I have come across this interesting question lately and would like to see some discussion on the topic here.  I found a blog post over at Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin.  His points are intriguing and I am curious about what you all may think.   I have reprinted the excerpts below:

“So let me start with the punch line. First, what is a woman’s place in a worship service? The same as a man’s - at the foot of the cross of Christ, praising God in the power of the Spirit for the mercy he’s shown us in the Savior. Second, is it biblical for a woman to lead a worship service? Yes and no. There. That clears everything up, doesn’t it?”

“Part of the difficulty in answering this question is that the New Testament doesn’t contain a worship leader job description. What exactly does the worship leader do? That title can describe a number of functions - song leader, singer, band member, music minister, or worship pastor, to name a few.”

“In the church, the pastor is ultimately responsible for leading congregational worship. But that doesn’t mean our worship leaders have to be pastors. However, in Sovereign Grace churches, given the importance of congregational singing, our worship leaders are fulfilling a very important role. They aren’t simply leading “music”–we desire them to direct people’s hearts, minds, and wills to the truths that they’re singing. Their role includes elements that involve a degree of teaching, leading, and pastoring, which we believe the Bible says are male roles in the church. For that reason, all our worship leaders are men. But women make a significant contribution to our corporate worship through singing, playing instruments, reading Scripture, song writing, arranging, leading choirs, modeling expressive engagement, contributing prophetic impressions, and more.”

I look forward to your wisdom and insights. 

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

Now thats funny!

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

(HT Gunny)

Top 5 Reasons Youth Camps are bunk:

5.  That video.

4.  It communicates that the best place for spiritual development and worship is away from the church.

3.  It communicates that the best place for spiritual development and worship is away from families.

2.  It places the student in a false “Christian-only” enviroment that is absolutly nothing like their day-to-day experience in the world.

1.  Its too expensive.  Placing a financial burden on low income families and squanders resources that could be better used in local community projects, international missions, discipleship training, etc.

My two cents.

Peace be with you,

Bishop Joe

This is perhaps the best analysis of The Dark Knight I have seen.  There are some great moral/philosophical questions in the movie that this article brings out.  Enjoy!

Saint Batman?

Father Raymond J. de Souza,  National Post  Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008

SYDNEY, Australia -Heath Ledger is mesmerizing in The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film. Here in his Australian homeland, his posthumous appearance as the Joker has been a major news story for two weeks.

It’s an extraordinary film, even if you are, inexplicably, unmoved by the addition of futuristic gadgets to the most reliable blockbuster combination in cinema: explosions, firearms, car chases and more explosions. This Batman comes with the bonus of some of the more combustible questions in philosophy. What is evil? Is there a moral order built into our world, or is to speak of such a moral design delusional?

This Joker does not permit us to dismiss him as delusional; he comes with an argument. This is not the maniacal buffoon of Jack Nicholson’s star turn nearly 20 years ago. This Joker is diabolical.

“I choose chaos,” the Joker confesses. There is no order built into human nature, no moral law written on the heart. There are rules of common agreement. But they are only manufactured rules, entirely arbitrary, without enduring value. They do not correspond to any truth–and they cannot, for there is no order or design at the heart of reality. There is only chaos, and the Joker embraces it. In an act of perverse integrity, he sets a mountain of cash alight, lest the impurity of his motives be corrupted by some logic or reason.

“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical,” explains Alfred, played by Michael Caine. “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Classical philosophy defined evil as not being real in itself, but the lack of something real — just as darkness is not real in itself, but rather the lack of light. If evil is a privation, as this view suggests, then what is real has some order and goodness to it: Light is good, and it is possible to conclude that it is better than darkness.

The conflict in this Batman film surrounds the truth of this idea. The fight between Batman and the Joker is not a fight between good and evil, but about something more fundamental than that: the question of whether good and evil exist at all. Is there order, including moral order, or chaos?

“You thought we could be decent men in an indecent world,” summarizes the hero-cum-villain Two-Face. “But you were wrong; the world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance.”

Richard Dawkins, call your agent: As a sworn enemy of Godly design, you should be getting royalties on that one. If reality has no order to it, if there is only chaos and chance producing what we experience, then against what criterion of reality will good and evil be measured? Everything retreats into relativism and meaninglessness. Thus, the Joker describes himself as a dog who chases the car without reason or purpose. It would have no idea what to do if it ever caught it. Chasing the car, catching the car, driving the car, blowing the car up–all of it is equally meaningless.

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” the script replays as a sort of refrain. It is a deeply cynical view of human potential, namely that goodness cannot endure. Yet cynicism is the proper response if there is no possibility of choosing the good but only surviving the chaos.

The answer to the lethal relativism of the Joker is the witness of the one who testifies to the reality of the moral order by his own willingness to sacrifice for it. Batman tries to do that, but his witness is incomplete for he himself dwells in the shadows, behind a mask.

