Compassion: The Ministry of Paying Attention by Keri Wyatt Kent
This monthly column is my gift to you, a faithful servant in ministry. As a co-laborer in Christ, I want to encourage you to care of your own soul, to take time to nurture your relationship with God through spiritual practices. We regularly reflect in this space on how soul-care is critical to long-term ministry success. If you’re not growing, if you’re not keeping your own soul healthy, it’s hard to tend to the souls of others. I sometimes feel like the gal who gets to ring the bell at recess, to give permission for you to play, to rest, to just enjoy God. I pray that refreshment will water your soul, help it to thrive.
There is another type of growth and it comes from serving, from imitating Jesus who took on the nature of servant (see Philippians 2). If that’s true and we want to be like God, we have to know what he’s like. Throughout the Bible, poets and prophets describe God in this way:
“The Lord is gracious and compassionate; slow to anger, abounding in love.” (see Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 145:8, and Joel 2:13).
And the Bible is clear, that God’s people are called to be much the same: gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, loving. We know we can’t attain God’s standard, but with his help, we can do much more than we thought. If that grace flows through us, we can share it with others. If we experience his compassion, we can pass it on.
OLCM Baptized 3
Another baptism happened on August 9, 2009. Three souls followed the Lord through water baptism. It was a hot, sunny Sunday but everyone is very excited for the baptism. Ate Bebe Pacurib, Charilou Estano and a young people from Tambulilid named Jerome finally decided to take a step of faith in obeying God’s word.
As usual just before baptism day, I went out to Lilion to reserve two cottages for the OLCM. The day was a blessed day. Below are some pictures from the event.
Our Sole, Soul-Satisfaction
“As for me, I will behold Your Face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with Your likeness.”
Psalm 17:15
As Warren Wiersbe once said, “If you look at others, you get distressed; if you look at yourself, you get depressed; but, if you look to Jesus, you’ll be blessed.”
Occasionally someone will ask, “What does Jesus look like?” The response depends upon the one answering the question. Sometimes it’s “I don’t know” or “I don’t have a clue.” Other times the answerer will launch into a description based upon his Middle Eastern descent, with black hair, dark eyes, olive-colored skin, etc.
While it’s true that most of us envision Him “in our own image”—i.e., if we’re Caucasian, white. . .Asian, brown-skinned with dark hair and eyes, etc., such a response misses the point of David’s words in today’s moving Manna.
We must remember the shepherd-king’s eschatology wasn’t as defined or refined as ours. Everyone, good and bad, went to the same place (according to his beliefs): Sheol, or the place of shadowy existence for all folks. However, it would seem that he. . .like the other patriarchs of faith before him. . .somehow viewed his Creator differently than the average person.
Women in Ministry
“What does the Bible say about women in ministry?”
There is perhaps no more hotly debated issue in the church today than the issue of women serving as pastors/preachers. As a result, it is very important to not see this issue as men versus women. There are women who believe women should not serve as pastors and that the Bible places restrictions on the ministry of women, and there are men who believe women can serve as preachers and that there are no restrictions on women in ministry. This is not an issue of chauvinism or discrimination. It is an issue of biblical interpretation.
The Word of God proclaims, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12). In the church, God assigns different roles to men and women. This is a result of the way mankind was created and the way in which sin entered the world (2 Timothy 2:13-14). God, through the apostle Paul, restricts women from serving in roles of teaching and/or having spiritual authority over men. This precludes women from serving as pastors, which definitely includes preaching to, teaching, and having spiritual authority over men.
Women as Deacons: Can Women Serve As Deacons In The Church?
“Can women serve as deacons in the church?”
Scripture is not completely clear whether a woman can serve as a deacon or not. The statement that deacons are to be “men worthy of respect” (1 Timothy 3:8 NIV) and the qualification “the husband of but one wife” (1 Timothy 3:12) would seem to disqualify women from serving as deacons. However, some interpret 1 Timothy 3:11 as referring to women deacons because the Greek word translated “wives” can also be translated “women.” Paul likely here refers not to deacons’ wives, but to the women who serve as deacons. The use of the word “likewise” as an introduction in verse 8 suggests a third group of leaders in addition to elders and deacons. Also, Paul gave no requirements for elders’ wives when outlining the qualifications for eldership. Why would he then list qualifications for deacons’ wives? If it were important for the wives of leaders to behave in a certain way, it is logical to assume he would be more—or at least equally—concerned for the elders’ wives since elders are in a more prominent position in the church. But he makes no such demands on elders’ wives.
