October 28, 2010

Apologetic or Apologetics

A few months ago I had a run in with a youth pastor peer that made me a little queasy. In no uncertain terms he went on to explain how in 30 seconds he could prove the existence of God. That's right, in a mere 30 seconds he was going to do what most if not all of us have failed to do, provide an air tight case, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is in fact a God in Heaven. He then went on to explain (in a little under 30 seconds I might add) a watered down version of a First Cause argument for the existence of God.

October 26, 2010

God Numbered The Hairs On Your Head, But Will He Whiten Your Teeth?

Now I will be the first to admit that my Baptist upbringing makes me a little uneasy with the charismatic spiritual gifts, and experiences. While I readily admit their historical presence in scripture I find myself as much of a skeptic about modern day 'outpourings' as your average atheist.

October 21, 2010

But How Do We Know We Are Right?

Last year after a gurgling Fall giving devotions at youth group that amounted to little more than 'Jesus loves you, Be good' I decided we needed to go deeper. So we did. I started from square one asking the question 'Is there any reason to think there is any sort of god out there?' We took 10 weeks or so and went from there until we finally arrived to talking about who Jesus is, who he claimed to be, what he did to back up those claims and finally we talked about Jesus raising from the dead.

October 19, 2010

You Are What You Eat

There is a little piece of advice I remember getting from time to time as a child; 'you are what you eat'. The advice as far as I have come to understand it was a warning against eating really fatty food because you would become a fatty person. Given the national obesity rates I would suspect that this advice was never really taken seriously. After all the aim of the advice was to get to people eat their vegetables, and skimp on the junk food. From my vantage point I count 5 fast food restaurants on the street I work.

October 14, 2010

A Strange Conversation

I already posted my Thursday blog but I just had a conversation too odd to wait and too long for a status update so I had to make another.

While I was working at Starbucks a woman stopped and noticed I was reading a book titled 'The Reason for God'. She talked briefly to me about how great it was that I was reading a book titled as such and what the Lord was putting on her heart. Apparently God has been putting on her heart to do outreach and teach. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and I went back to work and she sat elsewhere to enjoy her coffee.

It Is Easier To Give Birth Then Raise The Dead

I work at what would be rightly called a small historic church. We are coming up on our 120th year as a church and without some significant changes our best years are well behind us. This is a truth that weighs on me. Like so many evangelical churches in the western world our heyday was decades ago. Reading the history of the church I find a church that was once full of people, full of life, innovative, and sought to make a difference in people's lives and impact the community.

October 12, 2010

Chain 'Letters' for God Must Stop

One of the things that I am grateful for Facebook and other social networking sites for is my 'chain mail' e-mails have all but disappeared. In the last two years or so I have virtually received no e-mails that needed to be sent to 100 of my friends within the next 5 minutes. Which is great because as it stands I must have about a million years worth of bad luck coming, I should die 'tomorrow' for the next ten years and I clearly hate God, Jesus and all my friends and family. I just can't bring myself to forwarding such nonsense to people.

October 7, 2010

Ordained

It's been a few years in coming now but in 10 days (October 17th 2010) I will become an ordained minister. I will in some sense cease to be Mr Christopher D Drew and become Rev Christopher D Drew. I think I should be more excited about that than I am at this moment. Truthfully I find myself a little introspective about the process. I am trying to sort out how I feel about everything that is going on here at my church, at the youth group and in life in general.

October 5, 2010

Science and Moral Relativism

I found myself thinking yesterday as I was putting groceries in my car that the 'New Atheists' have been somewhat quiet of late. What was a red hot debate between New Atheists and Christian Thinkers had cooled some and it had been a while since I found myself engaged in a conversation or debate that really hinged on 'New Atheist' arguments. I joked, really to myself, that everyone must be busily writing their next book and are too busy to argue right now.