Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Derf]

Parishioners packed the Fairfield Church of Nazarene this week as word of the toaster apparition spread throughout the community. The phenomenon continues to prompt waves of intense emotion as people try to comprehend the heavenly message. Throughout viewing hours set up by the church, people can be seen weeping, fainting, and praying.

The miracle toaster appears embedded and glowing within the painting of the Virgin Mary hanging at the front of the church. Many feel the apparition is somehow intended to convey the opposite message of many heavily publicized sightings the Virgin Mary on pieces of toast around the U.S. in recent years.

Church officials report the toaster appears to be a KitchenAid KMTT200OB which is a medium quality four-slice toaster that comes with a one year warranty. The unit generally retails for $69.99.

Church Pastor, Paul Edwards commented, “Although we don’t yet understand the meaning of this phenomenon, we do understand the Lord works in mysterious ways. Possibly this is meant to benefit our parish financially. We are considering offering the painting on eBay.”

Source

[From me]
Some churches have all the luck.

HT: Steve Thompson

[CNN]
If you’re the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:
Your child is following a “mutant” form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Translation: It’s a watered-down faith that portrays God as a “divine therapist” whose chief goal is to boost people’s self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of “Almost Christian,” a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
She says this “imposter” faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.
“If this is the God they’re seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust,” Dean says. “Churches don’t give them enough to be passionate about.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Powerful article. It don’t think it is just teenagers. How many cultural Christians are there? There ought to be something radically different about us verses the world. Our actions should be different. Our language should be different….OUR lives should be different.

[Yahoo News]
Joyce Kim needed a sign to remind her to pray. She found it a few months ago along a stretch of rural road where she and hundreds of other Southern California commuters drive home every day.

A 4-foot placard reads “Need Prayer?” Shawn Heggi, a self-appointed Christian spiritual counselor, sits in a blue tent in the field nearby.
Now Kim tries to stop every Friday to pray with Heggi, 35, and two of his friends. They pray for a solution to Kim’s financial troubles, the domestic violence victims she works with and the medical career she put on hold during her mother’s 11-year battle with ovarian cancer.
“I go to church when I can, but that’s on a set time,” Kim said. “There may be times when I don’t have time to go to church. This is just open, it’s free, it’s available for anybody, so I stop as often I can, when I can.”

Heggi’s unconventional ministry caters to worshippers on the go, strategically placed near a traffic-heavy intersection and two hospitals. It offers a more convenient venue to pray than an institutionalized church setting, especially in an era when church attendance is shrinking, said Richard Flory, senior research associate at University of Southern California’s Center for Religion & Civic Culture.
“People can stop by and unload what they have and it keeps them from having to go to church,” he said. “It’s 20 minutes and you go away. There’s no long-term commitment.”

And they do, by the dozens. Motorists frequently pull over to make a prayer request, read scripture or chat about God — and they’ll change the occasional flat tire, too.

“It’s just a dirt field, but to us it’s church,” said Heggi, a stout Redlands garbage truck driver who has been manning the drive-through stand for about nine months.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m for prayer anyway you can get it. Sounds like a great idea.

[HTR News]
“Bye-bye church. We’re busy.” That’s the message teens are giving churches today.

Only about one in four teens now participate in church youth groups, considered the hallmark of involvement; numbers have been flat since 1999. Other measures of religiosity — prayer, Bible reading and going to church — lag as well, according to Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., evangelical research company. This all has churches canceling their summer teen camps and youth pastors looking worriedly toward the fall, when school-year youth groups kick in.

“Talking to God may be losing out to Facebook,” says Barna president David Kinnaman.

“Sweet 16 is not a sweet spot for churches. It’s the age teens typically drop out,” says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, which found the turning point in a study of church dropouts. “A decade ago, teens were coming to church youth group to play, coming for the entertainment, coming for the pizza. They’re not even coming for the pizza anymore. They say, ‘We don’t see the church as relevant, as meeting our needs or where we need to be today.’ ”

“I blame the parents,” who didn’t grow up in a church culture, says Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor at First Family Church in Overland Park, Kan.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m sure there is a lot of blame to go around. But blaming parents only is stretching it. Having grown up in Youth Ministry and being a Youth Minister myself, I think it has more to do with hypocrisy that students see. When they see adults fighting in church over_____________ then they don’t want to have anything to do with that. Having edgy music or cool games doesn’t cut it. They can find that anywhere.

I’m still working with students now and what they want are authentic relationships. Age doesn’t matter if you treat them with respect and you are honest and authentic. Just my humble opinion.

What do you think?

[KERO]

Divine inspiration can come from many sources, but you may be a little surprised where one woman found some heavenly help.
Amanda Biezad contacted ABC 23 after she found what she described as a cross seared into a potato chip she was about to eat.
The cross has been the symbol of hope for Christians around the world for more than 2,000 years. From church steeples to the message of Calvary, now a bag of Lay’s potato chips could be added to the list for one Bakersfield woman.
Biezad said she has never seen anything quite like this before but is not ready to call it a miracle just yet.
“I don’t know, it’s either divine inspiration or some random rogue person that decided to stick it into the bag of chips, I don’t know, but I think it’s cool,” said Biezad.

Biezda added that she usually pays attention to what she eats and is glad that she didn’t take the next bite.
“I was talking to my family while I was eating chips. As I took a chip I saw the cross. I thought,’Wow; wait a ‘minute’. Then I just stopped and stared at it. My family was looking at me like I was crazy. I told them there is a cross burned into the center of the chip,” said Biezad.
The timing of the discovery couldn’t have been any better because she had just moved to Bakersfield and at that point was questioning if the move was the right one to make.

Read more here.