“Gotham needs a hero with a face,” we are told. Yes, the world needs a witness to the truth, the goodness and the beauty of reality; a witness to the order of creation; a witness to the enduring reason through which all things were made; a witness with a human face.

We don’t call those people superheroes. We call them saints.

The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. By Richard D. Phillips, Philip G. Ryken, and Mark E. Dever.  Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2004. 132 pages. Paperback, $9.99.

The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic is a superb read for those looking for a short but meaty stand alone ecclesiology.  The authors have gone about the task of describing the Church in the terms presented in the Nicene Creed (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) but through a purely biblical lens.  Each chapter highlights a Nicene characteristic, but is also based primarily on a particular passage of New Testament text.

There were three primary themes I personally appreciated in the book.  The first is its steadfast commitment to a biblical understanding of the Church.  At least in the evangelical world (and yes even in the Baptist world) books concerning the church are often methodologically focused.  To often we find our churches being purpose driven rather than biblically and theologically driven.  To the authors of this work the purpose of the church is found in scripture not in ourselves.  The purpose of the church is both biblical and theological; The greater glory of God.

The second item that impressed me about this book was its discussion of unity. The first chapter deals with how the Church is truly one, unified body.  Looking around at denominationalism many think that commitments on doctrine are what divide Christ’s Church and that unity should be upheld at its expense.  Thus unity is built around the lowest common theological denominator.  However Richard Phillips contends that doctrine and denominations is actually an agent of unity.  Philips states:

Denominations allow us to have organizational unity where we have full agreement, and allow us to have spiritual unity with other denominations, since we are not forced to argue our way to perfect agreement but we can accept our differences of opinion on secondary matters (27).

Far to often do we name doctrine as the problem rather than our own sinful natures.  We must claim unity around the authority of scriptures.  Where our interpretations separate us let them do so with humility, but also a never ending desire to know and boldly proclaim God’s truth.

The third and final item of interest in this book was its Christ centered understanding of the Church.  While this is often taken for granted we must always be wary of discussions of the Church that do not focus in the nature and work of Christ.  The Church is after all the body of Christ, to speak of it without Christ is to speak of a corpse rather than a living organism giving full glory to god.

In a mere 132 pages this book provides a powerful testimony of the Church and its intrinsic value to God’s purpose and glory.

An article by Gerard Bakker of the UK Time Online:

He ventured forth to bring light to the world

The anointed one’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a miracle in action - and a blessing to all his faithful followers

 

 

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media. He ventured first to the land of the Hindu Kush, where the

Taleban had harboured the viper of al-Qaeda in their bosom, raining terror on all the world.

And the Child spake and the tribes of Nato immediately loosed the Caveats that had previously bound them. And in the great battle that ensued the forces of the light were triumphant. For as long as the Child stood with his arms raised aloft, the enemy suffered great blows and the threat of terror was no more.

From there he went forth to Mesopotamia where he was received by the great ruler al-Maliki, and al-Maliki spake unto him and blessed his Sixteen Month Troop Withdrawal Plan even as the imperial warrior Petraeus tried to destroy it.

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child’s very presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

And the Persians, who saw all this and were greatly fearful, longed to speak with the Child and saw that the Child was the bringer of peace. At the mention of his name they quickly laid aside their intrigues and beat their uranium swords into civil nuclear energy ploughshares.

From there the Child went up to the city of Jerusalem, and entered through the gate seated on an ass. The crowds of network anchors who had followed him from afar cheered “Hosanna” and waved great palm fronds and strewed them at his feet.

In Jerusalem and in surrounding Palestine, the Child spake to the Hebrews and the Arabs, as the Scripture had foretold. And in an instant, the lion lay down with the lamb, and the Israelites and Ishmaelites ended their long enmity and lived for ever after in peace.

As word spread throughout the land about the Child’s wondrous works, peoples from all over flocked to hear him; Hittites and Abbasids; Obamacons and McCainiacs; Cameroonians and Blairites.

And they told of strange and wondrous things that greeted the news of the Child’s journey. Around the world, global temperatures began to decline, and the ocean levels fell and the great warming was over.

The Great Prophet Algore of Nobel and Oscar, who many had believed was the anointed one, smiled and told his followers that the Child was the one generations had been waiting for.

And there were other wonderful signs. In the city of the Street at the Wall, spreads on interbank interest rates dropped like manna from Heaven and rates on credit default swaps fell to the ground as dead birds from the almond tree, and the people who had lived in foreclosure were able to borrow again.

Black gold gushed from the ground at prices well below $140 per barrel. In hospitals across the land the sick were cured even though they were uninsured. And all because the Child had pronounced it.

And this is the testimony of one who speaks the truth and bears witness to the truth so that you might believe. And he knows it is the truth for he saw it all on CNN and the BBC and in the pages of The New York Times.

Then the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine and stepped onto the shores of the Old Continent. In the land of Queen Angela of Merkel, vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.

