read. 

Ok… where do I start. I pretty much grew up at Church of the Harvest and attended there for about 14 years. I went to Kari Bryan’s small group for 8 of those years, I think. From a young age, it was pretty much a contest with the other 10-12 girls in the group for who could please Kari more, literally to be just like her. I remember one time when I was like 12 I didn’t make it to Saturday night prayer and she chided me and said “Well, if you want to be like me, you’ll need to be here whenever the doors are open.” She said that to a 12 year old… who couldn’t drive. I got my act together and for all of high school, I was busy with church stuff with most of my free time. I quit track my sophmore year because Kari didn’t think it was a good use of my time. I never even tried out for basketball based on the same reasoning. My only friends were in the church, because there was a “third degree of separation” attitude – if I was friends with even a Christian who was friends with a non-Christian… it was taboo. Kari was constantly conditioning us and motivating us to go out and get at least 10 disciples of our own, because she vowed to not get married until she had 100 small groups underneath her leadership. I can’t explain to you the controlling, manipulative “friendship” I thought I had with her – if at any moment she felt like I wasn’t divulging all the details of my life to her so she could make a call about what I should do or who I should be, she’d come after me, saying that she couldn’t help me grow unless I was completely open with her about everything. I’m not denying that this kind of discipleship has its place in our faith – but it’s voluntary and natural, not forced, and sure as hell not demanded.

When it came time to decide where to go to college, I thought about moving away. The church had just started an internship a year before, and I wasn’t all that interested, because I honestly wanted to go experience something other than what I’d known all my life. At that suggestion, Kari said “Well, you don’t just go live with another family because you want a different “experience, do you?” Leaving the church is constantly compared to divorce and abandoning your family there. So, I stayed. I became an intern, working 12 hour days Mondays and Tuesdays to pay $5400 for a “Biblical Studies Degree” and to work for the church, handling a lot of their video and media needs, for free. Jonathan Bryan, the pastors son, got paid in the afternoons while being an intern, because he was the children’s pastor. I guess my reward is in heaven? Haha.

At this internship is where I really started to see the inner workings of Church of the Harvest. It also happened to be the first time I sat down and read entire books of the Bible, with the verses in context, and so I also started to see a lot of operational and theological things I disagreed with in the church. I realized we were only being taught one side of things – “the right side” – and not being allowed to judge for ourselves on dogmatic issues. I started to wonder if other churches operated this way… surely other people, who also love God, aren’t this weird! At the beginning of that school year, two of my best friends were essentially forced out of the church, and I was instructed not to talk to them.

One day we were at a funeral. Kari and I were sitting at the same table, and I had a piece of cake at the table. As I began to take a bite, she asked how my diet was going from across the table. I decided to take the conversation to a more private level after the inital embarrassment… I told her I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be an intern for another year, and I thought God had a lot of other possibilities and things I should work on, one of which being my weight. She told me that she would like to use me more on the worship team (I was the electric guitarist and a background vocalist) but she couldn’t… because of my weight. However, I needed to suck it up and lose weight while going to school full time and working. I told her my parents were supportive of me, and she said I needed to make sure all of my “authorities” agreed about the direction my life should take before I took any action. I think at that moment I realized that this woman was not a friend of mine.

Over the next few months our relationship started to deteriorate even more – I was a youth small group leader in her youth group and a band member on her worship team, and those were the only two things keeping me in the church, mostly because she didn’t seem to have anyone else to fill the need. We met one day because she sensed that I wasn’t close to her. I expressed that I didn’t agree with her about everything, and then she pulled out that verse that says to be “of one mind and one judgement” in everything. I don’t disagree with that verse, I just didn’t think it meant that all of us needed to conform to her mind and judgement. I questioned her stance on alcohol consumption, which turned out to be a mistake because once I got kicked off the worship team, alcohol was a fictitious player in the stories that circulated about why I got kicked off the team. That, and the fact that I was too heavy.

Kari asked me to step down completely from the worship team and from being a youth leader as soon as she found out that I’d read Donald Miller’s book “Blue Like Jazz.” To be honest the book wasn’t that big of a deal to me, but apparently it was to her. She said I needed to ask permission before reading any more books, because as my shepherd she needed to know what I was feeding on. The girl who gave me the book also got in trouble, and actually apologized for lending me the book… it’s so sad to see the way she’s been broken and lied to.

She asked me to meet with my small group and tell them that I wasn’t going to be their leader anymore, and I gladly complied. My only regret is that I left young and impressionable girls to be brainwashed there, but God is sovereign and if he can pull me out of that he can get anyone. Privately after that meeting, she told me that I was like Korah in the Old Testament, which obviously made her like Moses. Korah is the one that God commanded the earth to swallow, by the way. And finally, she told me that she and her parents were the only thing that stood between me and the wrath of God. She literally thought she was Jesus in my life. I couldn’t allow that any longer. We tried to reconcile once, and I said I was willing to forgive all the things she’d done… and then she went behind my back at the high school to tell my sophomore sister that she shouldn’t follow in my footsteps, because my life was bearing “bad fruit.”

