Hurricane Sandy Comes Calling in Rahway

For the second year in a row, a major storm is blowing into our town. Right now, the winds are very high (possibly 80 mph), but it hasn't rained that much. The heavy rain bands are south of us. The center of the storm is aimed at Cape May, NJ. Rahway is two hours drive north of there.

We'll see what happens tomorrow. If I have power, I'll post some pictures.

Peace, Pastor Bill

Go Tell it on the Mountain - Toby Keith

Happy Friday

Christian Pastor Murdered in Syria

 
The civil war in Syria continues to claim lives. More than 30,000 have already died in the conflict. Now, with the rule of law unbridled, innocent Christians are becoming victims as radicals take advantage of the situation.

The Middle East Director of Christian Aid Mission says marauding bands of militants are responsible. "They're not necessarily Syrians, but they're very radical Muslims, and their goal is to eradicate Christians. They believe it's an abomination to have Christians within Syria."
 
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Persecuted Christians in Cuba

He has been interrogated more than 20 times, and humiliated, beaten and threatened. His interrogators blamed him for the growth of his church, accusing him of using “secret indoctrination methods” from the United States. For these offences, he was forced to spend six months cleaning public outhouses every day. He was also prohibited from leaving the island for more than four years. The officials in charge never told him why his exit permits were never granted. There was always an excuse: “We lost the paper work!” or “We never got your application.”

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Kenny Chesney & Randy Travis sing Baptism

Happy Friday

Ministry in the Oil Patch

Obtaining Oil and Gas from shale has created boomtowns in North Dakota. But there isn’t enough housing for the newcomers. A Lutheran church is one of the few to minister to the men who work the oil fields.

The heavy leather work boots are stained with oil and the reddish dust that churns through the air in the small but growing town. The population has tripled in less than 10 years. New drilling technology has revived the state's oil industry. About 20 new oil-patch workers arrive in the 20,000-person town every day, by Mayor Ward Koeser's estimate. Each worker faces the same challenge within 24 hours of arriving in this prairie town: finding a bed in a boomtown bursting at the seams that offers nothing even resembling a homeless shelter.

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Glenn Beck and Union Theological Seminary

After Glenn Beck criticized one of their professors, the students at Union Theological Seminary invited him to become a student there and learn what the Bible says about social justice. Jesus said a lot about helping the poor, and if I remember correctly he said something about taxes; something like, you should pay them and focus upon God? Something like that. Anyway, the video is cute and below is a link to a letter from the president of Union offering Mr. Beck a scholarship and help with paying for room and board. Enjoy.

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Let There Be Photosynthesis

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. Genesis 1:11 NIV

Before these was anything else, there were single celled organisms that used carbon dioxide and produced oxygen as a by product. Molecular oxygen is not stable in a planets atmosphere and so life processes must be present in order for there to be oxygen. And so, the first thing God did after creating our planet, was to create living creatures so that you and I could breathe. Below is a link to an article from the Biologos Foundation that explains how this works.

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By the way, since there is no known way for molecular oxygen to exist in a planet’s atmosphere without biological life processes, the search for life in far off planets is focused on the chemical composition of the atmosphere in the hope of finding oxygen.

Peace, Pastor Bill

Father Along by Brad Paisley

Happy Friday!

Dangerous Worship in France

 
As more than 100 Haitian evangelicals danced and sang on Easter Sunday, the floor caved in at their makeshift church north of Paris. The deaths of a 6-year-old girl and 47-year-old woman who fell through the second story of the rented house in Stains were a tragic sign that Christian gatherings have outgrown available space in the secular French capital.

"Many immigrants that come from French islands and territories are fervent in their religious expression," said Gilbert Bilezikian, a pastor and former Wheaton College professor born and educated in France. "[They] cannot gather without making a lot of noise, so it is difficult to find places to meet."
 
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Thoughts on the Controversy Over Jesus and His Spouse

Below are links to two pretty good articles that will give some perspective on the scrap of papyrus that says Jesus had a wife.

Before you read them, here are some things to consider.

1. The papyrus has no context. We don’t know the author, we don’t know where it was found, we don’t know the time period and we don’t know the history and culture into which it was created. Without context, the fragment is meaningless.
2. By 325 AD the fundamentals of Christian Doctrine were settled. These fundamentals are still the foundation of Christian belief. Many ideas about God and Jesus existed in this time period, but those that fell outside of the fundamentals were rejected. This includes the idea that Jesus was married. Thus, whoever wrote this credit card scrap of papyrus was not a Christian, he/she was a heretic.
3. The owner of the papyrus fragment is attempting to sell his collection of Coptic writings to Harvard Divinity School. When there is a lot of money on the table, I become extremely skeptical of anything and everything.

Here are the links;

http://ethicsdaily.com/flimsy-papyrus-draws-itchy-ears-cms-20044

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/papyrus-fragment-stirs-discussion-again-about-jesus-and-a-wife-cms-20013

Battling the Exploitation of Women

Watch Women Are Not the Problem, They Are the Solution on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Click below for a review by Christianity Today of the book, Half the Sky, by Nicholas D. Kristof. It’s about the world wide exploitation and oppression of women, and their efforts to overcome.

The Christianity Today Review…

Jesus Take the Wheel - Carrie Underwood

Happy Friday

Pastoral Burnout

If you wish to read these statistics, click on the graphic for a larger view.

These figures sound right to me. But I need to see where they come from and how good the study and/or studies are.

The claim that 1,500 pastors quit per month is very shocking. If it is that high, then we in the ministry are in a lot of trouble.

I can say with surety that pastoral burnout and conflict are the main sources of stress on us ministers. Moral failure is a rarity, but the other two happen everyday. The pressure upon me since I became a minister is way beyond anything I experienced when I was a banker/lender.

This graphic comes from the book, Pastors at Greater Risk by HB London, Jr.

Peace, Pastor Bill

Public Photos of Private Actions

In Puritan times, citizens who trespassed against the law were subject, among other punishments, to humiliation at the pillory, something Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts memorably in The Scarlet Letter. The pillory was

so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks -- against our common nature -- whatever be the delinquencies of the individual -- no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame.

The days of the pillory have long passed. But the humiliation of the public gaze—for social transgressions, if not criminal ones—lives on, thanks to Facebook and the internet. 

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Good-Bye Mrs. Maxine Carey

Mrs. Maxine A. (nee Martin) Carey, 97, died on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012, at home. Funeral services will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012 at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of Rahway. Interment will be in Hazelwood Cemetary, Clark N.J. Visitation is Tuesday from 2 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. at the Lehrer-Gibilisco Funeral Home, 275 W. Milton Ave., Rahway, N.J. 07065.www.lehrergibilisco.com. Mrs. Carey was born in Yates Center, N.Y. and lived in Roselle, N.J., for two years and then in Rahway, N.J. for the past 70 years. A life member of the First Baptist Church of Rahway, she was a member of the Judson Class of the church, taught Sunday school and was very active in the church. Mrs. Carey was a kindergarten teacher for 30 years at Sherman School in Roselle Park, N.J. Prior to that, she taught school in a one room class in New York State. She was a member of the Rahway Historical Society for many years and of the Civil War Round Table of Woodbridge, N.J. She was an avid baker. Mrs. Carey was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and was loved by her neighbors and will be missed by all. She was predeceased by her husband of 59 years, George P. Carey who died in 1996. Surviving is a son, James M. Carey and his wife, Jo-Ann Malanga; a daughter, Ann E. Orban and her husband, Joseph; four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the First Baptist Church, 177 Elm Ave. Rahway, N.J. 07065.

Published in Star-Ledger on September 30, 2012