Hello all:

We all know that Alexander Campbell did a lot of writing. In his younger years when he first started out writing for the local press, Alexander used pen names to disguise his identity. A good example of this are his “Clarinda Letters” .

Clarkecomments has been my version of the Clarinda letters. As a couple of you know, and as many of you have probably suspected, Clarke is not my name.

I have used a pen name for the last several years for several reasons. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know that I started this blog being much more conservative than I am now. I worried then about being a staunch conservative and drawing attack. I should probably now worry about being a progressive thinker and drawing attack, but I’ve come to the point where I just don’t care if I am attacked or not.

My journies through church history, theology, biblical cricitism and philosophy have been interesting and worthwhile to me, and they will continue…just not here.

So, without further comment, I invite you to my new blog.

-Clarke

“All you have to do is compare what the Gospel asks and what war does. The Gospel asks that we feed the poor, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, house the homelss, visit the prisoner, and perform works of mercy. War does the opposite. It makes my neighbor hungry, thirsty, homeless, a prisoner, and sick. It kills them by the millions. The Gospel asks us to take up our cross. War asks us to lay the cross on others.” - Dorothy Day.

Hello Everyone:

I am flying out early Tuesday morning for Nashville to attend the World Convention of Churches of Christ. While I’m there I’m going to visit Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University, and the Disciples of Christ Historical Society. I am also going to look at housing as my wife and I are interested in moving to Nashville.

If you are going to be there, drop me a note. If I can get access to a computer and have the time, I might do a bit of blogging while there.

-Clarke

Warning: My post today is more of a theological rant than it is any type of quasi-pseudo-scholarly examination. If that is what you are looking for today, you will not find it here.

Hello all:

I listen to several radio stations around the Portland area, including a couple of Christian music stations. Two of these Christian radio stations regularly play the James Dobson Family Minute.

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but growing up, I thought James Dobson was a member of the Church of Christ because he seemed to be very respected by our fellowship, even my parents. Listening to him now, I can somewhat see why that is… he fits decently into our worldview..close enough to be counted as safe.

I don’t typically care for most of the advice I hear from James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Most of it seems to be psychological and behavoral advice that they try to pass off as biblical or “approved by God,” but really just are human insights that may or may not be correct because of our fallen state.

Most of the time I can handle that, but then I heard this radio clip:

James Dobson Family Minute, 05/23/08 (59 Seconds).

Dobson says that “Any effort to destroy this great nation . . . has to be the ultimate assault on family values.” He goes on to describe how destroying this nation is to subject it to a foreign force that would endanger our freedom. Bill Maer then tells us that it is important to “be grounded in God’s word and to be involved in the Democratic Process . . .whether it is at home or abroad, any issue that threatens the family is one that needs to be faced head on.”

This clip makes several worldy assumptions: that the United States is a great nation, approved by God; that an attack on democracy or freedom is an attack on the family; that Christians have a duty to vote; that Christians have a duty to fight any aggressor that might threaten our nation, democracy, or our freedom.

This flies in the face of Jesus words recorded in Matthew 5:39, “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

We equate the United States with Israel. Sometimes it appears that we have embraced Alexander Campbell’s Post-Millenialism… and believe that the Millenium is here, and that we are living in the renewed Earth, with our country as the renewed Israel, our President, no matter who he is, sitting on the throne of David.

Instead, we are living on a fallen Earth, in a Nation that is just as wicked before God as Babylon, believing that we are doing right by fighting anyone who attacks our freedom and our ability to buy whatever we want.

Our forefathers in Churches of Christ wouldn’t have bought into James Dobson’s Worldview, but we appear to have swallowed the line whole.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I came across an add on DisciplesWorld.com this morning advertising the Disciples of Christ Historical Society’s Journeys in Faith project. The Society is looking for members of Stone-Campbell churches to go online on their website, and fill out a survey about your memories growing up in your local church. The survey takes about 45 - 60 minutes to complete, and they will take your answers and put them in their oral history collection for current and future Stone-Campbell Historians to use in learning, teaching, and writing.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I am 29 today…and I’m not very thrilled/happy about this…not sure why….

I just have a feeling that its not going to be a great day…prayers accepted and solicited.

I guess I’ll take birthday greetings, too.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Today, Sara and I made it to Doug Foster’s class entitled “Three Decisive Years for Churches of Christ (A Church Historian Reflects on 1809, 1909, and 2009)”. It was such a blessing to hear Doug Foster speak; he is a great teacher and speaker who can really make Church History interesting, even for my wife, who actually wanted to go to his class. This was the second time I’ve heard Doug Foster speak, and both times have been great.

Dr. Foster spent the last part of the class talking about 2009, the year of the Great Communion. To commemorate 200 years since Thomas Campbell’s Decleration and Address, the three streams of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement will hold “Great Communion Sunday,” encouraging churches from all three streams to worship, fellowship and commune together. Dr. Foster encouraged people to go out and meet the Disciples and Independents in their areas and to start a plan to celebrate the Great Communion. One of my goals for 2009 will definatly be to help organize a Great Communion event for the Portland area.

Dr. Foster also just released a new book through Leafwood Press focused on the Great Communion called One Church that you can order here.

After Doug Foster’s class, I went and heard Lynn McMillon talk about “Lessons Learned from Restoration History (The Scottish Experience).” Dr. McMillon spoke about the Scottish Glasite and Sandemanian Churches, that called themselves Churches of Christ and which bear quite a resemblance to our movement. This has been a topic I’ve been curious about ever since I read Leroy Garrett’s history of the movement, and it was a very enjoyable class. Dr. McMillon wrote a book on the Glasite churches called Restoration Roots that I’m looking forward to buying and reading.

I ended up missing the next two sessions because of homework, but I ended up with a good great so I guess it was worth it.

Later in the day, I was quite blessed to have dinner withBobby Valentine, and we got to talk about life, school, and theology.

The Main Lecture was by Gary Selby of Pepperdine, who spoke on “The Wealth of the Faithful.” Selby criticized the security and wealth that we cling to, and how that wealth and security interfears with the Christian life, which was odd to hear in Malibu among the million dollar homes, $75k cars in the Pepperdine parking lot, etc. It was a powerful message, though, and helpful to myself and Sara as we continue to strongly consider quitting my secure civil service job to go back to school to study theology.

The night ended in Bobby Valentine’s class on The Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ, which was excellent. I must admit, I went to Bobby and John Mark Hicks’ class on Kingdom Come two years ago at Pepperdine, bought the book, read it, and enjoyed it. I was persuaded by many of the arguments in Kingdom Come. And then…I heard Bobby speak about it for three days this year, and had a chance to talk to him about the Nashville Bible School tradition… and that, coupled with the events that have taken place in my spiritual journey over the last two years, has won me over to the apocalyptic worldview embraced by Lipscomb and Harding. I believe it is true to scripture, true to our heritage, and true to the Spirit… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about these things, and you may see a change in which topics I blog about soon because of it.

Another great night at Pepperdine.

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

Since we returned from Pepperdine, I’ve had a few things keeping me from blogging. I got sick and ended up taking a couple of days off work…then when I felt better I cleaned our BBQ grill, anticipating nice weather, and burned both of my eyes with flying debris… that kept me off work and off the computer….and now my whole family has strep..

On the good news-providence side of things though, when i went in for my follow-up appointment for my eyes, they said that they should fully recover, but they think I have Glacoma. So, I have follow-up testing for that. If I do have it, there is treatment available to keep it from progressing…so, it seems that burning my eyes might have been a blessing in disguise.

So, hopefully, baring any further health issues, I should continue my blogs on Pepperdine in the next day or so.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m a little behind because I haven’t had easy access to a computer. I’ll try and catch up in the next day or so.

We have been commuting from Calabasis every day to the campus, because we registered two late and all of the rooms were already taken…and since I have both my four year old son and my wife in tow, things haven’t always been smooth or gone according to plan, but they have been fun.

We tried to make it to Richard Cherok’s lecture on Alexander Campbell, but missed it due to traffic. I ended up making it to Robert Hooper’s lecture of David Lipscomb, however. I had the chance to chat with Dr. Hooper for a few minutes before the lecture as we were both waiting outside the classroom while the previous lecture was wrapping up. Dr. Hooper’s lecture was very enjoyable, he talked about Lipscomb and how he is a man for our time today, which I very much agree with. Dr. Hooper announced near the end that his book Crying in the Wilderness: A biography of David Lipscomb, was going to be reissued next year, with a new introduction and some new chapters with current research. I’m excited about that and looking forward to getting a copy when it comes out.

After the lecture, I ended up having to spend a couple of hours working on Art History homework, so we missed the main lecture and several of the afternoon lectures. We made it back in time to hear Randy Harris give what he called an “unSermon” on “The Care and Feeding of Enemies.” The sermon was powerful…he started by reciting the Sermon on the Mount from memory, and then talked about why he couldn’t actually preach the text. Harris’ thesis was that man in incapable of loving his enemy, and that this can only be done with the love God through the Christian in the Holy Spirit. Harris rightfully asserted that without a deeper, biblical theology of the Spirit, we cannot truly understand or live the Sermon on the Mount. I wish my description of the sermon could give justice to what I heard.

After the keynote, I went to Bobby Valentine’s second installment on the Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ. Again, the lecture was excellent, and I learned alot more about our more recent history. On a side note, it seemed that throughout the week, I ran into Bobby Valentine every place I went, it appeared impossible not to, which was okay. I promise I wasn’t following you around, Bobby!

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

I am at the Pepperdine University Annual Bible Lectures this week.

We arrived a little late for the 1st nights Song Fest, but what we heard sounded wonderful. It is so great to hear a couple of thousand voices singing praises to God at once. The lecture “Turning the World Upside Down” by Donny McLaughlin was excellent. Don spoke on how the church must be a group of revolutionaries for the Kingdom of God. The message was right on, and very timely.

After the main lecture, I went to Bobby Valentine’s lecture “The Struggle for the Soul of Churches of Christ, 1884 - 1984. Bobby spoke about the Nashville Bible School Tradition versus the Texas Tradition, the personalities behind the approaches and the theology that they pushed. It was a great lecture and I am looking forward to hear the next. John Mark Hicks was unable to join Bobby as he is tied up on other affairs; I was sorry to miss him but Bobby did a great job solo.

I hope to have pictures to follow once I get back to Portland.

-Clarke

Hello All:

My family and I are currently at a hotel near Anaheim, California. I will be blogging live from the Pepperdine University 65th Annual Bible Lectures, for the next few of days. I am really looking forward to the lectures, and hope to meet any of you that might be there.

We went to Disneyland today. My son’s birthday is during the lectureships, so we decided that if we were coming down here, we’d better celebrate his birthday. We were very fortunate in that my son was selected to go up to the bridge of the Disney Ship S.S. Mark Twain - a huge sternwheeler boat- where my son got to “pilot” the ship for the cruise. That was incidental to his birthday, and really topped anything else that we did or saw. What a fun day.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

-Clarke

Hello All:

I am taking History of Western Art this term, a class I’ve been wanting to take for a long time. I enjoy Christian art and iconography, even though I am no artist myself.

I found this picture in my current reading. I figured I would post it for your edification.

-Clarke

Hello All:

I will be out of town for the next few days for my Anniversary. When I return, I plan to continue my series on the Magisterium of Churches of Christ.

Until then, I will leave you with a small excercise..I’m sure it will generate much lively discussion.

Answer the following question:

Which one of the following is the infallible, inspired word of God?

A. King James (Authorized) Version.

B. New King James Version.

C. Revised Standard Version.

D. American Standard Version.

E. New American Standard Bible.

F. New International Version.

G. Today’s New International Version.

H. The Amplified Bible.

I. The Message.

J. The New Living Translation.

K. The New Revised Standard Version.

L. The Holman Christian Standard Bible.

M. The New Jerusalem Bible.

N. The Ignatius Study Bible.

O. New American Bible.

P. The Douay-Rheims Bible.

Q. English Standard Version.

R. International Standard Version.

S. New Century Version.

T. Revised English Version.

U. Young’s Literal Translation.

V. Contemporary English Version.

W. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine Translation.

X. Knox Translation.

Y. New Millenium Bible.

Z. Twentieth Century New Testament

Discuss.

-Clarke

Hello all:

So, I’ve had the Restorationmovement.org domain name for a while…. and it has served several different functions, but I’ve not been real thrilled with the site….So, do any of you have any suggestions for a good use for it? I bought it with the intention of creating a yahoo style directory that was everything RM related, but I don’t know….

I’d like to hear your suggestions.

-Clarke

Hello Everyone:

In December, my family and I travelled to Springfield, MO, to celebrate my Grandmother’s 90th birthday. While we were there, we also met my three siblings for the first time, and spent a little time exploring St. Louis.

One of the most exciting parts of the trip for me that didn’t involve family was visiting the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. This Basillica has the largest collection of mosaic art in the world, and these mosaics are on the walls and ceiling. It is probably the most beautiful building I have ever visited.

Right now I am at work, it is 2:40 in the morning. I am covering another Sergeant position, because my employer just fired someone for misconduct. I get off at 4am, and have to be back on-duty at 8:30am. I’ve been working graveyard for several weeks, and have been working all three shifts in one week. At times like this, I find myself wishing I could be at the Basilica for a couple of hours of quiet prayer, alone. Alas, I cannot.

Below are some photos for your viewing pleasure.

-Clarke

Hello all:

In my last post in this series, I spent a few moments criticizing our hermeneutical lenses of Command, Example and Necessary Inference. In this post, I want to focus on the theological system that we use in examining scripture and salvation history as a whole.

The magisterium, and to some extent, the Restoration Movement in general, holds to a three part, or Tripartite, Dispensationalism. This is ironic because we in Churches of Christ enjoy criticizing “dispensationalists” all the time, especially when it comes to talking about eschatology. I think that this is in part because we do not recognize that we are, in fact, dispensationalists ourselves, though of a different strain than the dispensational pre-millenialists we so often spar with.

Dispensationalism generally serves to separate periods of time into categories, and these categories describe how God dealt with his people during those times. For a full treatment of Dispensationalism in general, you can check out the Wikipedia Article on Dispensationalism.

Tripartite Dispensationalism divides the history of redemption into three parts: The Patriarchal Dispensation, the Jewish Dispensation, and the Christian Dispensation. We see a difference in how God dealt with the patriarchs versus the Nation of Israel, and we see a difference in how God dealt with Israel versus the Church. This is biblical fact. The problem comes when we see no connection between the differences, or dispensations, and declare that nothing God has said or done during the prior dispensations, nor anything that occurred in the prior dispensations, applies to us today.

