Stand Up O Men of God!!

I just love this. It's kind of an old one by now, but this wouldn't be much of a bad preaching blog without it. Say what you want about bad preaching, but it can be a lot more fun than the good stuff. I miss going to a Baptist church.

Biblically Integrating our Athletics

Hanging on the bulletin board of our newest teacher is a flyer for a cheer leading competition this winter. Right in the dead center of the flyer is the following verse...

"Be of good cheer."

We know that God loves a cheerful giver, but apparently he can also love a giving cheerleader.

Pluralism?

Tonight I heard a youth pastor at a non-denominational Bible church say this to some junior high kids:

"The world likes to think that there are many ways to get to Heaven. This is called pluralism. They say you can get to Heaven by being a Catholic, or a Baptist, or a fundamentalist believer...no...uh...wait...or...or a Buddhist, or by being baptized..."

Gave me a good laugh.

Our Own Personal El Guapo

This kind of reminds me of the style of preaching mentioned below, which is often no less comical. Sometimes I really love going to church.

Find Me In The River

A couple Christmases ago, I received John Eldredge's Waking the Dead. In the beginning of this book, Eldredge takes us to Genesis' account of the four streams that flowed out of the Garden of Eden. Citing a theologian I had never heard of (which does not necessarily make him a quack), Elderidge says the streams represent the four "streams" of Christianity that we are to live our faith out of. I forget what the "streams" were- but that's really irrelevant.

Yesterday, the pastor of the church we were visiting got up after the worship/song set and did the same thing. Without citing any other theologian or teacher/etc, this pastor read each of the verses about the rivers and then proclaimed a "river" he was releasing on his people.

The first river is Pishon, which flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. That is the river of provision, we were told. The second river is the Gihon, the river of peace. The third river is the Tigris, protection. And the fourth river is the Euphrates, power. Maybe I don't know my Hebrew well, but unless these river names mean these four things (which were not what Eldredge took them to mean- I do remember that much), this is just wrong.

In a moment of irony I have never before experienced at a corporate worship service, the person actually preaching yesterday got up behind the pulpit and paid the pastor a "complement" about his knowledge of Scripture saying she had never seen that in that passage before.

There's a good reason... it's not really there. Are there other passages we have done this to? Where else have we pulled hermeneutics out of a hat?

Sorry Little Drummer Boy

Of the 7 channels we get without cable, one is a local Christian station. Occasionally I find Tony Evans preaching, but beyond that it is pretty much a channel dripping with unintentional comedy. A couple days ago I stumbled upon a program featuring a man teaching a small group of adults about the evils of music, particularly rap. It turns out the program was taped around 1992, when MC Hammer had released his single "Pray." I remember having the "MC Hammer has a song called Pray he must be a Christian!" argument with my youth pastor- so I had to stop and watch. Besides making it abundantly clear that he felt MC Hammer was not a Christian he made it no less than abundantly clear that he felt rap music was not only fleshly, worldly music but that it also could not be "Christianized." Not even by DC Talk! Anyway, here was his best line of the 10 minutes I watched...

"What is the purpose of drums? To keep time. Will there be time in heaven? NO! SO, there will be no drums in heaven!"

Venn Diagrams and Following Jesus

This is quite literally a sermon illustration in the form of a Venn Diagram. This fulfills two of our primary requirements for a good sermon illustration: 1. Can it be turned into a power point slide? 2. Does it involve math? Props to Phil for tracking this down. Enjoy.



Want to have more fun with Venn diagrams? Check out this make your own Venn Diagram site:
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/venn/