Business Guilds, Sunday Morning & Boring Glory

Businesses know it is bad business to badmouth other businesses. Competition between coffee shops and skate shops can get downright ugly, but there is a line of negativity that these entrepreneurs know must not be crossed. Those who cross it ensnare their customers in a guild feud and their business walks out overnight.

In business, this is easy to understand: Respect your competition.

This fully applies to Sunday morning “fellowship” congregations, but only in practice, never in name. If you see the business guild on Sunday morning for what it is, “respect between competitors” is easy to navigate. Pastors “respecting each others’ parishioners” makes perfect sense, you will know what to say and not say and when to say and not say it. The entire collection of Sunday morning territorial turf battles are perfectly sensible, if seen from the vantage point of respect between business competitors.

But, pastors can’t explain it so cut and dry.  · · · →

Since I Quit Sunday Morning

Since I quit Sunday morning…

Other people understand me better. Maybe that’s because I stopped using strange words and wrong grammar just because it made sense to the 200 same people I saw every Sunday.

Since I quit Sunday morning…

Jesus got a lot bigger and a lot more real. I started to believe that all the buildings in town aren’t enough to hold all the people who are interested in a Jesus who can’t fit into Sunday morning.

Since I quit Sunday morning…

I started rolling with the punches more. Surprises didn’t upset me quite so much. Maybe that’s because Jesus didn’t have to arrange everything he wanted to do and say into the Sunday morning schedule.

Since I quit Sunday morning…

I realized that God’s sovereignty meant that I’m not allowed to blame others for my difficulties. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t around a weekly culture of one denomination or congregation always blaming the other.  · · · →

Fab Sandwich: Homosexuality Hits Crit Mass

Fab Sandwich: Homosexuality Hits Crit Mass

Fab Sandwich: Homosexuality Hits Crit Mass

SCOTUS redefined marriage as an indication of homosexuality hitting the critical mass stage. It is now a fad. “Coming out of the closet” is no longer “brave” and has lost all of its counter-culture flair. Now, it’s the way to “be like everyone else”. The “fashionable homosexual” will never seem more attractive than he does now… never before, never after. Once something becomes too popular, it loses steam.

The number of open homosexuals will increase. That part won’t fade. But the flair, the pizzazz, the rapture and excitement of scandal—these will be lost for those who jumped in the game too late. Some of it will continue to go up, for a while. The momentum is still there, but the steam is gone.

Soon, closet homosexuals, formerly “fat slob phobes”, will join the movement. Then, once homosexuality is the new normal, the fat slobs will take over that as well.  · · · →

A REAL critique of IHOPKC

Dear International House of Prayer in Kansas City:

Critiques come best from friends.

You are rich with potential. You have done so many things that the Church needs. You have kept the flame on the altar. You have not caved to pressure from culture spare one thing.

The Great Commission is not yet complete. The Church is full of corruption and bad teaching, which you yourselves have tried to confront over the past few years. Not every Christian enjoys the convenience of being able to rubber stamp the pulpit. The obligation placed on Christians to “attend anywhere as long as you attend” led them to leaders such as Rob Bell when nothing might have been preferable.

The young preachers, especially over the past few weeks, have been exceptionally sharp-tongued in critiquing so-called “churchless Christians”. Have you not considered that the purpose and the funding of your webstreams depend directly on the idea that there is still more work to be done?  · · · →