This idea of disconnected dispensational time periods is most clearly seen in our view of the Old Testament as a whole. The magisterium holds that nothing in the Old Testament applies to us, because the Old Testament describes the Jewish and Patriarchal dispensations. For example, then, according to the Magisterium, the fact that we can read about Instrumental Music being used in the Old Testament to worship God does not mean that we can use it today.

A more obvious problem comes though, when we study the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and the teachings of Jesus. Tripartite Dispensationalism claims that the Christian Dispensation started at Pentecost. What does this mean, then? It means that Jesus’ teachings are lumped in with the Old Testament, were only for first century Jews, and that his teachings have no bearing on our conduct and lives as Christians.

It is absurd for us to think that God came down as a man into time, lived life as a human for 33 years, then died on a cross for us, but to also think that God doesn’t want us to take note of how he lived his life on Earth, or what he taught his disciples during that time. Such a claim makes a mockery out of Jesus’ life; a pure, holy, undefiled, perfect life, that he gave up in order to give us eternal life.

Furthermore, such a view of the Old Testament is in sharp contrast with Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. Here, Paul is refering to the Jewish scriptures, not the “Christian” scriptures which haven’t yet been compiled into the Bible at the time of his writings.

Our Tripartite Dispensationalism is more damaging than pre-millenial dispensationalism. The premillenialists don’t deny the Old Testament its significance. We must find a more biblical way of talking and thinking about the History of Salvation. Removing our anti Old Testament bias isn’t enough; we must jettison our Tripartite Dispensationlism and adopt a biblical view. What that view might entail will be the subject of a future post.

-Clarke

============================

Thank you to Bobby Valentine for writing about the Old Testament and our Tripartite Dispensationalism, I was looking for sources and he provided a great one at just the right time.

Clarke:

I bought a couple of books the other day; they were a present from my wife for Valentine’s day, which is quite amazing as she is always complaining that I have too many books!

The first book is God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology, by Michal Horton. The reason for my interest in and purchase of this book will become apparent in my next post that examines the Magisterium of Churches of Christ.

The second book I bought is The Mass of the Early Christians, by Mike Aquilina. Mr. Aquilina is a Catholic Apologist who is regularly heard on EWTN’s Catholic Answers Live. I listen to EWTN radio whenever my favorite Christian radio station plays music that doesn’t deserve to be aired…which in the last couple of months, has been quite alot. Quite a lot of the time Catholic Answers has quite contrived answers to the questions they recieve, but from time to time they do provide some great biblical insight. I bought Aquilina’s book because the Early Church Fathers hint of liturgical worship and hierarchy early in Church History, and while I’ve heard plenty of Catholic Eucharistic theology on the radio, I’m quite interested to read about it. I think it will be a fascinating read, and a good follow up to the book I’m reading right now, John Mark Hicks‘ Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper.

-Clarke

Hello:

In my last post we talked about the existence of a Magisterium in Churches of Christ. In this post we’ll examine one of the main holdings of the Magisterium: The Hermeneutic of Command, Example, and Necessary Inference.

Direct Command, Approved Apostolic Example, and Necessary Inference, or CENI as many call it, has become “our” way of reading the bible. It was taught—and still is in a few—of our colleges for many years. It is the lens through which most of our members read the bible.

This teaching states that we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the direct commands given to us by God, his son, and his apostles, and follow those commands. Then we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out the examples provided by the apostles, and follow those examples; and finally, again we are to look through the New Testament, and pick out those inferences that are necessary to be followed.

While CENI is the hermeneutical process, there is also a set of assumptions that sit behind CENI. Those assumptions include:

That the New Testament has been handed down as new law to replace the old law.

That the new law is basically a pattern that describes the worship of the church and what a person must do to be saved.

That God expects us to figure out the biblical worship pattern, and to adhere to it.

That lack of adherence to the biblical worship pattern is sinful.

That the sin of not following the biblical worship pattern is not covered by God’s grace and puts eternal salvation in jeopardy.

While I could attack each of these at length, I will at this point just state that there is no biblical evidence that backs up the hermeneutical assumptions of CENI.

As far as the method, it is flawed in many ways. Commands are usually easy to determine.

Examples, though, are far harder. Who approves the examples? What happens when we disagree on which example is approved? A common example that Pentecostal churches follow is the washing of feet. We reject this example out of hand. Is it wrong to wash feet? Is it wrong to not wash feet?

Necessary inferences are even harder. Who says the inference is necessary? Inferences depend totally on human logic. Being a fallen human myself, I don’t know that I want to trust my salvation to how great a job I do at deducting logic problems correctly.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time attacking CENI. Many others have done so, with great success. Brother (and bishop!)Alan Rouse has a great series on the topic if you wish to read further. What I will say is this: CENI is a snag, sitting silently on the woods, waiting to make a widow out of some unsuspecting churchgoer in our fellowships.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Allister McGrath claims that the central idea around the Reformation was that each man is entitled to read and interpret scripture for himself. This idea then explains the myraid of denominations that have formed over the last five hundred or so years since Luther nailed his theses to the door of his local parish.

This idea of each man interpreting scripture for himself was vigerously oppossed by the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed (as still does claim) that only the Magisterium of the Church, entrusted to Supreme Pontiff and his bishops, had the right to interpret Scripture.

Of course, this caused a major problem.

The Church of Christ, whether it will admit it or not, claims to have a magisterium on scripture. Only the church, through its bishops (journals, college presidents, prominent ministers), has the right to interpret scripture. Anyone who comes to a different understanding of scripture than the one advanced by the magisterium is in error, either intentionally or negligently.

This causes a major problem.

This is especially a huge problem when you determine that something in the magisterium is wrong. If one teaching is incorrect, what keeps all the others from being so? My good friend Mark has stated to me several times that everything that our fellowship has stood for has been debunked. While I don’t know that everything has been, I must state that I believe enough of it has that the magisterium has collapsed in the eyes of thosands of members of Churches of Christ, including myself.

And this causes a major problem.

What do you do when everything that you accepted as concrete suddenly vanishes before you?

For some, it means dumping Christianity altogether.

For others, it means joining another denomination; many are fleeing to The Anglican Communion faster than you can blink an eye.

For still others, it means looking around and trying to salvage what you can, and to attempt to find as much truth as you can. This is where I have been, and it is a scary ride. I have searched scripture, tradition, and history… a very “non sola scriptura” mix. Some of my thoughts and musings have been far from Orthodox from a reformed point of view. For now, though, I think I might finally be back in a normal spot. We’ll see.

In my next post we’ll look at the Magisterium in more detail.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just recently returned from a ten day trip to Missouri. What a trip. I celebrated my Grandmother’s 90th birthday, met an aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins (from all parts of the family) for the first time, and met all three of my siblings for the first time (I’m adopted).

I also worshipped with a very conservative Church of Christ with my Grandmother, while one of my cousins told me all about how the church down the road where my Aunt and Uncle attend just isn’t “quite right” because they have a praise team. What fun.

Through it all, God showed me every day, several times a day, how I have it good and how my life could be much worse. Praise God for his grace!

On another note, it has been bothering me for quite some time how I am not blogging very often anymore. I am working on developing a series or two to attempt to fix that problem.

There are two main reasons I am not blogging as much: I have things to write about, but I don’t write them down fast enough and then I forgget them, and some of the subjects I want to write about aren’t related to the Restoration Movement.

There are many topics that I want to explore with writing that really don’t have anything to do with our movement. Many of them are spurred on by my orientation as a restorationist, but otherwise, there is little to no connect. In many ways, I’m not sure that I want to blog about those topics here because I have dedicated this blog to examining Churches of Christ and the Restoration Movement at large, but also because I am not sure that all of my audience, both real and potential, would appreciate these other topics nearly as much as they do this one.

So… I am contemplating erecting a second blog….or maybe even keeping this blog up in archive form, but no longer posting to it and instead turning to a second blog to persue my other writing interests. I’d love to hear your opinion on what I should do.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I was happy to recieve my weekly email from The Christian Standard this morning. This week’s edition is on Two Views of the Millenium.

Alex Wilson, the minister at the Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote about his belief in Historic Pre-millenialism.

Robert Lowrey, dean and professor at Lincoln Christian Seminary, wrote about Amillenailism.

The articles were refreshing for several reasons. Wilson is not only Pre-millenial, he’s a member of an acapella Church of Christ. He states his beliefs strongly, but doesn’t attack Amillenialism, or for that matter, musical instruments. He in fact goes out of his way to condemn sectarianism based on any peripherial belief, and points out some arguments that others have made against pre-millenialism that are flawed (such as the statement that pre-mill’s believe that the Church was created as a afterthought).

Lowrey is an Amillenialist, and a member of the Indepedent Christian Churches. He too states his beliefs strongly, but doesn’t attack the other side. He makes his case, and that is that.

Churches of Christ need to learn how to do this; how to examine all-sides of the argument, realize that no one has a monopoly on the truth, and be willing to allow others to have differences in opinion without casting their salvation into doubt. This week, the Christian Standard provides us with a great example on how to do that. I pray that we learn from them.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Recently, I’ve been thinking about our use of words in Churches of Christ, and I’m bugged a little by it.

We’ve developed our own language over the years that serves the purpose of seperating us from “the denominations.” (one of our catch-phrases).

A good example of this is that we use the term “auditorium” to refer to large room in which we worship, while most other churches refer to that room as the “sanctuary”. Its like an unwritten rule that we cannot call the auditorum a sanctuary. If you are in one of our church buildings and call the auditorium “the sanctuary,” everyone around you will know right away that you aren’t one of us. Of course, the irony is that neither word is found in scripture.

Another example, is our not using the term “Pastor.” This is now a favorite of mine. I was taught that we can’t call the minister a pastor because this term is reserved for elders. Because we strive to “call bible things by bible names,” an old adage of Alexander Campbell, we reject any church that calls their minister a pastor unless that minister is also an elder.

The problem here is that word usage changes over time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for “calling bible things by bible names,” however, we must recognize that all language changes over time. Our use and study of Greek is a prime example of this: We defend that baptism means immersion because the greek baptizo’s original meaning was immersion. However, over time, we can show that the meaning of the word changed to include pouring and sprinkling.

However, when we look at the question of instrumental music, we talk about the word psallo. Psallo originally meant to sing with instrumental accompanyment, or to pluck a stringed instrument. We argue that the meaning of the word changed, and by the time the New Testament was written, Psallo meant to sing only, without accompayment.

So, can we accept that the meaning of the English word “Pastor” has changed over the last 500 years? Personally, I can, especially after reflecting on the fact that the word Pastor is a Latin Word, not a translated or transliterated Greek word.

While the rest of the Christian world calls someone a “Pastor,” we call that same person a preacher, an evangelist, or a minister. Many Churches of Christ, especially the more conservative congregations, seem bent on using the title “evangelist.” While the term is biblical, it rarely if ever describes what the person does. I’ve met very few paid evagelists in Churches of Christ…. they all seem to keep their evangelistic efforts confined to the building. Preacher is probably the most descriptive word for many of these people… but I digress. My conclusion here is that the words minister and pastor are equivilant.

However, now I have one more problem. I’ve identified what I believe, however, I’ve been indoctrinated in our beliefs for so long that I have a hard time changing. I still occasionally cringe when I see an Independent Christian Church title their minister as “Pastor.” I still feel odd hearing the “auditorium” called a “sanctuary.” Old habits die hard, I suppose.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Its been a while since I posted. I have a few things to write on, but I’ve held back. Until now.

Last night, I recieved my weekly Disciples News Service email. I found the following story at the bottom of the synopsis:

NORTHWEST REGION WELCOMES NEW CHURCH START IN SEATTLE, WA.

Friends of the One has been welcomed as a Disciples congregation in formation by the Regional Board of the Northwest Regional Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Friends of the One, which met for the first time on Sept. 30, is a Christian Sufi community bringing together the mystical traditions of two faith groups into the formation of a Christian community. The community’s Sufi practices include a silent mediation of the heart. This Sufi tradition is explicit that one can belong to any religion and be a Sufi and there are many Sufis who are actively and fully Christian.

The community also will draw from the non-hierarchical non-creedal Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) tradition, which practices the return to the earliest roots of inclusive Christianity, including weekly communion, to which all are welcome. To learn more about Friends of One, see: www.disciples.org/dns/Releases2007/07157.html

I’ve heard of Sufism, but never known anything about it. According to the Wikipedia Article on Sufism, it is a branch of Islam. Some Sufi’s are considered “universalists” who feel that Sufism is compatible with all relgions and that the Sufi “faith” is the most base form of religion that leads to knowledge about God. Islamic Sufi’s deny universalism as unorthodox.

My first thought about this article is that this is quite disturbing, especially with the words “inter-faith” being used to describe this church. This type of activity seems to affirm what more Conservative Disciples have been saying about the direction the Denomination is heading. I’d like to hear your opinions on the issue.

Also, if you know any Disciples, send them over. Disciples are usually few and far between on here…I’d like to hear what they have to say about this.

-Clarke

Hello all:

For what its worth, I preached this short sermon this morning at my church:

For the last few months, one of the goals of the worship ministry here has been to make this church, specifically the Sunday morning worship service, more welcoming to those who come in for the first time. It has been our goal to make this church a place where people can come in for the first time and identify with us, and have a desire to return. I think that we have had some success, but much more can and should be done to welcome those who come to worship with us.

A sign on the front of the building of the Portland Avenue Church of Christ in Lexington, Kentucky reads “All are welcome here, especially the stranger and the poor.” This morning I want us to contemplate this statement, to come to an understanding of why the Portland Avenue church has this sign on the front of their building, and why our message should be similar to theirs.

But first, let us pray. Father in heaven, we come before you know as a broken people. We acknowledge and confess our sinfulness, and we ask you to forgive us. We thank you for the grace that you provide through Your son Jesus, and we are thankful that you love us enough to provide a covering for our sins. Lord, we ask that you help us to place all of our trust in you, both when we can see the path and when we cannot. Lord, I ask that you speak through me this morning, that you use me to convey your truth to the church, and that you cover my inadequacy through your perfectness. Lord, finally, I ask you to bless this congregation, and that in doing so that you instill in the church a desire to use those blessings to bless others who need your love. In Christ’s holy name, Amen.

Jeremiah 22:13-16 says: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages,
who says, ‘I will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms,’
who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.
Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father
eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well.
Is not this to know me? declares the LORD.