Selling Evolution by Mark Pagel
Selling evolution
by Mark Pagel [1]
Nature 447, 533 (31 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447533a; Published online 30 May 2007
BOOK REVIEWED-Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives
by David Sloan Wilson
Delacorte Press: 2007. 400 pp. $24
Evolutionary biologists — those enthusiastic foot-soldiers of Darwin’s grand notion that life evolves by a process of descent with modification — cannot understand why so many people reject the great man’s theory, and often in favour of some form of creationist account of the existence and diversity of life on Earth. In the opening pages of David Sloan Wilson’s new popular-science book, hopefully entitled Evolution for Everyone, we discover that 54% of adults in the United States prefer to believe that humans did not evolve from some earlier species. What makes this figure surprising is that it is up from 46% in 1994.
Where have the evolutionists gone wrong? One answer is staring them in the face but not often noticed. A double irony is that it derives from their own theory: if people differ in the strength or conviction of their religious beliefs, if children tend to acquire religious beliefs from their parents, and if religious people, for whatever set of reasons, tend to have more children, then it follows from Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection that religious belief will spread: quod erat demonstrandum.
Us AND Them by Dan Beaty: Essay About Organized Church
Viewing the Organized Church
For the past 7 years since my wife and I began doing Home Church, one question has persisted: How do we view the denominational/organized churches and those who attend them? I have to admit that my initial feeling was one of distaste and even disgust for a time. After all, did not some of the errors, excesses and unbiblical forms and practices of the traditional church system drive us to discovering the freedom and greater effectiveness of Home Church?
Our experience was that after having devoted nearly two decades of service to the traditional church system, we were beginning to see its failures on many fronts. From that God began to show us how many of the things we previously read into the book of Acts as being normal church life were simply not there. We saw how open the meetings were in the New Testament in comparison to the typical North American church service. We also saw how the leaders were expected to serve more than be served and adulated. Besides that, the attention given to the church building itself was compared to the First Century, when special church buildings were not given much consideration at all.
Having church in the home, of course, does not automatically fix everything. I see it as a step in the right direction, that direction being towards God’s perfect will for His people. But if we are not careful another dangerous step can inadvertently be taken in the wrong direction, away from God’s Heart and Mind for us!
The Corinthian Church
Text: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Introduction
Starting today, we will be having a new series of sermons about the book of Corinthians. Before we start, let us take a short background study of the book of 1 Corinthians and the city itself.
The City of Corinth is:
* Center of Commerce. It has two harbors (1) Cenchrea, which is six miles to the east of the Saronic Gulf. (2) Lechion, which is a mile and a half to the north on the Corinthian gulf. Trade flowed through the city from Italy and Spain to the west and from Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Egypt to the east.
* Center of Culture. The city is predominantly influenced by the Greek culture. Furthermore, people are very interested in Greek philosophy and placed a high premium on wisdom.
* Center of Religion. Not necessarily Christian religion since Christianity is still expanding and has been newly introduced to the pagan society, nevertheless, Corinth is religious. It has at least 12 temples though we really don’t know if these temples stood at a single time during the time of Paul.
* Center of Immorality. Corinth is religious but because one of their main gods was Aphrodite, the goddess of love whose followers practice religious prostitution, then religious prostitution has been tolerable in the city.
The Corinthian Christian Church at this time is also having lots of problems to which we will talk one at a time as we go along this book slowly.
As for today, let us try to know first what is the Corinthian Church, and what they possess as Christians.
In His Image
“And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly.”
I Corinthians 15:49
What sin disfigures, defiles and defaces, Grace restores, revives and renews.
“In His image.”
That’s what God said He’d do that day—i.e., “make man in His image” (Gen. 1:26)—although His use of “our” there is part of the basis for our belief in the Trinity. Even so, trying to understand this desire/design (“in His image”) is almost as hard as trying to understand how God can be one in three Persons.
The Hebrew word “tselem” is used there for “image” and basically means “a shade, resemblance, etc.” and when coupled with the next phrase—“after our likeness” (Heb. “demuwth”—“resemblance, model, similitude, shape, etc.”)—in v.26a, we realize He was talking about the essence of our being, not our physical appearance.
Simply put, only mankind has the ability to think and choose. Other creatures operate primarily on instinct and conditioned response, not a conscious, intentional act of the will. Thus, we, who are the crowning act of God’s creation, also have more responsibility in our choices—primarily because of our having been created “in His image.”