In Other News:

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ABBA as Anti-Christ

So ABBA is the Anti-Christ. Or maybe just the False Prophet. Ehh??   You decide.

Bjoern Ulvaeus spelled backwards is Sueavlu Nreojb. Which I’m pretty sure is Swedish for Six hundred sixty-six. A little known fact. (Or it could mean Swedish Fish. It's hard to translate.) However, the Book of 2 Opinions 12:74 says that the Antichrist will be a Nordic singer that will promote a cashless society.

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Shoeless Joe Bidden sticks foot in mouth...again

So the Veep told a pro-Obama crowd at a fund raiser that the Bin Laden raid was the greatest military gamble in over five centuries! Really, Joe? Said the VP, “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there. Do any one of you have a doubt that if that raid failed that this guy would be a one-term president?”

*****sigh***** Mr Vice President…I don’t have to go back 500 years. I don’t even have to go back 70 years. I suggest, Joe, that you Google the date June 6, 1944.

In the words of Gordon Ramsey, "You donkey! Hang your head in shame."

Lawyers fired for wearing orange

And I thought it was just me. Kudos to the executive at that law firm for firing these 14 minions for wearing orange to work. It is a blasphemous, devilish color. Everyone knows that Red and Black are God’s colors; holy and true. Orange? Satanic. The followings photographs give evidence to such reasoning.

Holy interstate caution sign, Batman.

 No subtitles needed.

Ellie Mea Clampett? Well, she was from the hills of Tennessee.

 Oh, wait. I said Orange clothes...not orange people. Did Anne Hathaway get a part as a giant Oompa Loompa?

Like I said, blasphemy.

 Except, that's a white shirt. Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, Clemson? Do they have degrees in color management? I think not.

And my favorite...

Greyhound tickets to Atlanta...$98
Day spent at Sue Billie's Hair Emporium...$98
12 hot dogs, four Cokes, and a pretzel...$98
#98, pansy orange XXXL windbreaker...$98
Realizing how awful orange looks on television...Priceless

 Now here is something to sing about!

 Glory, glory, to Old Georgia!

The Outrageous Nonsense Of Misplaced Faith

Dear friends, do you think you'll get anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person really has it? For instance, you come upon an old friend dressed in rags and half-starved and say, "Good morning, friend! Be clothed in Christ! Be filled with the Holy Spirit!" and walk off without providing so much as a coat or a cup of soup—where does that get you? Isn't it obvious that God-talk without God-acts is outrageous nonsense? James 2:14-17 (The Message)

John MacArthur tells the story of a queen that went to the theater to see a drama and wept her way through the entire drama. From beginning to end it was pure emotion. This was in the time of the carriages in years past. And she went out to get in her carriage and it was a very cold and wintry night and she had left her coachman out there where he belonged. He didn't belong with her class. She found him frozen to death and according to her biographer she shed not a single tear over his death.

That is just like us. We get all emotional at a movie or a TV story. Dramas are supposed to fill us with emotions. Back when Top Gun first came out, the US Navy set up a recruiting booth right outside of the theater. I went to see a Movie with Patty a few years ago, and it was just pathos laden. I won’t tell you the name of the movie. It was what we would call a chick-flick. Every woman came out just boo-hooing. I had to wring the estrogen out my shirt. It’s fine to go see movies. I’m not preaching against movies!  But do movies and TV and the theater inoculate us from the crisis and desperation all around us? Yesterday I saw a commercial for Christian Children’s Fund. How many of us see the little kid in Africa, who needs a sponsor, and we become incensed or even angry at their plight, but we don’t give a second thought about the plight of our own neighbors. WHEN, church; when are we going to care more about the lost living within 5 miles of the church than we do about our wayward nephews and nieces, sons and daughters, and cousins living three counties over!? When are we going to stop playing acting at being a live, breathing, and faith filled Christ follower? When are we going to stop living in our fanciful, self deceiving, self centered, fantasy world, and come back to reality? How long are we going to pine away over our lost relatives? Do we ever stop praying? NO! Not until it’s everlasting too late. But Jesus said (not what I SAY , what Jesus SAID) if they won’t heed the truth when they know the truth, give them over to the Satan and use that energy; shed those tears; invest that kingdom resource into someone who will respond to the Gospel of our Lord and Savor! Let us stop with the in-ward focus, and let us start focusing on the reachable.

Listen; if we want to see the Spirit of God fall in power, we have to act like the church that desires to see Him. We have to be like the churches that have experienced Holy Spirit revival. We have to take our resources and our money and make them subject to the task of reaching lost souls. So what say, ye? Will we be like the queen, or will we be like the Apostle Paul and say, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”?