The bible is full of scriptures that echo this sentiment. Amos 2:6-8: “Thus says the LORD:
“For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,
because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—
those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way
of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house
of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.

Proverbs 31:9: “Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
These verses, taken together and with plenty of others scattered throughout the bible, suggest a theme… and I submit to you that this theme is one that we have largely forgotten, both here and across the Churches of Christ. Instead, we have embraced our culture, a culture that tells us that we need to have money to have self-worth; a culture that values a lucrative occupation over family; a culture that teaches that the poor and the homeless deserve their lot in life… we have embraced a church-culture that values having a large building and ministries that generate cold hard cash instead instead of one that values serving the poor, the down-trodden, the oppressed, the widow and the fatherless.

I think James, the brother of Jesus, sums it up best with his words in James 1:27 : “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” He goes on in the next chapter saying: “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?”

These are scathing words to James’ audience. Yet they ring as true today as they did almost two thousand years ago when he wrote his letter to the saints. James is writing to us as much as he was writing to the early Christians of his time. His message, and the message of many different writers in scripture, is that the heart of God is especially concerned with the poor and oppressed, and that, as His people, God expects us to have that same love and concern for the poor and oppressed that he has.

Part of the problem is that we don’t seem to have that same love and concern, or at least, not to the extent that we should. Someone here would probably like to stop me just about now and say, “But what about the collection that we take each month for the orphans in Zimbabwe?” or, “What about the indigenous preachers that we support each month, and all the orphans that they take care of?” While its true that we do these things, I fear that they’ve become just another ritual, just as many other things have become for us. We do send money to orphans in Africa, its true, but, does this church really care? Or do we send the money out of a feeling of obligation? What do we know of the people that we are helping? Not much. Am I suggesting that we stop sending money? No, I’m not. However, I think we should consider doing more than sending money to these orphans.

First, we should make our church welcoming to the poor. We must be attentive to what James said in Chapter 2 about showing favoritism to the rich, or even to the middle class. We must be attentive to James’ words, “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?” We must recognize that the poor have a special place in God’s heart, and make sure that we show those who enter our doors that the poor and oppressed have a special place in our hearts as well. Portland Avenue tries to show this recognition in many ways, one of them being the sign on their door. While the sign on the door is no doubt helpful, we must do more than just proclaim our love for the poor. We must demonstrate our love from the moment they walk through the door.
Second, we must take our faith out of the building and into the streets. We cannot simply show the poor that we love them on Sunday morning. We must demonstrate our love by doing good. Again, to quote Isaiah 1:17, we must “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” We can do this in a lot of different ways, as a church body and as individuals. One way, probably the most popular, is by giving money. We have somewhat of a hard time with that, though. Our contribution last week was only $190, which makes it hard for us to give money to the poor. So, if we want to exercise this option, we must become willing to give more. The people here have the resources, but they must commit them to God’s work. However, money isn’t the only answer, nor should it be. One of the reasons that giving money is the most popular option is because it also is the most impersonal and takes the least amount of effort. We cannot allow ourselves to give money alone, because money doesn’t bring people into the Kingdom of God.

We must be willing to seek justice, correct oppression, and bring justice personally. Last week Chris spoke on connectedness, or lack thereof. One thing that we must understand is that God created us as social beings. We are meant to be connected with other people. In this world lacking that connection, we can be most effective in helping the poor and the oppressed by doing so personally. People in this world, especially lost people who do not know Jesus, are longing to be connected. We can serve them by being connected to them, and helping them with their struggles. We can personally bring the homeless blankets, and spend time talking with them about their lives and the love that our Father has for them. We can personally provide food to those who are hungry and share the Good News of Jesus Christ crucified for their sins. We can personally help build a house with Habitat for Humanity and show the love of our God to those who need it most. You can volunteer to be a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused children. You can spend time at a shelter for abused women and share your talents and love. You can stand up and do good when everyone else walks by and lets evil flourish around them. You can be the personal connection to Jesus that someone desperately needs in their life. That personal connection will do much more good to help the poor and the oppressed than any amount of money could.

So, to bring this all back around. This congregation has a need to strive to be more welcoming to those in our community. We cannot cater to the rich or the middle-class. We should certainly try to be welcoming to these people, but we must make a strong effort to welcome and reach-out to the poor, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan. Its not only what God wants of us, but it is also practical. The people in the neighborhoods around our building are the poor and the oppressed, and need us to be the light that we are called to be. We can be that light by working on being welcoming, and by connecting to those who have no connection. We have a choice. We can embrace the values that our culture espouses, or we can value what God values. We can practice pure and faultless religion, as James describes, or we can practice religion that we’ve developed using our logic and reasoning. Again, the choice is ours. May we choose wisely. Let us pray.

PRAYER

If you have a need of the church this morning, whether it be prayer, comfort, or love, or you want to take the next step in your faith and come forward to be baptized into Christ, I encourage you this morning to come forward as we stand and sing.

Hello everyone:

I finished up “Distant Voices” and I really enjoyed it….so, I picked up another of C. Leonard Allen’s (along with Richard Hughes, this time) books, “Discovering our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ.”

If you’ve not read this book, pick it up. It provides some really great backgound on Restorationist thought in Christianity that occured before our movement began and which had great influences on our movement.

The best irony I’ve found so far is that alot of our restorationist roots came from the Puritans…who were later known as Congregationalists….who later merged with some other churches and formed the United Church of Christ. Its quite amazing how belief changes over time.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Our church pre-school finally closed.

The teachers in the pre-school demanded that the church pay their insurance and workers comp. payments up front this year, which total about $6000. Since our church has a hard time even paying our small staff (of interns, who make very little), it was a ridiculous demand… but one that they expected us to meet.

The worship ministry met and prayed over it, and asked God to have his will prevail….and so, on Monday, we were handed the keys to the pre-school by one of the member-teachers who just left the congregation because we couldn’t come up with six grand. This was an interesting moment. Very few of us had ever been inside this part of the building, as it was always kept locked and only the teachers and the pre-school “ministry” (what a misnomer…) leaders had a key.

It was sickening to walk inside. Our Sunday school classrooms are bare…we can’t afford supplies hardly….but the pre-school had everything…. a brand new freezer…the only H-Vac system in the building that works….. school supplies everywhere…toys…

Its amazing that such a small, insignificant pre-school could control an entire congregation for years.

I’m glad its gone. Maybe we can start focusing on doing the work of Jesus, and not on keeping a pre-school running.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well, as you are all used to hearing from me, I’ve been busy. My family and I finally moved into our house, and I’ve been working non-stop. Every time I turn around there is a new crime to investigate or a new emergency to respond to. Being the “resident” ranger has its perks…but also its pains.

I’ve been reading a couple of books….right now I’m in the middle of “Distance Voices” by C. Leonard Allen. Most of it is a rehash of things I’ve read elsewhere, but Allen brings a lot of different material together into an interesting looking collection displaying the diversity of our movement.

I’ve had a couple of topics to blog on, but have never had the time, and now they’ve slipped my mind.

We missed church yesterday because I was really sick. I spent several hours at the hospital and several more in the bathroom. It was no fun.

The 3 Sundays before, however, we spent at an independent Christian Church. We went some Sunday nights to our congregation as well, but the situation there is deteriorating more and more…and I think that sooner of later it will close its doors. When we leave the Christian church…we feel much more renewed and in touch with how we are supposed to live a Christ-like life than we do when we are at our church… I don’t know what is going to happen with that. Now that we live 30 miles from our congregation, it might be time to make a change. I guess we’ll see….

How are you all doing? I’ve not been keeping up with the blogs…any major changes in life?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I recently wrote a post on the Immorality of Church Finance.

A piece of information I left out in that post was about how the church I am a member of got into the precarious financial situation we are in. In my church finance post, I mention a member that was a large contributor financially, who moved away. That same member bailed the church out of a scheme, in the form on a loan. He is still earning interest each month on his loan to us.

The scheme that he bailed the congregation out of was that of bonds. The church sold bonds to various members of the congregation to raise money. Those members were making significant interest on their investment…in other words, they were making money off of the church… a lot of money.

When the congregation couldn’t afford to repay the interest, or the bonds, a wealthy member stepped forward and purchased all of the bonds. Those members who bought bonds got their money back, with interest, and the church started paying off its debt to this member. All of this occurred several years before we joined the congregation.

I believe this to be immoral. Loaning money on interest to Christians is not a biblical concept.

Unfortunately, I see that we are not the only group that has subscribed to this method of church finance. When I opened up my weekly email from the Christian Standard, I found the following ad (Click to make it full size):

Maybe someday we will learn not to do things like this.

I’m sending an email to Christian Standard about this blog post. I challenge them to drop ads from CDF.

-Clarke

Hello all:

So how about a manual poll?

What eschatological view do you hold, and why?

Premillenialism

Postmillenialism

Amillenialism

Partial Preterist

Full Preterist

or - Don’t know.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just finally finished reading The Fool of God by Louis Cochran. I started reading it a long time ago, and I’ve picked it up in spurts every once in a while.

My grandfather bought the book for me while we were visiting Bethany College back in the early 90’s. He bought it on the condition that I read it. It look a long time, but I finally fulfilled that promise.

While the book is written in novel form, its an eye-opening picture into the life and beliefs of Alexander Campbell. If you haven’t read it…give it a try.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Change is coming to church, and the internet, very soon.

Keep your eye out for it.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post asking what people though about the apocrypha. Since then, I’ve done a lot more thinking on the subject.

The Apocrypha, or the Deutero-Canonical books as the Catholics call them, was included in the Christian canon until Martin Luther excluded them in 1534. Luther also excluded Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Luther stated that he wished Esther had never been written, and he called James “an epistle of straw.”

I am not saying that apocrypha is scripture…and I am not saying that it is not; I am saying, however, that I think we should re-visit the apocrypha, that we should read it, and that we should carefully and prayerfully consider whether or not these writings hold a place as sacred scripture.

Some questions I have:

What gave Luther the right to remove these books from the canon?

The apocrypha was included in the canon for 1500 years. Would God allow these books to be considered scripture for such a long period of time if they did not belong in the canon?

What makes Esther, Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation acceptable, but the apocryphal books unacceptable?

Shouldn’t we, as a group of churches that values “Restoration,” consider whether or not the apocrypha is in need of restoration in the Protestant church?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’ve been pondering church finance as of late. My congregation is having money problems, as I have written before. We just had a member move out of the area, one that was a significant financial contributer.

On Sunday, our minister led the Lord’s Supper and took the collection. There was no Lord’s Supper reflection, which is not the norm for our church…but there was a lengthy reflection on giving…of a type I’ve never heard in a Church of Christ yet. Our minister spoke about how giving money can be equaled by others through their giving of time and energy. He was rebuffing a comment made by another member recently about how our worship ministry should respect the wishes of those who give the most money.

Every time I look at our bills and church finances, I see a trend. Our congregation treats people different based on how much money they give. We seem to “employ” some people who are in need of money and have a certain status, yet we take money from others. A case in point:

We employ two widows, one of whom was an elder’s wife, through our pre-school. None of the students in this pre-school attend our church, so, in essence, we take money from non-believers and give it to church members. The pre-school doesn’t break even… no matter how much a couple of members claim… they generate thousand dollar energy bills which the church ends up subsidizing to provide two “jobs” to two widows. At the same time, we rent our parsonage to another widow, a member of the church….. we take her money, along with rent subsidies that the state provides… the money she gives us in essence bankrolls the pre-school. We take money from one person is deemed “not as worthy” to give to someone else that is deemed “worthy.”

To top it off, we also receive rent from Cingular Wireless, as they have a cell-phone tower on our property. Never mind the immoral acts AT&T is involved in….we take their money and subsidize the pre-school and the church.

Our $2.5 million building is falling apart. I’m not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Who ever thought that you could make a game out of church history and politics? Check this out… Vatican Board Game.

-Clarke

Sometimes I reflect on growing up in the church and what we were taught….and then I reflect on what being a Christian is really about.

How did the real meaning of what it means to be a Christian get lost in some Churches of Christ? Campbell and Stone worried much more about being a real Christian than in having every last detail right..so how did it happen? Lipscomb and Harding, the separatists that they were, were very worried about being true Christians….so Sand Creek wasn’t the turning point as far as it all goes….how did it happen?

-Clarke

Hello all:

Newell Williams, the president of Brite Divinity School and co-editor of the the Stone-Campbell Encyclopedia, has been appointed as the Moderator of the Christian Church.

As the moderator, Williams will preside over the General Assembly of the Disciples of Christ that will take place in Fort Worth, Texas in July.

This is good news. Newell Williams has a vision of unity for all three streams of the Restoration Movement, and his beliefs about baptism are much more in-line with Churches of Christ and Christian Churches than much of the Disciples. Hopefully he will be a “moderating” force that will steer the Disciples from the extreme liberalism that they have been embracing over the last few years.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Below is the paper that I promised. Feel free to tear it apart.

-Clarke

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The Received Spirit of God
An exegetical research paper on I Corinthians 2:12-13

Thesis

In this paper I intend to research 1 Corinthians 2:12-13, the author of this passage, Paul of Tarsus, and Paul’s intended audience for this epistle, the Christian church in Corinth, Greece.
I will start my research by conducting an Historical-Social analysis of Paul, his situation in life, and the location from which his epistle was written. I will also conduct an analysis of the situation in life of the church in Corinth. I will then synthesize current knowledge and understandings of Textual Criticism, Form Criticism, Source Criticism, and Redaction Criticism for this passage. I will review the windows of understanding held by both the author, his intended audience, and by the denominational stance of the mainline Churches of Christ. Finally, I will summarize what I have learned as well as my reaction to the text and the research.