But when he had finished speaking his disciples told him the crowd was hungry, for they had had nothing to eat all the hours they had waited for him.

And so the Child told his disciples to fetch some food but all they had was five loaves and a couple of frankfurters. So he took the bread and the frankfurters and blessed them and told his disciples to feed the multitudes. And when all had eaten their fill, the scraps filled twelve baskets.

Thence he travelled west to Mount Sarkozy. Even the beauteous Princess Carla of the tribe of the Bruni was struck by awe and she was great in love with the Child, but he was tempted not.

On the Seventh Day he walked across the Channel of the Angles to the ancient land of the hooligans. There he was welcomed with open arms by the once great prophet Blair and his successor, Gordon the Leper, and his successor, David the Golden One.

And suddenly, with the men appeared the archangel Gabriel and the whole host of the heavenly choir, ranks of cherubim and seraphim, all praising God and singing: “Yes, We Can.”

Now that is some great satire.  Conclusion of Predator and Prey seris still coming.

As we continue to ponder the current banking and mortgage crises it is important to remember that most TV and newspaper reports are all part of a single narrative.  According to this narrative banks have taken advantage of the naive lenders in order to secure a higher profit.  This narrative sounds plausable to most since the popular belief is that individuals will always be victims of profit seeking corporations.

However this narrative leaves out a large chunk of the story.  ”The rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey would say is provided by my favorite economist Thomas Sowell.  The article can be found here and is printed below: Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the story of a simple person looking for a not-so-simply mortgage as seen through the lens of the national media and various left leaning politicos’ perception of the banking industry and their “predatory” loan practices.

The time has finally arrived.  You have landed that job you have been hunting after for months and the paychecks have begun to roll in.  It is time to do what every American should do when they start making more money than they did in college; buy a house.  You pack up the wife and your 2.5 kids and drive in your Prius down to your local bank.  You’ve never actually been inside before, having managed to complete all transactions either though the banks website or through the drive-through.  But if the streamlined design of the website and the pleasant voice over the intercom is any indication your sure its full of kind and caring people who are interested only in your financial comfort. 

Walking into the lobby you are greeted by the Customer Service attendant.  You inform her that you are interested in applying for a home loan.  As soon as the word loan escapes your lips a dark, menacing figure steps from the shadows.  His short and stocky appearance is cloaked by the perpetual gloom he seems to radiate.  “I can help with that,” he whispers with a slight hiss in his voice.  Grasping you by the arms with his cold and lifeless hand he half-drags you back to a dusky corner office full of opulant furnishings that simply scream upper-middle class.  With the wife and kids out in the lobby you sit and talk to the man about your dreams of a big home and a big family.  Without the vaguest level of interest on his face he asks for your account information quickly plugging it into his Mac.  Slowly a smile spreads across his lips, one that reminds you oddly enough of the “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” cartoon. “Well Mr. Smith,” he says still hissing a bit, ”it appears you bounced a check when you were 17, so you are going to have to go with one of our high risk, adjustable rate, ruin the rest of your life loans.” 

As you begin to ponder the ramifications of your bounced check at 17 the stocky banker slides a stack of papers in front of you.  With a gleam in his eyes (or is it flame?) he hands you a nice fountain pen, removes the top sheet and says: “sign here.”  You ask about all the things “Buying a Home for Dummies” told you to ask about.  You mention things like interest rates and down payments even though you have no idea what they mean.  The banker sneers at your questions leans back into the shadows and pushes a bright red button on his desk.  The next thing you know a Dementor is floating behind you and begins to suck out your soul.  You of course pass out from the soul extraction. 

An unknown amount of time has passed by and you wake up in your Prius out in the parking lot of the bank.  In your hand you find a photo copy of the top page of that contract with your signature scrawled across the bottom.  You have the oddest headache and a strange desire to trade in your Prius for a Hummer, break your low-carb diet by taking the family out to lunch at McDonald’s, and stopping by Wal-Mart on the way home.  You wonder at exactly what you agreed to for the mortgage, but then you quickly dismiss your worry.  “This is America” you say to your self.  Someone will always be there to bail me out of stupid decisions.  As you drive down the road you turn and ask your wife: “Now where is that over-sized house we were looking at?”

THE END 

Next: An article by Thomas Sowell

Government funding of religious charities (Faith Based Initiatives) has made its way into the news again, this time from an unlikely source.  Democrat Presidential Nominee, Senator, and messianic figure Barak Obama has come out supporting some of President Bush’s Faith Based Initiative programs.  While the idea of one such as Sen. Obama dolling out cash to “religious” organizations for charitable purpose give many a collective shudder, Christians should look at the broader implications of this program even as it was devised under the Bush Administration.

Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute has written a great article expressing the problems of Faith Based Initiatives from both the Bush and (potentially) Obama White House.  The article can be found here and I have reprinted it below: Read the rest of this entry »