My Thoughts For Today

 I go to church on Wednesday night to hear the word of God preached. To be fed with some hidden manna.

The events of 9/11 happened. I remember it happening. People over reacted and freaked out about it. Pastor Mitchell did not. Neither did I.

The death of my wife affected me far more than 9/11 did. The death of my wife hurt me personally. 9/11 hurt us as a nation, but me, not so much.

Perspective helps us endure the trials of life. Experience helps us rightly process the events of life.

Most of the anti-America sentiment comes from universities and the national news. Most people do not feel like those radicals do. I've lived through this before.

The Jesus People Revival, of which we are a part, saved us from the turbulent and dangerous time of the 1960's.

Pray for your pastor that he can rightly divide the word of God and that he can bring us sermons like apples of gold in pitchers of silver.

A Biblical Perspective.

"let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak..." James 1:19

God gave every person two ears and only one mouth.  James understood this when he wrote these words. Some people feel the need to speak up or to speak out or to defend what they believe. They are swift to speak and slow to hear.

Being a pastor means that the focus of your ministry is speaking. Speaking in prayer, speaking in counseling, speaking in preaching, and speaking in fellowship. Their job is to bring a word in season for those who are weary I wonder if pastors ever get tired of talking?

Some people feel it is a sin not to speak up to defend the faith. It's is God's word. Let Him defend Himself.

Men feel the need to fix problems. Fixing means working or giving advice. Contrary to popular opinion, men do like to talk.

Women, we are told, like to talk. They like to teach and instruct which involves a lot of talking. Women see the world in a unique way and they definitely talk about their world in their own way.

Children should be seen and not heard. But they learn early on how to talk in an appropriate manner.

The Bible makes is clear that we all, men, women, children, and pastors need to keep watch over our words. Swift to hear, not swift to speak, is the Biblical perspective.

Why I Blog

 I do not keep this blog because of the number of followers I have or the amount of money I make from it. I do not write to impress anyone. I use this blog as a sort of online journal. I write things that are important to me. I write things that I feel strongly about. I mull over ideas and when an idea rises above all the others, I may write that idea here.

I also suspect that AI bots are scouring this blog looking for published material to steal. I don't care. I used to think that I had thousands of views every day. Now I guess that there are thousands of bots looking for data.

If you are a real person and you are interested in what I write, welcome aboard.

I have been blogging for over 10 years now. I'm not going to quit because high tech is involved in this enterprise. My blog is my thoughts and my ideas. It's how I see the world. No pictures, no video, no monetization. Just me writing because I need to write.

Local News

I am going to try subscribing to the newspaper. It's old fashioned. It's only on Sunday. But it's not too expensive and maybe I can stay on top of what's happening outside of church. It will start delivery tomorrow. And it gives me access to the digital format too.

My Thoughts Today

 Go into all the world and preach the gospel is a good motivator for church planting. We plant churches into unchurched areas with this command ringing in our ears. But at some point a young man must learn to be a pastor to those new people who know nothing about how to live a Christian life. Evangelism might get him there. But shepherding God's flock will keep him there.

Is it really necessary for some pastors to spend the best of their time traveling around the world to preach at conferences? Pastor Mitchell's place was unique in that there was no one else with his qualifications. But we have pastors and we have leaders now. Does our pastor really need to be somewhere besides home all of the time?

While pastor's vision is for the regions beyond, many in his church are just wondering how to pay the bills and how to stay afloat or how to survive. While pastor says go ye, some in his church are crying oh me!

Maturity comes from surviving the experiences of life. You learn that when the bottom falls out, there is still solid footing under you. People seem to mature to the level of their pastor. That's why the Prescott church is solid as a rock and mature beyond their years. They have survived things that would be the end for some people. Pastor Mitchell never treated us like children.

God bless us all.

TV Is Not Useful

 After living here for a while I noticed that things were happening locally and I would not find out about it until after it had happened. I do not listen to local radio and I do not subscribe to a local newspaper here. So I thought that I would buy a television and an antenna to see if I could tune in to local news and find our what's happening before it happened.

Well, after I got my smart tv all hooked up, I found out that even with an antenna, local television stations do no broadcast their stations over the airwaves anymore. I live in a big city and thought that with my antenna I could tune in to local news. I can't. Here's what I learned in my short time of having a TV in my house.

1. No local stations are available.

2. Network news is the same old same old every day.

3. I am not a big movie watcher so a bazillion movies to watch did nothing for me.

4. I would watch national news and I would not feel that I had learned anything useful.

So the television is packed away. I had no idea that you couldn't just watch tv anymore.

Will We Survive?

What's that sound? That's the sound of the biggest generation in US history passing from the scene. The baby boomers are retiring in droves now. Not in our Fellowship, but everywhere else. And the early part of the Boomers is starting to die off. In 20 years there will not be many of us left. We have already entered the realm of the unimportant and the irrelevant. We thought that we would be fresh and vital forever, but time is catching up with us.

In church, our cultural and spiritual wisdom is of little use to the generations coming after us. We sang hymns out of hymnals. We only clapped on the choruses. We only stood after the singing was finished. We did how we were taught. Now we seem old fashioned and out of touch. We still use the same method to teach adult Sunday School. We still try to have morning prayer like we were still teens. And like every generation that ever lived, we are fighting to not grow old.

I had determined that if pastor Mitchell keeled over dead while preaching, that I would not come back. That was too much for me to handle. Thankfully he didn't die in the pulpit. But he died nonetheless. Now we have preachers who are young and full of zeal and with big egos preaching to us. God help us.

Our Fellowship can deal with retirement of pastors, or they can just wait until they all die off and then see  what happens. Of course, my generation will not be around to direct the far off future of the Fellowship.

All of the great men of the Bible are long gone and dead. In a few more years, all of the great men of the first wave of our revival will also be gone, and dead. What then? Will we survive? Will we survive the Silver Tsunami that is rushing toward us with a steady roar.