Historical-Social Analysis

The letter to Corinthians was addressed to Christians in the City of Corinth, Greece. It is believed that this letter was sent by Paul the Apostle in approximately 54 to 59 CE, with most sources estimating that the letter was written in about 56 CE (Brown, 512).
The world of the Corinthians at the time of Paul’s first letter to them was very complex. The Corinthian church would have been made up of both Gentiles as well as Jews, as Claudius had expelled the Jews from Rome in 49 CE (“Brown, 513”). The city was a Roman Colony, and was rebuilt by Rome in 44 BEC after being destroyed by the Romans in 146 BCE. Rome used freed slaves and “displaced peasants” to colonize the new city (Brown, 514; Coogan, 267). This made the city very diverse with regard to economic status and social class. The city was known for its sexual immorality, as the city housed the Temple of Aphrodite, who’s 1000 “priestesses” sex slaves assisted with the worship of this goddess. (Brown, 513; Barker and Kohlenberger, 606). The city was important to the Roman world, as it was the provincial capital and was noted as an economic center of the empire.
The reigning Caesar during the time of this letter was either Claudius or Nero based upon the time-line of authorship. Both Caesars persecuted Christians (“Greco-Roman Rulers in the New Testament”). Claudius expelled all of the Jews from Rome, and “Nero was a horrible, horrible man who hated Christians, dipped them in tar and set them on fire to light his parties,” (Erika Sajdak). This socio political environment would have had a great effect on the church in Corinth. The Sitz im Leben of the church as a whole appears to be one of chaos. The church was divided over many issues, sexually immorality flourished in the group, and members of the congregation were known to sue each other in secular courts (Brown, 518).
The letter to the Corinthians was written by Paul in Ephesus, in Asia Minor (Brown, 512). Ephesus was the capital of the region, and stood between Jerusalem and Rome. It laid in the center of the Roman Empire, and many small cities laid around it. The city was known for the Temple of Artemis, and the people were very superstitious, believing heavily in magic. Fertility cults, funeral societies and various mystery cults were very popular in Ephesus (Pollard). Paul lived in Ephesus for about three years while he worked with the Jesus Community there. (Coogan, 267).
While Paul was living in Ephesus at the time he wrote his letter to the Corinthians, he had been to Corinth and spent time with the church there. Paul’s writing would have been influenced by the time he spent working in Corinth, as well as the cultural framework of Corinth and the Roman World in general. Corinth and Ephesus would most likely share a common cultural framework through their close proximity to one another and their status as major cities of the empire (Barker, 607).

Textual Criticism

I compared my selected passage with three versions of the Bible, namely, the New Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, and the New American Standard Bible. The three texts, in parallel, appear below:

NRSV
12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
13 And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.

NIV
12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

NASB
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

All three versions of the text are very similar, but there are some differences of translation that might effect the understanding of the reader.
In the NRSV in verse 12, the phrase “the gifts bestowed on us by God,” is used, and phraseology is not used in either the NIV or the NASB. Both the NIV and NASB translate this verse as “what God has freely given us,” though in different word order. The words “gifts bestowed on us” make the subject of the text more personal than the phraseology of “what God has freely given us.”
In verse 13, all three versions translate slightly differently. NRSV uses the word “interpreting”, while the NIV uses the word “expressing,” and the NASB uses the word “combining” when interpreting the Greek word sugkrino. According to Strong’s Greek Lexicon, sugrinko means: to joint together fitly, compound, combine; to interpret; to compare (Blue Letter Bible). The NRSV’s “interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual,” is not close at all to the NIV and NASB, which mention “spiritual truths” or “spiritual thoughts” with “spiritual words.” The NRSV leaves the reader to understand that the people receiving the information are spiritual, while the NIV and NASB leaves the reader to understand that thoughts or truths that are spiritual are communicated with words that are spiritual.

Form Criticism

The apostle Paul writes to his audience in the form of a letter. This passage is part of a piece of correspondence which meant to teach and correct the members of the church in Corinth (“Literary Overview of the NT Books”). Paul used this format to accomplish a change in the attitude of the reader. The implications of Paul writing in a letter format are that Paul might not have anticipated that his letter would be kept and circulated around the churches and become part of the Christian cannon (Gable, 246). The letter to the Corinthians is not an epistle, as this letter was personal and was not written as a literary device to teach a wider audience, though it eventually was used for such purposes (Patzia, 69).

Source Criticism

Paul, as a Pharisee, was intimately familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, which mention the Holy Spirit many times. (Patzia, 69) Genesis 41:38-39 is a possible source for Paul’s understanding of the Holy Spirit. This verse says, “So Pharaoh asked them, ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?’ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you’” (New International Version.) This verse imparts the idea that God through his spirit gives knowledge, understanding and wisdom to those who posses the spirit, which is the central idea that Paul is attempting to communicate to his audience.
Another possible source verse for Paul could be Joel 2:28-29, which says, “”And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (New International Version). This passage presents the idea that the Holy Spirit provides special information, along with dreams and visions.

Redaction Criticism

Some scholars have claimed that Paul did not write this passage, but that it was inserted and was “preformed tradition” of a non-Christian or a Gnostic origin. This is based on Paul using the pronoun, “we” instead of “I.” Harpers disregards this belief entirely by stating, “such an assumption is not justified, because the rhetoric of the whole section revolves around “I” (Paul), “you” (Corinthians), and “we” (apostles and missionaries). It is therefore Paul and not his “Gnostic” opponents who introduces the distinction between two classes of Christians” (May, 1172).
The passage refers to a type of “secret” knowledge that is only accessible to people through the Holy Spirit. The Gnostic’s believed that salvation could be attained through secret, intuitive knowledge. (“Definition of Gnosis.”).

Windows of Understanding

World 1

The Church in Corinth was composed of a group of Jews and Gentiles who had converted to Christianity. The church in Corinth had many spiritual gifts, and they abused them. The congregation was divided against itself with different members supporting different leaders, members sued each other in secular courts, and some members thought that Christian knowledge was reserved for a select few in the church (Brown, 521). The church celebrated the Eucharist regularly (New International Version 1 Cor. 11:17). Because this congregation had both Jewish and Gentile converts, at least part of the congregation probably celebrated Passover as well.

World 2

Paul was a Jewish Pharisee who was trained in the Jewish Law. Paul was converted to Christianity after having a theophany with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul was appointed to act as an apostle of Christ to the Gentile world. From the eyes of Paul, this passage is an attempt to teach the Corinthians that no knowledge or insight into Christianity is possible without the holy spirit. Paul believes that a man cannot perceive the truth of religion unless that truth is first revealed to him by God himself. Paul is reacting to the attitude of the members of the church in Corinth, who believe that they are very wise (Brown, 520).

World 3

There are two “normative” doctrinal stances of mainline Churches of Christ with regard to the Holy Spirit. The first view, which is now a minority view called the “Texas Tradition,” believes that there is no indwelling of the holy spirit and that instead all that remains of the Spirit to humans is the Bible. In this doctrinal position, the passage would be interpreted as speaking about the Bible itself as being the authoritative word of God that teaches “spiritual things to those who are spiritual.”
The second view, which is now the view that the majority of members of Churches of Christ hold, is that the Holy Spirit indwells in the believer. This is the same view espoused by historical Christianity at large. This doctrinal position would interpret this passage as speaking directly about the Holy Spirit, the third person of God, teaching and instructing the believer in the truth.
(“Kingdom Come – Chapter Four”).

Summary and Closure

In this project I have learned how to complete a basic exegesis of scripture using the Historical-Critical Method of scripture analysis. I have come to a greater understanding of the culture that Paul and the Corinthian church were operating under, as well as how various groups within my own denominational heritage view the operation of the Holy Spirit within Christianity.
I have enjoyed learning how to employ higher biblical criticism in an exegesis. While I have studied biblical criticism in another course, I was not presented with the opportunity to use it to the extent that this course has offered me.
The search for meaning and understanding of this scripture passage has enriched my understanding of the operation of the Holy Spirit. My religious heritage, being birthed during the Enlightenment, has always placed an extremely high value on reasoning and “common sense.” This high valuing has allowed my denomination to replace the Holy Spirit with human reasoning, which is incongruent with historical Christianity. Furthermore, this passage has shown me just how much farther we must travel in Churches of Christ to recover our original beliefs and teachings.
The most important thing I learned in this research is how much light an exegesis can provide on a small piece of scripture. I had never considered before how just a few sentences in scripture can convey so much information.
I am left with one main question from my exegesis. What is the true meaning of verse thirteen in the passage? The word choices and order in this passage can greatly effect the understanding of the idea that Paul is trying to communicate here. I am left to wonder if I must learn a large amount of Greek to fully grasp what Paul is attempting to convey.

Hermeneutic

I plan on presenting a short exegetical-type sermon on this scripture to the class. Because of time restraints, my presentation will actually be a small piece of what would be a larger, longer sermon that would be presented to a church.

Annotated Bibliography

Books

Barker, Kenneth L and John R Kohlenberger III. The Expositor’s Bible
Commentary, New Testament. Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1994.

This work is useful as an evangelical commentary that can shed some light on basic information about a piece of scripture.

Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament.
New York: Double Day, 1996.

This book provides much detailed scholarly information about the New Testament as a whole, as well as individual books of the Bible.

Gable, John, Charles Wheeler and Anthony York. The Bible as Literature: An Introduction.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

This book provides a good primer on higher biblical criticism and ways to apply it to different genres of scripture.

May, James, ed. Harper’s Bible Commentary.
New York: Harper-Collins Publishing, 1988.

This commentary provides scholarly information, and it was very useful for redaction criticism.

The New Oxford Annonated Bible with the Apocrypha. Michael D. Coogan, ed.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

This bible has very useful scholarly introductions as well as short commentary for most verses in the Bible.

O’Connell-Roussell, Sheila. “Greco Roman Rulers in the New Testament.”
Author’s Draft: Charts

This chart provides concise information on Roman rulers during the New Testament period.

Patzia, Arthur. “The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text and Cannon.”
Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1995.

Lecture

Pollard, Paul. “The Social World of the Johannine Epistles.” Bible Lectures.
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA. 5 May 2006.

Sajdak, Erika. “Exegetical Paper on Galatians.”
Clackamas Community College, Clackamas, OR. 13 Mar. 2007.

This lecture provided wonderful social background information on Ephesus, as well as the Greek culture prevalent during the New Testament age.

Websites

“The Apostle Paul.” Southern Methodist University.
12 March 2007.

This website provided basic background information on the Apostle Paul.

“Biblegateway.com – Passage Lookup: 1st Corinthians 2:12-13 NIV”. Bible Gateway.
20 February 2007.

Bible Gateway is a versatile bible search engine providing scripture in many different languages and translations.

“Biblegateway.com – Passage Lookup: 1st Corinthians 2:12-13 NASB”. Bible Gateway.
20 February 2007.

Bible Gateway is a versatile bible search engine providing scripture in many different languages and translations.

“Definition of Gnosis.” Merrian-Webster, Incorporated.
20 February 2007.

This dictionary provided a basic definition of the word Gnosis.

“Dictionary and Word Search for ’sugkrino (Strong’s 4793)’ ” . Blue Letter Bible.
1996-2002. 20 February 2007. bin/words.pl?word=4793&page=1>

The Blue Letter Bible word search for Strong’s lexicon provided valuable information on the meaning of Greek words.
“Kingdom Come – Chapter Four.” Out Here Hope Remains Blog.
17 Nov. 2006. 12 Mar. 2007

This blog was very useful in summarizing information from the book “Kingdom Come.”

“Literary Overviews of the NT Books.” Catholic-Resources.org. 05 May 2006. 03 March 2007.

This website provided good background information on 1st Corinthians.

“New Revised Standard Version”. Oremus Bible Browser.
20 Februrary 2007.

The bible browser provides a useable search engine for the NRSV Bible.

Hello all:

This quarter I am taking “History of the New Testament.” Part of the requirment for the class was to write an exegesis on a piece of scripture, and to present some sort of creative expression that goes along with our project. I had the idea of presenting a short exegetical sermonette on my paper, and my professor, a roman catholic exegete, was more than willing to oblige.

So I spent about 5 minutes preaching in a public school classroom, talking about the Holy Spirit. It was interesting. The most shocking part is that no one seemed to mind, even the non-Christians in the classroom. I was somewhat surprised in that, since the thesis of my paper and my sermon was on how you cannot understand spiritual things without having the spirit of God within you.

I figure I’ll give it another two weeks, and if I don’t get a letter from the ACLU, I’m okay.

I’ll post my paper after I do my final edit. If you’d done exegesis, you can poke holes in it!

-Clarke

you think this is one of the coolest things you’ve ever seen:

Zwingli Gear

I want one. lol

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’ve noticed a revival of Calvinism in the Church. I was in a teen class the other day listening to our new youth minister talk about predestination. John Mark Hicks has written an article on Calvinism vs. Arminianism on his website. The Christian Standard is running a whole series looking at Calvinism (very critically, I might add).

We in Churches of Christ are historically Arminian in our soteriological point of view. The Baptist embrace of Calvinism really turned Campbell off because he and many Christians couldn’t express a conversion experience that the Calvinism of the time required. Is this a point in our theology that we need to reevaluate? What is driving many to question this point of our beliefs?

Tell me what you think.

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

I’m not totally sure what happened, but I noticed today as I was looking through my blog that Bobby Ross’ blog was not appearing on my blogroll. I got into the settings and found that it was set as invisible.

That has been changed now and I am linking visibly to his blog once again.

Sorry Bobby.

-Clarke

Hello all:

In the last couple of days, I’ve read enough sentences that say something like “xxx rejects the authority of the scriptures,” that I’m ready to puke. This phrase has bothered me for a long time, but I have tired of reading and hearing it, so now I shall start my diatribe against it.

This phrase comes out of the mouths of many in Churches of Christ. Not only that, though, this phrase also comes out of the mouths of many others that would be considered “evangelical” about churches that are more liberal than they are, or with whom they disagree.

If you read most statements of faith and creedal statements by most fundamentalist or evangelical groups today, they usually include a phrase that mentions that they firmly uphold and affirm the authority of scripture.

The groups that our church often criticizes for rejecting the authority of the scripture love to talk about how much authority the scriptures have. So why do we say that they reject that authority?

It is because they don’t reject the authority of the scripture, but instead they reject our preconceived ideas and beliefs about scripture. They reject, or rather, don’t even recognize our idea that there is a “New Testament Pattern” of how to conduct a worship service. They reject the Command, Example and Necessary Inference hermeneutic (which stems from the idea of a pattern to look for and follow). They reject the notion that the bible must specifically authorize something in English for it to be permissible in a worship service. They reject various interpretations of scripture that Churches of Christ typically affirm, and when they do this, we then say they are rejecting the authority of scripture altogether. It is implied that they don’t respect God. It is implied that they are apostate for not agreeing with our notions about scripture.

We then use these items in our unwritten creed to keep these people at arms length or further so they don’t effect “doctrinal purity.”

When we do this, we, in fact, are guilty of rejecting the authority of scripture. We instead exalt the authority of our logical and common sense above that of the scripture. We impose our beliefs on the text instead of reading anew what the text actually says and means.
One of our taglines states: “It says what it means, and it means what it says.” Its time that we respect that.