I’ve only told you about me and Kari, but it doesn’t stop there. Jonathan is one of the meanest people I have ever met, and I can say that as someone that he once called one of his closest friends. They would say things about my parents to my face in a very judgemental way, and I would listen and not defend my parents (partly because I thought they’d always be right since they were the pastors), and then when it came out that they were speaking ill of my parents, they said I set them up to do it. At that moment, all the years that I’d spent defending Kari Bryan and Jonathan Bryan and their arrogant, deceptive behavior stung on my tongue.

I’ve now been out of that church for about a year and a half and I’m SO GLAD I’M OUT. It has come at the cost of rumors, a loss of all the friendships I had at that church (because they pretty much won’t talk to you once you leave), a deep season of loneliness, and a little questioning of my sanity. But I’ve gained so much more love for Jesus, a respect for reality, and true freedom in Christ.

You’ll often hear people talk about how this church has changed their life. It does change people’s lives, and often for the better, in a very moralistic sense. But you won’t hear so many people talk about Jesus changing their lives there. You won’t often hear even the name of Jesus preached in a sermon. And if you stick around for long, you won’t feel the true love and acceptance and conviction of Jesus… it’s been replaced by the hands of Pharisees. I’ve had people tell me that I need to be at least as nice as Jesus would be to these people, and that actually makes me happy. While not forgetting my own religious tendencies, I’d tell them that they are tithing out of their spice rack, but they’ve forgotten love and mercy and justice. That they strive to make even one proselyte, then turn them into twice the son of hell that they are. I was just like them, and through God’s grace Jesus by his great kindness has called me to repent of my religion, and he has granted me forgiveness.

Kari and/or Jonathan, if you ever read this… here’s a little Middle Eastern saying my brother taught me. If one person calls you a camel, you can ignore them. If two people call you a camel, you can ignore them. If three people call you a camel, you better get a saddle. For your own sake, listen just a bit to what people are saying.

Rob Bell has his feet put to the fire in this clip from MSNBC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg-qgmJ7nzA 

The host, Martin Bashir, does a solid job of dissecting Rob Bell's belief that, in the end, God's love will melt everyone's heart. 

Bashir challenges Bell, "You're amending the Gospel so that it's palatable to contemporary people who find the concept of heaven and hell difficult to stomache." 

To which Bell doesn't have much of a response. Because, uh yeah, that's what Bell is doing.

To be fair, the Church has been amending the Gospel for the last 2000 years. (Do you really think that the American Christian church of 200 years ago would be cool with black people and women being in leadership?)  However, I do think Rob Bell needs to admit that it's difficult to take a traditional interpretation of the Bible and then proclaim Heaven and Hell do not really exist. 

Also, when asked whether God is powerful and just doesn't care about the people of Japan. Or whether God does care about the people of Japan but just isn't all-powerful.  Rob Bell responds, "I begin with the belief that when we shed a tear, God sheds a tear".   

That's a nice way to absolutely not answer the question.

I don't have the answer either. But come on, I need a little more than, "When thousands of people are killed, God texts us a frowny face."   

Bell seems more concerned with the practical aspects of being a pastor and less with the theological realities of Christianity. This is what makes him one of the most popular and influential pastors in America. But it is also what makes him completely unpersuasive in this interview.  

A local blogger who writes about Portland's architecture visited City Bible last week and offered his thoughts on their campus. To put it politely, he's not a fan:

Standing outside in the parking lot of what I learned to be City Bible Church, I was astonished at what, at least in my biased view, seemed to be the ugliest set of buildings I'd seen in ages. The concrete domes are completely windowless. Glass-walled entrances had been built onto the edges of each dome, and multi-story in height to add a substantial presence. But the glass was highly reflective, like some banal 1980s office building. The entire architectural enterprise seemed to be screaming, "KEEP OUT!"

He goes on and on like this for most of the blog. However, he also offers Robert Jamison a chance to kind of explain the reasoning behind the domes, and their benefits to the church. 

"We bought the property in 1981 and, as a church, you're not getting a big loan," explained pastor Robert Jamison in a phone interview. "Interest rates were 20 percent at the time. The domes themselves, the exterior construction is very inexpensive. Latex is inflated with air and tied rebar to the foam and sprayed concrete. Most everything was done with volunteers. Basically it was an inexpensive way to get a big piece of square footage."

I've never really thought about the domes from an archictectural standpoint, but they do look kind of Soviet-esqu. The domes and surrounding buildings offer a strong "compound" feel.  But whatever, it serves their needs, I guess. And in reality, I'm pretty sure if they could do it all over again, they would build a much different building in a different location.

A reader sends in this poignant video he made poking fun at myself and the church. 

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8274249

I need to learn how to create these videos. I feel like they're an untapped gold mine.  The possibilities are endless. 

I kid. I kid. 

Consider this an open thread.  

I think it was because he had a cancer. And cancer kills people. But I'm open to other thoughts as well.

I bring this up, because there have been a few comments (which I didn't approve) suggesting that the readers of this blog believe Wendell Smith's death was a result of God's judgment on his life. I decided to approve one of the comments below. Because, well, let's have that discussion.

My take: Everybody dies.

…so, you might as well enjoy your time on this earth while you can.