More New Creatures In Christ

Abe Lincoln

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“The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s difficult to discern whether or not they are genuine.”
~ Abraham Lincoln

Baptism TKO

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My standard line before walking anyone into the baptistery has always been, "Don't worry. I haven't dropped anybody yet."

Well I still haven't dropped anybody, but Paul was about as close to knocking someone out as I've ever come. I usually take a step to my left before baptizing someone that's my own height. But after four baptisms in a row I forgot! It's a good thing he doesn't have much hair, cause it would have scraped the wall.

More Things I Ponder While The Ushers Are Taking Up The Offering

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If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would it be called Fed Up?

Do Lipton Tea employees take coffee breaks?

What hair color do they put on the drivers licenses of bald men?

If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?

Why do you press harder on the buttons of a remote control when you
know the batteries are dead?

If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a nuclear reactor out of a coconut shell and some palm fronds, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?

What happens if someone loses a lost and found box?

How do you throw away a garbage can?

If Americans throw rice at weddings, do the Chinese throw hamburgers?

Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?

Aren't all generalizations false?

Could someone ever get addicted to counseling?  If so, how could you treat them?

How come Superman could stop bullets with his chest, but always ducked when someone threw a gun at him?

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it?

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, "I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out"?

Herding Cats In Nashville; The Great Name Change Debate

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So the muckity-mucks at the home office have decided—again—that we Southern Baptists should consider changing the name of our convention. For several years there has been talk about "Southern" hindering the Gospel, slowing the growth of churches not located in the Southern parts of the United States, etc, etc. blah, blah, blah.

Look, I’m not about hindering growth, evangelism, or even perception. But I do take offence at certain things that are being thrown around out there about WHY we need to change our name. 

1) I, nor any Southern Baptist I have ever known, has ever owned a slave. No Southern Baptist I have ever known has been a slave. Seriously, it’s 2012! It’s time to get over it. If we are forever and always, Amen, going to associate the term Southern with slavery, then we need to change the title of everything Southern. The SEC? I know, let’s call it the Not Northeast Conference. The NNC. How about Southern Bell? Let’s change the name to Irrelevant In A Digital Age Bell.  IIADAB (pronounced Eye-A-Dabs) Or Southwest Airlines? They can be the Nonracist Operators of Planes and Excursions. NOPE for short.

2) If we want to change the name, can we at least not call it something as cheesy as the Great Commission Baptist Convention? If I were a Methodist, I’d be pretty offended at the connotation that I could no longer practice the Great Commission with-out changing denominations. Honestly, what happened to the International Baptist Convention? At least that aligned with what the “changers” say about why we should change the name.

3) If we are offending SOME people who don’t like to be called Southern, (As if that were a bad thing. Again, I mention the SEC, and will add boiled peanuts and grits to the list) how many are we offending? I am so sick and tired of being told that because I hail from the Southern part of the United States that I am an ignorant racist, and that those from the left coast are so culturally and intellectually superior. So, in order not to offend a minority, we will offend a majority. Yeah, that makes sense. 

4) If we change from Southern Baptist, we will offend Baptists from South Korea? What about Southern Manchuria; or Baptists at the South Pole? Dare I ask it???? What about Baptists from Southern California? What about Baptists from Southern North Dakota? HAS ANYONE ASKED BAPTISTS FROM SOUTHERN NORTH DAKOTA ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS? Huh? Have you, Task Force!?

5) Speaking of which…What is the big deal, Task Force? I thought we were already autonomous?  Soooooo…now you are giving us permission to call ourselves whatever we want, but you have already purchased website domain names? ****Ummmm…just in case. ***** Can’t the offended churches in the offended regions just call themselves whatever they want already? The biggest church in our convention, Saddleback, already does not use the term Southern Baptist in their name, correct? 

6) Marketingly speaking, why not pull a Kentucky Fried Chicken move here. When some people thought “Kentucky Fried” sounded unhealthy, they rebranded to KFC. What’s wrong with SBC as our official moniker? 

7) My real concern here is that it seems to me the ones who are fussing the most about “Southern,” also don’t like "Baptist." What’s next? I’m afraid to know. Will we be afraid to call ourselves Christians? Remember back in the late 80’s: there was a coalition formed called RAD? Rockers Against Drugs. An oxymoron of the 80’s if ever there was one. I’m afraid the next step will be a similar coalition; we’ll call this one CAC, Christians Against Christ. Or BASS. Baptists Against Seeming Southern.

All-in-all, this is a big to-do about nothing. I hate to go using Southern speak and all, but to quote my pappy,

 “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

(Great Commission Baptist Convention translation: “If the opportunity for improvement is not strategically aligned in a manner that proliferates the paradigm shift sought out by the focus group’s core competency for a bandwidth of change, consider empowering the static traditional approach to synergize the industry standard. Otherwise, you’re just herding cats.”)