-Clarke

I don’t believe that there is an identity crisis in Churches of Christ at all. We know who were are, no matter whether we are conservative or liberal.

I am a member of a congregation that is most would say is becoming more progressive. There is some serious, healthy questioning of our traditions going on in this church. However, this questioning, which is rejecting some of the teachings that have been held as “traditional” within our brotherhood, doesn’t mean that we have lost track of who we are. We are familiar with our heritage and history, and we affirm the people that came before us in a different time. In many ways, we are embracing the distant past of our Restoration Movement, and not the last 50 to 100 years that has brought division and turmoil.

So, are we in a crisis? No, not at all. We are instead entering a time of renewal and understanding that is being fermented by the Holy Spirit.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I love it when I am searching for information about scripture through website sources that many in our churches wouldn’t touch with a ten foot poll, and then find little gems on those sites from scholars within Churches of Christ.

I was searching for information about the exclusion of the apocrypha from the Protestant Cannon when I found this quote, which is attributed to a book that Everette Ferguson edited, entitled “The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity.”

“The Septuagint was the Bible of the earliest church. The parting of the church from the synagogue was a bitter one. The Septuagint had been regarded as the inspired Word of God; . . . the synagogue rejected the Septuagint [c. 90-100] . . . the Church spread the Septuagint, together with its own writings contained in the New Testament, throughout the world in its missionary activities. The Greek Bible was translated into Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Arabic and other languages. . . Until the Protestant Reformation, the canon of the Church was the larger canon of the Septuagint. The Septuagint has traditionally been used to restore the text of the Hebrew Bible where the latter is corrupt.”

The thread and post can be found here, it is post #18.

Enjoy

-Clarke

Daniel and the Dragon, circa 1372

Hello all:

Northwest Christian College has revealed their line-up for the second annual Stone-Campbell Symposium. The docket includes four women and one man (Paul Blowers). D’Esta Love, the Chaplain at Pepperdine University, is one of the speakers at the symposium. She is scheduled to preach at the 1st Christian Church of Eugene during the symposium.

The symposium is March 19-21, 2007. I’d like to go, but I’m not sure I will make it this year, as our anniversary occurs during the symposium. Last years symposium was great, and I have a feeling this year’s will be good as well.

Let me know if you are going to be in the area for the symposium.

-Clarke

So, we knew we had to do something but we weren’t’ sure what…

During my websurfing, I found the website of a local Christian Church that started with about 50 members and was regularly attracting 2500-3000. We had been hovering around having 50 in attendance, and I figured that if they could grow that large, we could too. I mentioned this congregation to some of our friends at church, and that I thought we should visit it sometime and see how they did things. Our more conservative friends sounded interested, but cautious.

As things deteriorated more and more around us, with less people coming, and worse attitudes emerging, we joked more and more about going to that Christian Church. Finally, we got so frustrated that our good friends (their entire family) and my family would go check this congregation out. We sent an email to our minister letting him know we wouldn’t be at church on a certain Sunday, and why, and then we went.

Going into a congregation that had 2500 people from 50 was a bit of a culture shock, but it was good. We took a lot of what they did, their attitudes, and their look, and decided that we wanted to incorporate those things into our church.

We came up with a list of small changes that no one could biblically argue with. The first was to remove the pulpit. Several people freaked out. Some argued even though there was no biblical basis for it. Our minister, who at first was supportive, decided this was his time to bail, making the changes we had made the reason for his departure, and he left.

We’ve made-over part of our building, fixed our roof, created a vision statement that included welcoming people of all types and situations, changed the bulletin, created a nice self-serve coffee bar, and hired a couple of interns from Cascade - one to preach and the other to improve worship.

We’ve had a couple of spurts of visitors, but this Sunday we were down where we were before.

Unfortunatly, I still see much of the same attitude….but out of different people now. People leave and create a hole, and someone else fills it.

Yesterday and today my wife and I had some good friends of ours treat us horribly… part of that “filling the hole.” It started a while ago and has gotten worse. We almost decided to leave and find another congregation today…it was so painful. Another good friend showed us that that would be a mistake.

Its been crazy. I am swamped in school…I’m taking History of the New Testament this quarter along with Astronomy…and it is killing me. I’m working full time as usual….and I’m lead/supervisor/program developer for my special little work unit….and its killing me. I’m going through Structural Fire Academy for work so that I can take care of fire stuff better…and its killing me.

Prayers will be gratefully accepted.

I apologize for taking so long for part 2. So many things have happened…so many frustrations…so many little things have kept me from sharing the story. The words above don’t communicate 5% of what has happened.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts, a lot I’ve wanted to get on here and talk about, but I didn’t want to do that without finishing this story.

I’m glad this story is written. I’ll probably write more about it later. I have many other things I want to talk about right now though.

I’ll see you all soon.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just wanted to let you know I haven’t forgotten that I left you hanging….however, things are much more dynamic then I thought…things are changing even more than I thought….I will resume writing after we have a worship ministry meeting tomorrow.

I’ll leave you with a painting from the Iconoclast period of “The Theotokis and Child”. (Theotokis means Mother of God).

-Clarke

Hello all:

In the past year, the little congregation that my family is a part of has gone through a period of ups and downs. We placed membership just a little over a year ago, and became a part of a group of only a couple of younger families in the congregation. My wife was baptized on Christmas of last year, not long after we placed membership, so we had a honeymoon experience with the church.

Not long after, we were fully immersed in the culture of this group of believers. We found out that the church had had close to 350 members before a series of splits occured, caused mostly by the former minister who had finally been thrown out of the congregation six months or so before we arrived. Morning worship attendance was now down to around 65.

I was brought into the worship ministry, which was trying to reform the worship into something a ltitle more “modern”. I was also asked to teach the teenagers, which was something I had a big interest in doing. We stayed very active in the events of the church, with my wife getting involved with lots of projects.

It became very apparent that one of our two elders had cancer and would not survive much longer. Plans were made for governing the church without an eldership or deaconate. Weekly attendance rose during this time period, and we ended up with about 85 people every Sunday morning, which created some optomism for all of us.

After Charlie passed away, a group of ministries was formed, each to govern their section of the church, along with a monthly men’s meeting that served as a business meeting. We also held congregational meetings to communicate with everyone what was going on.

The congregational meetings served as nothing else than a place for people to argue and fight. We in the worship ministry decided this would not be tolerated, and made it clear that abuse would not be allowed to occur. We lost a couple of members during this time, but that was okay because they were chasing visitors away and yelling at anyone who disagreed with them.

It became very apparent that the men’s meeting system was not working, and that the church was in financial trouble. During this time, attendance started to fall, and we are now back to around 65 people on Sunday morning, where we started.

We knew that we needed to do something, but we weren’t sure what.

To be continued…

-Clarke

Good evening everyone.

I obviously haven’t written in a while. Life has crept up and I’ve been busy. I just finished fall term at school and walked away with a 4.0 GPA again. I’m very thankful for that.

I’m also finishing up a fire engineering academy at work, and that is finally done next week.

I’ve had things to write about, but I’ve kept them to myself so that I had more time to think about what I’m going to say.

So, in the next week or so I’m planning (hoping) to write a couple of posts about what I’ve been up to recently as far as church goes, because a lot has happened just in the last couple of weeks. I also want to take some time and read up on what others have been talking about and I want to comment on recent events such as Richland Hills COC adding a Saturday night service featuring instrumental music.

So, I’ll leave you with that teaser for this second. I’m hoping that my long absense hasn’t pushed too many people away. I’m sure that some people will get their notification email and come over and unsubscribe. I guess we’ll see.

-Clarke

My Jesus, by Todd Agnew

Which Jesus do you follow?
Which Jesus do you serve?
If Ephesians says to imitate Christ
Then why do you look so much like the world?

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the arrogant
So which one do you want to be?

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Cause my Jesus bled and died for my sins
He spent His time with thieves and sluts and liars
He loved the poor and accosted the rich
So which one do you want to be?

Who is this that you follow
This picture of the American dream
If Jesus was here would you walk right by on the other side or fall down and worship at His holy feet

Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a clear complexion
Is how you see Him as He dies for Your sins
But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part
Sometimes I doubt we’d recognize Him

Cause my Jesus bled and died
He spent His time with thieves and the least of these
He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable
So which one do you want to be?

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet might stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despises the proud
I think He’d prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud!

I want to be like my Jesus!
I want to be like my Jesus!

Not a posterchild for American prosperity, but like my Jesus
You see I’m tired of living for success and popularity
I want to be like my Jesus but I’m not sure what that means to be like You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You, love like You but then You died for me
Can I be like You Jesus?
I want to be like my Jesus

Hello all:

Bobby Ross, editor of the Christian Chronicle, has written an excellent article on the recent debate on unity between Churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches that occured at FHU.

While it sounds as if the debate didn’t change very much, it is good to hear that FHU allowed the debate to occur on their campus at all.

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

Well, I am somewhat caught up in my Astronomy and Criminal Law classes for today, so I have a minute to sit down and blog.

As I wrote in my last post, I’ve been really busy with school. Work slowed down just about the time school started so that my activity level stayed just about the same. Now that has changed.

I’m still under an overtime freeze at work, but now I’m taking a fire apperatus operators classs for work during work hours. This is taking up some of my time. Also, my wildland fire classes are starting with the first one starting next week, so my schedule is very messed up.

=========================================

On the Restoration and Unity fronts, the Stone-Campbell Dialogue has issued a study guide and brochure on how to create a local Dialogue in your own community, in advance of the 2008 anniversary of 200 years of our movement.

This just came out a week or so ago, and was publized today in the Disciples News Service news brief for the week. This comes at an interesting time for me. Back in March or April when Sara and I went to the Stone-Campbell Symposium, I met the Regional Minister for the Disciples in Oregon. I then contacted her via email and we agreed to speak more and work together on something to promote unity within the Restoration Movement. She told me that she would be busy until November or so, but that we could start working on it then.

So, is it coincidence that the S-C Dialogue put this out right when they did, or is it providential? My faith tells me that there is something more than mere coincidence working here.

If the Disciples minister agrees, I want to persue a local S-C Dialogue here in Portland.

So…if you are in the Portland Metro area, or know someone who is a member of a restoration movement church, I’d like to hear from you. This project will take a lot of work. Its likely to get some strong reactions from some churches in the area, and some of those reactions will probably be pretty negative.

And you’ll hear about it here first.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I wanted to let you all know that I’m stil around. I’ve been buried between school and work.

Typically, I go to church whenever I can. Sunday morning, evening, Wednesday night, and whenever else there is something going on. Lately, I’ve only been able to get there Sunday morning. I work on Wednesdays with my new job, and while I have a flex schedule, I’ve been dragged into late meetings, pulled into training sessions, and generally kept too busy to go.

Sunday nights have been a myriad of reasons, but I’ve missed alot of those as well. I feel disconnected.

Now, school has started. I’m taking Astronomy as one of my lab science requirments, as well as Criminal Law and a couple of Wildland Fire classess for professional upgrade. The Astronomy class is a lot of work. I’m contemplating switching to another community college thats a little bit closer to where we will be moving because my school won’t accept some of my credits from Cascade College.

So, thats where I’ve been. I am working on a new post about division, but its kind of long and is not done yet. Hopefully I’ll post that soon.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My parents are on vacation right now and are currently in Texas. They are driving up to Missouri and Illonois, and might be hitting Louisiana and Mississippi while they are down South. They are planning on hitting Abeline and Harding on their tour.

One of my second cousins is a minister in Texas. My parents dropped in my Dad’s aunt and uncle to visit and wanted to see my cousin Arty. While they were there they were shocked to learn that Arty had “left the church.”

Arty now preaches at an Independent Christian Church. My parents aren’t too sure what to thing about that, but my Dad’s Aunt gave them a copy of “The Other Side of the Keyboard” to read.

My mom called me to ask what I thought about the book and the situation; she knew that I had read it because I had sent it over with my dad for her to read some months ago and it had gotten lost in his travels. I was at work so I couldn’t really talk about it. We keep missing each other by phone so I haven’t been able to talk to her about it. But, she reads my blog.

In a nut-shell, I think its great. I’m glad that Arty has a job, that a Independent Christian Church is willing to take the risk in hiring a preacher who was trained and grew up in the Churches of Christ, and I’m glad that Arty was willing to take a job with a congregation that is different from what he has known.

I hope that if Arty is ever ready to return to an a capella church that he is shown the same grace that the Christian Church seems to have shown him.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My wife, son, and I went to Central Oregon over the weekend to visit my parents. We went to church with my parents on Sunday night, and listened to the second of a series of classes on Church History that one of the preachers is teaching.

The series was called, “Studying the History of the New Testament Church.”

It was a decent lesson for the most part, sparse with information, but that is to be expected when you only have 45 minutes to cover the ante-nicene period of Church History.

Things that struck me however: Ignatius of Antioch was mentioned as one of the most prominent martyrs of the period. What the lesson leaves out is that Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch when he was executed. The teacher asserted that the apostasy took place during the nicene period, however, Ignatius being the “Bishop” of Antioch over a group of elders points to the fact that already there had been changes to the leadership structure of the church. I assume the teacher left this out because it weakens his point about the apostasy.

One of the other things that struck me was that he talked about the New Testament Pattern. He related this to the idea of a dress pattern, and stated that if the dress didn’t come out exactly like it was in the pattern, that the pattern wasn’t followed. After reading Bobby Valentine’s post on Patternism I had a hard time agreeing with him on his statement.

The final thing that was stated that bugged me a bit was the comment that there were always those out there somewhere doing things just the way we do them today. While I think God’s will was always accomplished no matter what the church and people did wrong, I don’t think there was a group of people that existed the whole time that things the way we do them. The Orthodox kept up Baptism by immersion and, and some Orthodox kept up a capella singing… but otherwise I’d say alot changed…

On the positive side, there was talk about several martyrs, as well as a quote from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which was a pleasant surprise. There was good information about the period that was in the lesson that was helpful. I was happy to see that they had so many people there who wanted to learn about church history. Its just too bad its not coming from a more neutral angle.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I have a couple of different things to post about, but I’ll start with this one first.

A few days ago I was talking with my 80 year old Grandmother, who lives in Missouri, over the phone. I was curious, so I asked her how she became a Chrisitan. She told me that she grew up in the church, and that her mother had grown up in the church as well.

I made a comment during the conversation that her mother must have remembered the division between the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches quite well. My grandma wasn’t sure exactly when the division happened, but she did have something to say about it:

“You know, your granddad and I had friends in the Christian Church. Their service in town was before ours, so we would go and worship with our friends at the Christian Church, and could still make it to ours. They were pretty much just like us except they had an organ. I just couldn’t disfellowship those people just because they used an instrument.”

