Doubting Thomas Blog

Archive for the ‘church’ Category

Instead of making resolutions, I’m writing down plans…well, not plans exactly, but stuff that I want to do.

I think most of these ideas are feasible. What do you think?

1. Finish the house we started in 2009. I’d like to incorporate green technology, but we’ll see.
2. Get back to running my favorite seasonal business, The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co.
3. Go to more pro baseball games than we did in 2009. I’d like to see my first major league game. In Toronto. I know what you’re saying…someone my age has never seen the MLB in person? Nope.
4. This one is related to #2 above. I will lose a little weight and continue to improve my cardiovascular health. Riding The Buffalo Bike Taxi Co, it would be nearly impossible to gain weight.
5. Do more writing, even if it just more-frequent posts on this blog. I do want to get back to real writing, though.
6. I’d like to learn to speak another language. I studied French in high school and college, so I remember some of that, but “Quiero aprender a hablar español de este año.” (Without having to use Google Translate.)
7. I have a bunch of audio cassettes that I want to convert into digital files, so that I can actually listen to that music. (Younger readers may want to ask their parents if they have any audio cassettes in the basement that they could look at.)
8. I say this every year, but this year is different (partly because of the divorce). I want to spend more time with old friends. I have not ever visited my friends Jesse, Rich, Craig, or Greg at their houses.
9. I’d like to buy an electric car. A Tesla Roadster would be nice, but I would “settle” for a a hybrid Fusion.
10. We live near a lot of water, so I’d like to make sure we get the canoe wet a lot this summer. The Buffalo River is a lot more scenic than you’d expect.
11. Another thing I’ve wanted to do for years, but somehow haven’t found the time to do, is ride my bicycle across New York State. The Erie Canal is a great way to go.
12. I want to take the boys camping, somewhere that they’ll never forget. I think the Adirondacks would be great.
13. We’ve been attending church more regularly, but this year, I would like to make it such a standard part of our life that the boys don’t resist going, when they are at my house on a Sunday. But here’s a problem I haven’t figured out how to resolve: I like three different churches, but I can’t go to all three on the same Sunday morning. Ultimately, I think it will be better if I am more actively involved with one of those three churches, doing things besides just attending morning church services.
14. Many of these things can be done, and some should be done, with family. Baseball, bicycling, and church, for example. This year, I would like to have time to visit my family members at their houses, but also to make the house we’re working on large enough for everyone to gather here for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

What about you? Will you be doing any of these activities?

This display of palm-leaf crosses at the grocery store made me think that some people must really want to appear that they went to church on Palm Sunday.

Bonus points if you know who sings these lyrics:

Little crosses – I see on my T.V.
Take my money – and give me some of these
Little crosses – with lots of color and sound
I’m in heaven – with all these treasures around

And ever since he bought them he sits and watches
He’s got everything now, he really loves those crosses…

Is it just me, or did anyone else find the fact that the megachurch has armed security guards disturbing?

From cnn.com:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) — “It seemed like it was me, the gunman, and God,” said Jeanne Assam, describing her feelings as she confronted a man who charged into her Colorado Springs church Sunday firing a weapon.

Assam, a church security guard with law enforcement experience, fired her own weapon at the invader and stopped his attack, police say.

Also, when did “megachurch” sneak into the national vocabulary?

Tonight someone I haven’t seen in 13 or 14 years IMed me while I was online hoping to connect with a tech support guy. We chatted for a while, learned more about a certain part of Washington than I knew previously, and then I checked out a recommended link to a site that came up during the conversation. I browsed brieflly, and this one page was funny, I thought.

Check it out at Wittenburg Door.com:

MISPLACED TAPE CAUSES MEGACHURCH SCANDAL
The ensuing near-schism arose, however, not because of the content of the tape, but because an unauthorized person had somehow gained access to the video room. This information led to an emergency congregational meeting immediately afterwards where another level of electronic protocol was added to security.

“The heart and soul of this church is the technological ministry,” said Pastor Josiah Grubb. “We are too big a body for any of us to personally know each other, and besides, how can we meet the needs of all our religion consumers without our techie stuff?”

You have to read the rest of it, to get the whole joke. Pretty funny stuff.

One of these days I’m going to make a list of literal interpretations of the Bible that we just shouldn’t follow, but for now, let’s just enjoy the sanctimonious self-righteousness of this North Country preacher/city council rep.

Church dumps Sunday school teacher for being female
The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 after she had taught there for 54 years.

WATERTOWN, New York (AP) — The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job — outside of the church.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city’s day-to-day operations is a woman.

“I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to” outside of the church, LaBouf wrote Saturday.

Mayor Jeffrey Graham, however, was bothered by the reasons given Lambert’s dismissal.

“If what’s said in that letter reflects the councilman’s views, those are disturbing remarks in this day and age,” Graham said. “Maybe they wouldn’t have been disturbing 500 years ago, but they are now.”

Lambert has publicly criticized the decision, but the church did not publicly address the matter until Saturday, a day after its board met.

In a statement, the board said other issues were behind Lambert’s dismissal, but it did not say what they were.