Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

Source

[From me]

[HT] Steve Thompson

[Washington Times]

Church demographers have been saying for awhile that Catholics are in big trouble if you take away growth from immigration and sure enough, the 2009 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, which just came out, showed the Catholic Church declined .59 percent or 398,000 members in 2007. They still have some 67 million adherents, though.

 The Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, have been seeing faltering numbers for years in their own head counts. Their downward shift is finally being registered by the Yearbook, a bible of sorts for religion writers and scholars. They lost .24 percent or 40,000 members. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to their reported 16.2-million-member total but no one likes a shrinking membership base, no matter how slight. 

The churches that are growing are:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (up 1.63 percent to 5,873,408; the Assemblies of God (up 0.96 percent to 2,863,265); Jehovah’s Witnesses (up 2.12 percent to 1,092,169); and the Church of God of Cleveland, Tenn. (up 2.04 percent to 1,053,642). The Mormons are now America’s fourth-largest church group, having surpassed nearly every mainline Protestant denomination. 

Read more here.

[From me]

Good for the AoG and Church of God.  What is scary to me is that the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses are growing.  Now the Mormons are the 4th largest religious group! Maybe they take their faith, flawed as it may be, more seriously than followers of Jesus.

What do you think?

Ministry isn’t just at church!

Matthew 11:28-30

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I Peter 5:7

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

I came clean to my family last night. I told my wife and two children that I had sinned by taking on a burden that I wasn’t meant to carry.  I’ve been stressing and trying to figure out how I could sell our house in Charlotte when no one is even looking at it. Well yesterday we designed a “burden box.” It is a box where we place all of our burdens in the box and pray over the burdens we put in it. Once the burden goes in the box, we can’t mention it or think about it. The only time we can open it is once the burden has been lifted.  At that time we can take the burden out and destroy it.

So last night I placed a index card with the word “house” written on it. One of the children also put in a card of a burden they were carrying.  We prayed of them.  Now I can’t mention what is on that card again.  Who knows what God has planned in regards to “that” burden but I’m at peace that it is not mine to carry anymore.

[Matt Knight brought this to my attention.  These are not my words but the man that wrote the article]

[ABP  by  Miguel De La Torre is associate professor of social ethics at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver}

Our faith tells us that anyone can come to Jesus. The evangelistic message is that Jesus will turn no one away. We can come just as we are, ill and diseased. All who seek healing will find salvation and liberation in the arms of Jesus, for his unconditional love accepts everyone -- regardless of their race or ethnicity. 

Or does it? Matthew 15:21-28 recounts the story of a Canaanite woman who came to Jesus desperately seeking a healing for her daughter.

The Canaanites during Jesus' time were seen by Jews as being a mixed race of inferior people, much in the same way that some Euro-Americans view Hispanics today, specifically the undocumented. The Canaanites of old -- like Latino/as of our time -- did not belong. They were no better than "dogs."

For this reason Jesus' response to the Canaanite woman is troublesome. When she appealed to Jesus to heal her sick child, our Lord responded by saying: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not good to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs."

No matter how much I try to redeem the text, I cannot ignore the fact that Jesus called this woman of color a dog! I am forced to ask the uncomfortable question: Was Jesus a racist?

Read more here.

[From me]

I don’t even know where to start. I think Dr. De La Torre has bought into the Washington DC Social Gospel. Jesus wasn’t a racist. He could not be God and sin and racism grieves the heart of God. This is just plain and simple poor exegesis. If this is the kind of trash that is taught in Seminaries our churches are in trouble.

What do you think?