Thats a good example that we should follow today.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just finished reading Kingdom Come by John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine.

It took me a while because I’ve been really busy with work. The book itself is an easy read and is a fascinating look into the beliefs and eschatology of our forgotten past.

Bobby commented a while back that he’d like to know what I think about pacifism and religous nationalism after reading the book.

Between the lecture they gave at Pepperdine, the book, and reading some blog posts by Travis and Greg, I’ve been thinking alot about these subjects.

And I’ve changed my mind.

I grew up in a very patriotic family. My grandfather wasn’t just an elder, he was also a soldier. I grew up reading the Constitution, Decleration of Independence and the Monroe Doctrine. I read those documents more than my bible. I persued a career working in government.

But now I’d have to say that I agree more with Lipscomb’s thoughts on government. If I remember correctly from the book, Lipscomb believed that human governments existed because man was unable to govern himself under the law of Christ.

So…on pacifisim. While I’m not sure I would take a completely pacifict position, especially when it comes to protecting my family, I think I can say that Jesus was serious when he taught “turn the other cheek,” and I don’t think he was alluding to just verbal insults.

And as far as religous nationalism…. it is nothing less than idolatry. While we live here in the United States and should be thankful to God that we have it easy, we should not assume that America has a special place in the heart of God. The thought that the United States is the new Israel is wrong. To view the United States as anything other than the Babylon, Assyria, or Rome that it is is to fool oneself and elevate the temporal state to a place that it doesn’t belong.

But, this is a mistake that has been made since Constantine. Its nothing new. But we as Christians must see it for what it is.

Bobby and John Mark’s book helps us do just that. Get a copy, and read it. If you read any book besides the bible this year, this should be the one.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My wife relayed a funny/sad story to me tonight.

Her best friend’s boyfriend goes to a non-denominational community church of some sort, and he has decided to be baptized.

He’s been waiting for three months.

The church he belongs to makes you sign up on a waiting list to be baptized. They do not want to fill the baptistry each Sunday, so they only baptize people twice per month, and when they do, they only baptize a couple of people each time.

So, he’s waiting. Sara told him that he could come to our church and be baptized right away, but he wants to be baptized in front of his congregation.

Since they believe that baptism isn’t necessary, its not really that important and so they don’t believe it matters when you are baptized. The one reedeming (I think…) thing to this story is that it sounds like they baptize more people per year than we do, but they are a large church which is constantly growing.

Sara was told by her friend’s dad that, “it doesn’t matter when you are baptized since you are saved when you start believing.” She didn’t really know what to say to him and didn’t want to get into an agrument so she stayed quiet.

I think we need to rethink our logical arguments on baptism and find one that works today. It drives me nuts to be listening to the local Christian music station and hear someone talk about “inviting Jesus into your heart to be saved.” Its such an obvious error, we’ve got to find a better way to communicate the importance and necessity of baptism.

-Clarke

It has long seemed to the writer that many if not most doctrinal differences are caused by a partial apprehension of the truth, rather than from a wilful desire to depart from God’s word. A man perceives some special point of the truth, and loyally contends for that. If then he closes his mind to further teaching, or even tries to nullify the Scriptures that seem to conflict with his limited view, he becomes a sectarian. But if he accepts all that God says, and seeks to take hold of all in growing apprehension, he realizes to that extent the privilege and doctrinal position of a simple Christian. This is a distinctive mark.

-R.H. Boll, The Kingdom of God.

Robert Henry Boll saw a lot of sectarianism during his time.

This statement by Boll does well to illustrate our culture in Churches of Christ. It certainly illustrates where I came from, and where I am hopefully moving away from more and more.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well…I did my first sermon last Sunday, and it seemed to go pretty well. I compared the churches in Jerusalem and in Corinth to my congregation and the problems that we are having. It made a few people mad I’ve heard, but directly, of course, I’ve heard nothing but good. One of our former elders suggested I persue preaching, but I already know I have no interest in doing that for a living….

Work has been insanely busy since I got promoted. We are waiting to move into our house, and I am busy trying to make new contacts and deal with problems, as well as deal with the political attention I am now receiving from above.

We also had our “TNT” program that I talked about in one of my prior posts. It seemed to go very well. We had two or three hundred kids in our building and I heard nothing but good on that.

So….at the moment, everything is very good, other than the busyness…and I’m finding I’m not praying as much as I was, but I am going to work on that.

Anyway, I hope to have some time on my days off to read and think about then come and write something more meaningful.

-Clarke

Hello all:

One of my kids in the youth group I lead is dating a guy that attends a large independent Christian Church. He comes fairly often with her, and I try to expound on the fact that the two churches aren’t that different and come from the same heritage.

On Sunday morning, she went to church with him at his congregation. She then came for Sunday night service at ours. While she was at his church, she invited the youth group there to come to the monthly devo and movie night that we hold once a month. I was pleased to hear that.

I was pleased, until she told me the youth ministers response. He said to her, “I don’t feel comfortable having my kids go visit a church that doesn’t use musical instruments.” He also told her that he was afraid his kids “might think a capella worship is better,” than worship with an instrument.

We certainly aren’t the only ones with a hand in our division…..

-Clarke

Hello all:

I will be preaching my first sermon ever this Sunday. I haven’t written it yet, but I think I’m going to compare the Jerusalem church in Acts to the church in Corinth, and then compare and contrast those two churches to my own congregation.

If any of you have any tips, I’d love to here them….I’m never preached before and I’ve not ever taken any classes on it so I’m trying to do it all from notes I was given by our minister and what I can find online.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’d like to thank you all for your prayers. I got the promotion I was hoping for, and my employer is now trying to get the house ready for us to move into as quickly as they can.

I found out on Monday, and since then I’ve had little free time. I assumed my duties as a corporal on Tuesday, and this coming Thursday I’ll be moving my office out to a brand new duty station.

Its very exciting, but time consuming. Things should slow down on Thursday or Friday, I hope, until we move. Once we are completely moved in thing should settle down into a normal pattern.

Again, thank you for all your prayers and support.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’ve been thinking alot lately about why our movement is important. I’ve done some writing on this subject before (Restoration Churches in the Future and The Restoration Plea in the 21st Century,) but I want to revisit it again.

As I visit various places online, I see different people from the three (or four, depending on your point of view) streams talking about how the movement is irrelevant, how Restoration doesn’t matter, or how they are going to leave the church (and the movement) for something else all together. I couldn’t disagree more with these positions. While my position has changed somewhat from what it was in the past, I still think that the goals and pleas of the Restoration Movement are achievable and necessary.

Our original emphesis on uniting Christians is important and needs to be recaptured. Alexander and Thomas Campbell had a dream of uniting Christians of various backgrounds together. It took a while, but they were very successful. A quick browse through Restoration History finds lots of Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and other Christians seperating themselves from their churches and becoming “Christians Only.” The movement saw a lot of growth when it embraced all who call on Christ as a brother or sister. Through the inclusiveness, a lot of minds were changed. At the same time, we need to be careful not to give up our core beliefs….and I don’t mean instrumental music or our eschatalogy.

The bible being the guide to faith and practice is one of our trademarks… or at least we believe that it is. We hold the Bible in high regard and look to it as the word of God. While we’ve discovered that patternism can be destructive, we can still be people of the book…and we need to be. Leaving man-made creeds behind, written or unwritten, is an important part of the bible being our guide. The message of the bible is as effective today as it has always been. It will work if we don’t abuse it.

Discipleship is important. Like unity, it is a message that was more widely present in the past and that needs to be recaptured. We, and the rest of the world, must rediscover what it really means to be a Christian. The members of our movement can do that, and I believe we can do it well.

Finally, we must evangelize the world. Our movement has fielded a lot of missionaries, and we still have plenty out there today, but we need more. Also, our own country is quickly becoming a white field ready to be harvested. God sows, we must reap. Unity and inclusiveness, holding the bible as our guide, and being true disciples of Jesus will help bring us a long way towards evangelizing a world that wants reality and not fakeness.

I really do think that the Restoration Plea is acheivable. I believe that we really can be united through Christ, even if there is not 100% agreement on all issues. I think that to make it there, we must be willing to be inclusive and invite those that we disagree with into our mist….interaction and communication will help change minds…standoffishness will not. Gospel Meetings might not work today like they worked 50 years ago. Our methods might change, but our principles should stay the same. Alexander Campbell probably wouldn’t recognize any of the streams of our movement today. We’ve strayed. But we can return. That is the wonderful thing about restoration.

-Clarke

Hello all:

First of all, it has been a while since I posted. I have been pretty busy, and my usual time at work that I can spend doing some blogging has been spent training people and dealling with issues instead. When I’m not at work, it feels like Sara and I are usually doing something with the church. This is good…I like to be busy, but it leaves little time for blogging (or anything else). I planned on reading a couple of books this summer, and haven’t done very much reading…. I’m hoping that things will calm down, but I don’t think they will.

My apologies to everyone about three-quarters of the comments going straight to the spam bucket. I was getting TONS of trackback spam, so I installed Spam Karma…which doesn’t handle TB spam very well. In the process of trying to fix the problem I messed it up. I will be working on it over the next couple of hours to try and fix the problems. As far as I know I “restored” all of the legitimate comments.

Finally…I’d like to ask for prayers. I’ve applied for a promotion at work. However, this isn’t just any promotion. This one includes a house…which will be behind a gate, in an area closed to the public by the Feds, and my office will be on site at the house…. and it also includes a pay raise, the supervision of a couple of people during the summer time, and being the person in charge of this area for public safety purposes. Its one of the most exciting opportunities that I’ve ever been offered. From what I’m told I’ll probably get it, but one other person applied. Could you please pray that whatever is within God’s plan for us is done in this situation.

If I do get this job and we move, it may put off me going back to school full time for a year or two longer. The house is Sara’s dream house and we went to go look at it when it went up for sale. There was no way we could afford to buy it…even though we dreamed of buying it and trying to get me assigned to work in this area full time because of its close location to our of the areas that we protect…and then my employer bought it… and put out this promotional opportunity.

So anyway…if you could spare a moment, please pray.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Each summer, Churches of Christ in the Portland area sponser whats called “TNT”, or Tuesday Nights Together, for the area youth groups. Each TNT night is held at a different congregtion, and there is usually a devotional, some skits, a message and some time to socialize.

We are hosting one this year, and as the “youth guy,” I’m working with the teens to get it prepared. So…the other day I received a phone call from an admissions counselor at Cascade, who asked if we’d also like to host the college’s newest music group during our TNT. Since this would take some pressure off of us to fill some time, I was all for it…but, there was one problem….

This group is a “Christian Band,” complete with acoustic guitar and drummer. I told the admissions counselor I couldn’t promise anything…and I took it to our minister, who vetoed it.

Apparently one of the other congregations last year hosted the same type of group during a TNT and caused some controversy. I don’t remember hearing about it, but apparently there were accusations that this congregation was attempting to introduce instrumental music into the area congregations.

So…. to avoid controversy, we aren’t hosting them. I can understand the decision, to an extent. We just changed our name, so going down this road would probably lead to more speculation on this subject, not less…. and we don’t need that right now. At the wsame time, though, its saddening, because these are the situations where I wish we could not worry about this issue so much… but, this is where we are.

-Clarke

Proverbs 8:12-36 (NRSV)

I, wisdom, live with prudence,
and I attain knowledge and discretion.
The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil.
Pride and arrogance and the way of evil
and perverted speech I hate.
I have good advice and sound wisdom;
I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign,
and rulers decree what is just;
by me rulers rule,
and nobles, all who govern rightly.
I love those who love me,
and those who seek me diligently find me.
Riches and honour are with me,
enduring wealth and prosperity.
My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold,
and my yield than choice silver.
I walk in the way of righteousness,
along the paths of justice,
endowing with wealth those who love me,
and filling their treasuries.

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

‘And now, my children, listen to me:
happy are those who keep my ways.
Hear instruction and be wise,
and do not neglect it.
Happy is the one who listens to me,
watching daily at my gates,
waiting beside my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favour from the Lord;
but those who miss me injure themselves;
all who hate me love death.’

From Gospel Advocate, June 21, 1906, found at: The Restoration Movement Pages.

In the determination of the question here involved, it must be borne in mind that this is a contest between two incorporated church organizations, and that the only question that this court can deal with is: in which corporation is the title to the church property which formerly belonged to the Sand Creek congregation now bested? From a careful examination of the record in this case, which contains over sixteen hundred pages, we have reached the conclusion that the learned chancellor who heard the case below rightfully reached the conclusion that the title to that property, at the commencement of this suit, was in the defendant in error the “Church of Christ of Sand Creek,” and not in the plaintiff in error the “Christian Church of Sand Creek,” and rightfully so decreed.

The decree of the Circuit Court will therefore be affirmed.

Paul, in First Corinthians, tells those in Corinth that he is writing to that they have already lost because they are filling lawsuits against one another. This was a sad day for our movement.

The thing that strikes me the most is that the division that occured between the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ was well orchestrated. It was not just a “drifting away” from one another, not simply just a de facto seperation, but one that was well thought out. Those who wanted seperation between the two groups weren’t afraid to advocate their position. The Sand Creek Address and Decleration illustrates this well.

Unity must also be something well thought out and orchestrated. We will not just “drift towards” one another, we must advocate our own position that the unity of the Church is biblically correct and within God’s will. Nothing else will achieve this goal.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I am finally done with school this term. I don’t have all my grades back yet, but it looks like I’m going to be getting a 4.0 this term. I have never gotten all A’s before…ever. But, its been 8 years since I’ve been in college, and I’m a little more dedicated this time around.

Next term, looks like I’m going to have to get some of my general ed. requirements out of the way, so I’ll be taking Intro to Astronomy for my lab science, plus a health or a math class probably… They are offering World Religions, which fits my schedule, but I’m not sure I’ve be able to handle that class along with a science class and another substantial class.

I have the opportunity to take Restoration History at Northwest College of the Bible for free fall term, but scheduling and work load might keep me from doing this. I’ll keep you updated on school as I know more.

-Clarke

From The Octographic Review (American Christian Review), JANUARY 3, 1892:

In the early part of our history as disciples it is a fact that discourses on “Oneness in Christ” were very common. But who preaches on that subject now? In view of the mischievous work of those who advocate humanisms in the worship and work of the church that subject is seldom discussed. It is among the themes of the past. That preacher would be a bold man, indeed, who would confront the religious world and say, “Allow me to show you what unity is, and how the Bible alone will produce unity.” Rather, such a man would be reckless. What then shall we do? Simply move onward. The Sand Creek Declaration is being adopted, and those who will not do right are purged out as old leaven. In course of a few years the Church of Christ will stand entirely separated from the Christian Church. Then there will be no more fellowship between them than there now is between the Church of Christ and any other branch of sectarianism. Hallelujah!

If Daniel Sommer only knew that he would look back at this moment, as do many other people in our movement, with lament and sadness.

The a capella Churches of Christ have been seperated from the Disciples of Christ and the Independent Christian Churches for 100 years now. Its time for us to heal with rift.

Our movement started out with the goal of restoring unity to Christianity through the rejection of creeds and the adoption of the Bible as the only guide to faith and practice. I think that was a worthy goal, and I believe it is still a worthy one. I think all sides have lost alot in the division.

When we split from the Disciples, we lost much of our heart for unity and for social justice. We we walked away, and finally when the Independents split away, the Disciples largely lost their call to return to primitive Christianity.

I think to be truly successful and complete, we need each other. Each group walked away and is now missing a vital part that the other has. We can learn from the Disciples and the Independents, and they can learn from us, as well.

So do something. Visit a congregation from another stream of the movement. Call the minister or elder on the other side and have coffee. Get to know those people who were supposedly “the enemy” and create some new allies.

I am going to do something. Sara and I have made a decision. Lord willing, I will quit my job next year, Fall 2007, and start full time going to school at Northwest Christian College - a school affilated with both the Disciples of Christ and the Independent Christian Churches, to work towards a degree in Theology. I will then persue admission to graduate school and study Church History and Theology.

Going to NCC, a school that has kept its ties to both the Disciples and the Independents, will put me smack dab in the middle of a bunch of people affiliated with the movement, but from different streams. Hopefully it will provide me with a good theological education, as well as provide me with strong credentials that I can use to work towards unity. My goal at this point is to earn a masters, teach, and work towards a doctorate, then teach some more and do some writing about unity and our movement. Its been a long discernment process, and I think that this is the direction he’s been leading me. I hope I’m right!

-Clarke

Hello all:

I received my copy of the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement today.

I’ve not had a lot of time to look at it, as I still having a never ceasing flow of homework coming at me, but I had time to check out the entries on the Exodus Movement and the Ottumwa Brethern.

I looked for the Ottumwa article because I had heard of them before but knew nothing about them. I found a pleasant surprise - many of the leaders of this conservative movement of the Disciples/Independents lived and worked right here in Portland. Northwest College of the Bible was a school started by members of the movement, and they have a small publishing company here that I didn’t even know about. When I have time I’m going to do some more research on this group.

If you don’t have a copy of the Encylopedia, I highly recommend it. Quite a bit of the Stone-Campbell Symposium was about the Encyclopedia, since the speakers there were the three editors of it. It has tons of interesting information about our movement and the churches that make it up. I can’t wait to sit down and read it cover-to-cover.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well, I was supposed to talk about Christianity in North America in class today, but people went so slow that they didn’t get to me, so I am going next week.

However, we’ve now been assigned a final project. We are supposed to select an individual from Church History, and offer some sort of presentation on that person. What the contents of that presentation is is pretty much up to us. The professor likes creativity, and encouraged monologues (or dialogues if you can find someone to work with).

I talked with my instructor about my idea and she approved it.

I selected Thomas Campbell. I will be reading Campbell’s Decleration and Address to the class as if I am Campbell himself. I’m very excited about this, because this gives me the chance to present the Restoration Plea to the people that I’ve been in class with for all these weeks. The majority of my classmates are already believers, and only one person there besides me knows anything about the RM, and he is a member of an Independent Christian Church congregation.

I think one of the things we need to do as members of Restoration churches is to reclaim our claim and appeal for unity, not just inside our movement, but outside. More and more I think the social and religous climate around us is ready for a message of Christian love, discipleship, and unity. We need to take advantage of this climate and renew our plea of the restoration of Christian Unity through going back to Bible basics…this time being more tolerant of those who come to different conclusions on periphial issues.

I hope that this is one such opportunity to do so.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My congregation is having some serious financial difficulties. The phone at the building has been shut off, the preacher went out and got a part time job so that he could reduce the amount of money he accepts from the church, and our natural gas almost got shut off a couple of weeks ago.

If you could take a moment and pray for us. Pray for wisdom for us, for us to make the right decisions when we have our business meeting in a couple of weeks, for our giving to increase, and for me when I call our minister later today to talk about some options…

My wife and I stopped by the home of a family who are members at our congregation to pick something up, and we ended up staying there two and a half hours talking, mostly about the budget and financial issues. We came away with this laying heavy on our hearts.

We came up with an idea on how to cut some expenditures, but I’m not very excited about how. We support two indigenous “missionary” preachers in Zimbabwe. These two both have their own congregations, and as far as I know, work full time evangelizing their areas. Between these two men I think we send a measley $350 a month. Some want to cut them out of the budget entirely, but I want to make an effort to “replace” our funds for them because these two men and their families are about as desperate as we are for funding.

So, this is my appeal for help. If your congregation would be interested in sponsoring some indigenous missionaries who are doing good work in Zimbabwe, leave a comment or email me. I don’t care if the sign above your door says Church of Christ, Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, or International Church of Christ. If your congregation wants to support some missionaries, let me know.

And finally, please forgive me for posting this. I feel like a televagelist now. I won’t be using my blog for fund raising purposes.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m taking a break from homework. I figured I’d write a quick blog post to let everyone know I’m still alive.

I have to give a 20 minute presentation on Christianity in North America to my History of Christianity class. I got assigned North America because I went to the Pepperdine Lectures and the Stone-Campbell Symposium, missing two weeks of class. My professor decided that since I have such an interest in the Restoration Movement that I would be good fit for North America.

The text we are using A World History of Christianity, mentions the Restoration Movement twice. It mentions Cain Ridge and the emotional excesses of the revival, and it mentions Alexander Campbell and the Christian Association of Washington, Pennsylvania.

On page 430, it says this about our movement: “The Christian Association, spearheaded by Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), attempted to recapture the unity of the Christian Community through a form of radical restorationism. Arguing that the New Testament was the only true guide for the Church, they offered as their maxim ‘where the scriptures speak, we speak; where the scriptures are silent, we are silent’. Such movements, however, rather than overcoming the divisions, contributed to them.”

What do you think?

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well, Sara and I took the our youth group to Central Oregon this weekend for a youth ralley. They seemed to have a good time.

While we were there, we got to spend some time with my parents and my grandmother. I was telling my mother about the Carl Ketcherside books I got, and she thought that was pretty neat. My dad didn’t know who he was. My mom asked my 78 year-old Grandmother, who hadn’t heard the conversation, if she knew who Carl Ketcherside was.

Her response was “Oh, yeah, I know who he is….He was a troublemaker!”

I have often wondered how my grandfather, who was an elder in the church, would feel about my theology. I guess my grandmother can give me a window into what he would think.

My grandfather could have heard Ketcherside speak even, but I don’t know. They lived in the area of Rockford, Illonois, almost their entire lives. Ketcherside lived in Missouri and often spoke at congregations in Illonois. Thats just speculation though.

So, I guess I’m a troublemaker, too. Guess we’ll see how it goes.

-Clarke

Hello all:

So, I dropped my wife off at work this morning, came back home, and found a large package sitting outside my door from College Press.

When I was at the Pepperdine Lectures, I had the occasion to meet Carl Ketcherside’s daughter. While we were talking she offered to send me a couple of books by her late father, and I agreed.

I lugged this huge package I found outside my door into the house, and opened it, and found 12 volumes of Hardcover books…”The Works of Carl Ketcherside”. The set is about as large as a smaller set of Encyclopedias, including his writings from the Mission Messenger magazine that he published.

This is more than I ever imagined. I expected to get a couple of paperbacks, and instead got this huge collection. I’m excited…I’m not sure when I’ll have time to read all of it…I shouldn’t run out of reading material for a while.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Its time to do some promoting (non-compensated, I assure you) of some stuff I’ve come across as late.

Check out the Faith & Education Scholarship Fund. This Scholarship is just for members of Churches of Christ to attend a 4 year liberal arts college or university. There is no requirement that you attend a church college, and they seem to actually promote attending secular universities. This is a brand new ministry that has just started up. I got some of their literature at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. If you have money that you can part with, send some their way…or if you know of a starving college student, send them their way. I’m hoping they’ll throw some money my way when I get back into a 4 year school. Unfortunatly its just around for undergrad work, maybe they’ll expand later, who knows?

Also…I bought John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine’s new book Kingdom Come while at the lectures. I’ve started it but haven’t gotten very far because of school. However, their lectures centered on the book, and I’m very excited to read it. The book is on the Spiritual Legacy of Harding and Lipscomb and the Nashville Bible School Tradition vs. the Texas Tradition. Very cool. Check it out, buy a copy.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m writing from the Firestone Fieldhouse, waiting for the evening Songfest and Keynote Lecture.

Today has been an interesting day. I went to the last session of Rick Atchley and Bob Russell’s lecture on being Together Again. It was again, a great session. That lecture has been completely packed all three days, and gives me great hope that we will be “Together Again.”

I want to take a moment to note a phenomenon that Greg has talked about on his blog, and that was addressed during the Stone-Campbell Symposium. While there has been much talk of unity between the Churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches, there has been little to none that included the Disciples. Those lectures that did mention the Disciples of Christ were fairly negative in nature. There were no mentions of the ICOC, either. I understand why this is…and its even a knee jerk reaction for me to not talk positively about the Disciples. I am trying to change, however, and I believe that our brothers and sisters that are interesting in unity need to as well. Highlighting brothers such as Newell Williams, a Disciples Historian and President at Brite Divinity School, and ministries such as Disciples Heritage Fellowship are good starting points for these discussions.

Anyway…back to the Lectureship. I missed Rubel Shelly’s last session, I had a last minute homework deadline that I had to make. But, I’m sure it was good.

The most exciting lecture I attended today was “3 Churches 3 Miles Apart….with the Same DNA (How we Discovered our Common Roots). Two pulpit ministers and a worship minister were present to talk about these churches. One from Churches of Christ, one from Independent Christian Churches, and one from Disciples of Christ. The most interesting this was that the Church of Christ minister was a former Catholic, the Independent Christian Church worship leader was originally from Churches of Christ….and the Disciples of Christ pulpit minister was originally from Independent Christian Churches, went to Pepperdine, joined the Churches of Christ, and is now (reluctantly) a Disciples minister (long story). These three congregations, all near Pepperdine, recently had a joint worship service and are getting to know each other better. It was a very interesting and exciting lecture.

I also went and listened to Dr. Paul Pollard, professor of Greek at Harding, speaking about the culture surrounding the Johannine letters. That guy knows how to make a history/scripture lesson interesting, and he is definatly a scholar.

The songfest is about to start, then a keynote address by Don Mclaughlin, and then I’ll attend one more lecture. I fly out of LAX at 6:00am. It has been a fun experience, I’ve learned, I’ve grown I think, and I’m glad I came. I would encourage all of you to attend next year, or attend the various unity events such as the North American Christian Convention that is going to be happening soon.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Today I again went and heard Rick Atchley and Bob Russell talk about being “Together Again.”
Their message was very worthwhile and I’m glad I was able to attend.

I also attended the second session of Rubel Shelly’s lecture on “Being the Church in a Postmodern World.” Rubel Shelly’s words really convicted my heart. He told the story of a Baptist minister who was out of town and stopped at a small diner in the middle of the night, and his meal was interrupted by a group of prostitues coming in for their nightly “break.” One of the Prostitutes announced her birthday was the next day, and was ridiculed by another. She then said that she hadn’t had a birthday party ever, in her entire life.

The next night, that preacher came back with streamers and a card and decorations, and he had convinced the cook to bake a cake….they threw a birthday party for this prostitute, who was in shock and couldn’t believe that she had her very own birthday cake.

It struck me that I’m not the type of persron who would do what this minister did….he went out of his way to be kind to someone that everyone looks down upon. This realization that I’m not that kind of person broke my heart. God calls us to be that kind of person. I’ve got a long long way to go before I get there.

I took a long break and did some homework, and then went to Victor Knowles second lecture on “Going Seperate Ways – What Really Happened in 1906?” Knowles read a list of 101 things that Churches of Christ and Christian Churches are doing together, both at home and on the Mission Field, to cooperate and win others for Christ. There were alot of good things on that list. As was mentioned in the comments from Wednesday, Knowles’ lecture is available on his Peace on Earth Ministries website.

After Knowles, I snuck into a half way done lecture on the Restoration of Discipleship in Churches of Christ by Brian Mashburn of Amarillo, Texas. Brian has been a youth minister in Churches of Christ for a long time, and a couple of years ago was hired as the Pulpit Minister of a large congregation….he wasn’t looking for the job, and didn’t want it, he didn’t want to leave youth ministry…so he told them the truth on what he believed…and they wanted to hire him for that. Brian talked about many that he knows that want to leave the Churches of Christ, and he talked about why he hasn’t and what he is doing to be a disciple while being a member of the Church of Christ. He reminded me of both Greg and Travis’ points of view alot.

At 9pm, I hit the third lecture on the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding by John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine. This was an awesome lecture. I can’t wait to read their book.
Hicks and Valentine talked about Lipscomb and Harding’s kingdom outlook, about pacifism and war, and about premillenialism. One of the attendees debated this support of Pacifism, and it was obvious that Hicks and Valentine feel much the way Lipscomb and Harding felt on the subject. I’ve never been a pacifist….and the man who gave his two cents on disagreeing with pacificism gave a good argument….but it was very hollow….after three days of Lipscomb and Harding….I have to say that they are persuasive. I highly recommend that you buy and read the new book on these two guys.

I met Dr. Paul Pollard several times yesterday, we kept running into each other. He encouraged me to check out Harding for graduate school, and Hicks encouraged me to check out Lipscomb. This has been a cool experience.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Today was good. I grabbed a bag of chips this morning, and while standing in line, noticed John Mark Hicks standing next to me. I said hello, and he introduced himself and we talked for several minutes. Nice guy…. I told him about my interesting in pursuing a graduate church history degree, and he recommended I check out Lipscomb University where he teaches. He was very gracious.

The first lecture I hit today was a joint program by Rick Atchley and Bob Russell on “Together Again:Restoring Unity in Christ After a Century of Separation.” Most of the material wasn’t new to me, but it was nice to hear Bob Russell talk about the similarities between his fellowship and ours.

The second lecture I attended was Rubel Shelly’s. He talked about “Being the Church in a Postmodern World.” It was an interesting lecture describing both modern and post-modern thought, and he examined the advantages and pitfalls of both. I didn’t agree with everything he said (he seemed to subscribed to wholesale unity without regard to Baptismal Theology), but the majority of his lecture I found very helpful.

After getting some homework done, I went and heard Victor Knowles speak about how the division of 1906 occur, along with his challenge of “conventional wisdom” on the subject. Knowles distributed a free copy of his magazine “One Body” which was really cool.

After Knowles, I went and heard a lecture called “Silenced Voices: The Path to Restoring Women’s Gifts in Worship and Ministry.” I didn’t agree with everything that was presented in this class, either, however, the two presenters, one female and one male, made some good points on how many times women are used by God in both the Old and New Testaments. Their arguments were convincing, but I still cannot discount Paul writing to the Corinthians. At the same time, I can’t discount the evidence from scripture that they presented… there has got to be a happy medium that is scriptural.

Finally, I attended the second session of John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine’s lecture on the Spiritual Legacy of Harding and Lipscomb. This was just an amazing class, and it portrays Harding and Lipscomb as amazing people… I now understand why their names grace two of our colleges, yet I don’t…… their beliefs are so different from the standard teachings of the Church of Christ today, I’m surprised they haven’t been renamed. But I’m glad they haven’t….these men are spiritual giants.

I don’t have as many complaints today about logistics…not to say I have none, but they aren’t worth whining about here. I need to have patience….prayers will be appreciated in this effort.

-Clarke

—————————————————-
Major Correction: Pepperdine Bible Lectures…not Harding…..I’ve just heard about Harding and Lipscomb for 45 minutes….

Well, after flying half the day to L.A. and finally getting to Malibu, I got into Firestone Field House just in time for the Songfest and then the Keynote Lecture of the night. Both were good. The Field House was packed, there were hundreds of people there.

After the keynote, we had the option of seven different lectures before the night closed out. I went and heard John Mark Hicks (of David Lipscomb University) and Bobby Valentine present “Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb & James A. Harding – Part One: The Kingdom of God reloaded.”
Hicks and Valentine did a great job. I really wanted to hear Hicks speak because of his reputation as a great scholar among Churches of Christ…he didn’t let me down. Hicks and Valentine talked about how Lipscomb and Harding viewed the Kingdom of God and how our theology and theirs are so much different. They have another session or two where they go farther in depth on how we can embrace the positives that these two men left behind. Hicks and Valentine have written a book on the subject, and it should be available in the coming days. They hope to have copies available before the lectureship ends…I know I’m going to get a copy.

Pepperdine asks their professors to write a book centered on the theme of the Lectureship each year. This year, Tom Olbricht wrote on “Life Together – The Heart of Love & Fellowship in I John.” I grabbed a copy for $10.00 and got a personalized autograph from Olbricht. Very cool.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the lectureship…so far the content has been great.

—————————————————————————————
Now…let me do some complaining. Whining, really. Whoever handles the logistics for this event…maybe even for the university, isn’t doing the best job here.

Pepperdine’s website boasts great wireless internet all over the campus. Wrong. I’m sitting here writing my post in a word document because I don’t have internet here in the dorm room I’m staying in. If I had a CAT5 cable I could hook up online….IF I had a Pepperdine login, which they won’t give me. I guess they are worried you’ll break into a dorm room, bringing a computer with you and hooking up to their network. However, if I go ¼ mile up campus, I can get a wireless signal, without logging in…..hmmmm….I think they have this backwards….time to fire the IT department. Cascade College has better internet access…..

School is out for the summer…and they’ve BLOCKED off parking spots just during the lectures. There is half the parking that there normally is on campus because of this. There is no obvious explanation…but they aren’t painting or sweeping or doing maintenance. I spent 30 minutes driving around trying to figure out where I could park that wasn’t a 20 minute walk to where I’m staying. Just not smart…

I got into the Field House at 6:30pm just in time for the singing to start, and hadn’t had dinner…. they close the cafeteria at 6pm, and the only thing you can buy is cookies and coffee, cash only. Thats really annoying when you walk half way across campus to get food and all you have is a debit card.

And, finally, I went and bought some food at the 24-hour market down the road because I was starving. Stuff that needs to be microwaved and refrigerated. I have a Fridge and Microwave in my dorm room. Problem…they are both plugged into a surge protector, but the surge protector isn’t plugged in….and there aren’t any plugins on that side of the room…at all…and they are too heavy to drag across the room…thats annoying….do I have to bring my own extension cord??

Just my two cents here, but I figured a college that costs $25k just for tuition would have its act together on logistics….guess not.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Lately, I’ve been running into a lot of resistance from people we go to church with about our heritage and history. My wife and I attended the Stone-Campbell Symposim in Eugene earlier this month, and when my wife told someone that we had gone, we were told by someone that they didn’t believe “in any of that stuff.” I was told that if the church of Christ originated from the Restoration Movement, “we are in the wrong church”.

I’ve been talking with someone else, who although they don’t deny our heritage, they seriously question if our heritage matters.

Has anyone else experienced this? I’m sure others question if our heritage matters….but denying that we have a heritage all-together? We all have to come from somewhere, and its pretty obvious that there wasn’t a continous, cogent group practicing just like us that existed throughout history.

I think our heritage matters. History shows us where we come from, shows us our mistakes and shortcomings, and helps to determine our future. Are there things that are more important than our history? Of course…there are many. But that doesn’t negate the fact that we have one and that it has importance as well, in my view. What do you think?

-Clarke

=======================================================================
Also:
I’m sorry I’ve been so inconsistant in writing on this blog lately. I’m going to try to start writing more so that a week doesn’t go by betwen blog posts.

Also, I will be attending the Pepperdine University Bible Lectures May 2nd-5th. I’m taking my laptop and will be blogging on site there. If you are reading this and are going to be there, let me know.
=======================================================================

Hello all:

I thought y’all might find this interesting.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m curious about everyone’s opinion regarding the Apocryphal books.

One of the reasons that Luther omitted the Apocryphal books from his translation of the bible was because they appeared in the Septuagint and not the Hebrew version of the Torah. The books were thought to have been written in Greek, not in Hebrew. The Catholics and Orthodox have held them to be inspired in at least some sense, some more than others, while protestant churches have generally held them to be accurate or semi-accurate history but not inspired.

Now, I’ve heard that scholars going through the Dead Sea Scrolls have found fragments of Apocryphal books in Hebrew.

The apocryphal books were part of the canon for 1600 years or so. Do you think they should still be a part of the Old Testament? We in the Churches of Christ have been very anti-Catholic, have we let this color our opinion, or has our opinion been correct?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I am hoping that I don’t end up turning this blog into being only about my experiences in school… because I want to write and discuss the Restoration Movement and Christian Unity, and… I don’t want to bore everyone to death. However, all I’ve done in the last few days is school work, work work, church work, and family. I’ve had very little time to do any thinking about stuff that I want to think about…and when I have, its been on other subjects….

I got a score of 95% on my first week in The Bible as Literature, which is the highest score you can get in that class. So far, so good.

Yesterday we had the funeral for one of our elders. I had asked for prayers for him a while back. He finally succombed, and he is now at Rest in the Lord. I lead singing for the funeral, and it was a stressful day, but I know it was alot more stressful for many others than it was for me. We only had two elders, and no one else qualifies, so our Eldership and Deaconate has been dissolved and we will start being run my committee until such a time as an Eldership can resume.

My son has been sick for the last few days, he seems to have the flu. I stayed home from work today because we were up until about 3am last night, and I was supposed to be at work at 7am. My wife is now sick, and I think I might feel it coming on.

I went to my first class session for History of Christianity. It was interesting….over half the students have zero background in the Bible, so the professor spent half of the four hour class going over the History of the Old Testament, trying to get these kids in a position where they can understand the geo-socio-political-commerical climate that Jesus and the Early Church were born into. It was frustrating, but somewhat interesting as she talked about some biblical symbolism and numerology. I knew about some of the numerology surrouding 3, 6, 7, and 40. But she talked about a lot more. While there I met a fellow city employee who is a member of an Independent Christian Church congregation…we talked about Restorationism for a couple of minutes on the way out to the parking lot.

Finally, I came across some references to Canon Law, which I had heard about in the past but not paid any attention to. Now that my focus is much more on religous subjects, this concept has grasped my attention. I am no believer that there should even be canon law, but I am still curious to know more…. at one time I contemplated being an attorney… and working in law enforcement makes this an interesting subject to me. I’m going to try and do more research as time permits.

So…that was my week. I’ll be heading to Pepperdine ina couple of weeks for the lectureship, which will throw a big knot in my school work, but I can’t wait.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well, I started classes this week. Not quite what I expected.

I am taking three classes: History of Christianity, The Bible as Literature, and Introduction to Crime Analysis.

The Intro to Crime Analysis class is easy. I’ve worked in Criminal Justice and Public Safety for a while, so none of it is new to me.

The Bible as Literature, on the other hand, I’m having a tough time with. The class, in a nutshell, is looking at the Bible as Literature through the lense of German Higher Criticism. The text (and the instructor) make the assumption that the Bible is uninspired, written totally by humans, and that the author had many points in mind, including religious ones, when they wrote the text. I’m having a hard time seperating my beliefs from the class, and I am struggling. However, I did get some good comments from the instructor on our discussion (its all online) so maybe I’m getting the hang of it. We’ll see. I know one thing, I’ll be glad to be finished with this one, and its just week one. Higher Criticism of the Bible isn’t my ball of wax…

I’m not sure yet what to make of my History of Christianity class yet. It is my only class that I am taking in a classroom, and I missed the first session because I was at the Symposium. I spoke with the professor over the phone and she seems very friendly. I started reading the text last night for this class, and found that the writers are fairily secular, and its very odd reading a text book on the History of Christianity when they question the diety of Jesus.

I’m definatly taking all of this “learning” with a grain of salt, but hopefully it will be helpful to me later as a follower of Christ.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I meant to write yesterday, but we hardly got any sleep, and we went back to our hotel room and went to bed.

The symposium was great. I learned alot, and my wife actually wants to get a copy of the Encyclopedia.

I met Dr. Doug Foster, per Travis’ recommendation. He was very friendly and gracious. I also got to meet Dr. Newell Williams, who is a Disciples historian who is the President of the Emmanuel School of Religion. Brite Divininity School. I wanted to meet Dr. Paul Blowers, but ended up not having the opportunity.

The second day of the session was made up of presentations by Foster, Williams and Blowers. Each presenter talked about a stream of the Restoration Movement that was not their own. It was an interesting twist to hear the thoughts and opinions on each stream from someone on the outside who is a church historian. There were some great insights, both positive and negative, pointed out by these men. After each presentation the other two presenters gave their opinions and then fielded questions from the audience.

After the session on the three streams, each presenter was asked to talk about their prayer for the future of the movement. Foster spoke about a renewal of emphasis on the Lord’s Supper, and a renewal of study on how we approach the scriptures. Newell Williams, however, was the most surprising in his approach to this question. Williams (the disciples historian) stated that he would like to see the Disciples renew their understanding on baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. Williams indicated that this is an important part of our witness to the Christian community that has been neglected by Disciples.

The last day of the symposium included a question and answer session, and then a communion service concluding the program.

It was a wonderful event and a great way to get to know members from other streams of the movement. Many people in attendance were actually contributors to the Encyclopedia. I met the Regional Minister of the Disciples, and found out that the parents of General Minister and President Sharon Watkins were at the symposium. There was a lot of knowledge and experience in the room.

It was announced near the end that the symposium will most likely be expanded next year, and it sounds like it may turn into a viable Restoration Movement gathering.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well….my wife and I made it down to Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon, to attend the Symposium. My guess is there were about three or four two hundred people in the Morse Event Center for the opening ceremonies.

I only recognized two people besides the speakers, but I had a good time. We sang two songs, both of which were written by members of the Restoration Movement.

Doug Foster, Newell Williams, and Paul Blowers spoke about how the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement came into existance, and some of the stories of its production.

I think the vast majority of people there are Disciples and Independents. Partly because I only recognized one member of the Church of Christ, and a lot of people there mentioned being alumni of NWCC.

All three of the speakers spoke on how the Encyclopedia has brought people from all streams of the movement together, and how it can be a bridge for unity.

Tuesday is the main session of the Symposium. I’ll let everyone one what happens.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m gonna steal an idea from Greg . I’m very curious who reads this blog… I have a bit of an idea because there are some regulars that comment, but I’m really curious just who is out there reading this.

So… I would really appreciate it if you would comment on this post, even if you are a lurker, just so that I have an idea.

In your comment, please tell me your name, website (if you have one), why you read my blog, where you are, and anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself.

Name: Clarke
Website: Clarkecomments.com; Restorationmovement.org
Why I read: Its my blog!
Location: Portland, Oregon
Anything else: I’ll be blogging from the 1st Annual Stone-Campbell Symposium at Northwest Christian College starting tommorow.

-Clarke

Hello all:

On Tuesday, my wife and I attended a funeral. A dear friend of mine that I went to High School with had called me up over the weekend….his mother had died.

Dan’s mother always welcomed me into their home, and it was if I was at my home when I was there. She always took an interest in stopping and talking with me. We knew many of the same people…. she had worked for the county Sheriff’s office where I volunteered, and so we often talked about what I was experiencing in my volunteer work there. She was a person who went out of her way to extend a kind hand to others. She defended the helpless, spending thousands of hours of her own time protecting the rights of sexual assualt and domestic violence victims. Not only did she personally help those victims, she faught for their rights in the legislature as well, helping to pass numerous bills protecting those people. She was a wonderful person.

Listening to her Eulogy, I heard how she had made many more people feel as welcome in her home as she had made me feel.

However… it was a sad funeral. For her entire family and for me, for the same, but different, reasons.

She was Jewish, and non-practicing. While the final judgement indeed belongs to the Father, I felt a deep sadness because I never shared my faith with her. Her son was the first person I ever tried to evangelize…. that effort failed miserably. I haven’t talked with Dan much, we live on opposite sides of the Tri-County area…. and we both have families. But he said he’d like to get together more. Maybe its another chance… I don’t know. But I can’t help but feel somewhat guilty when I think about it.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Every member of a congregation of the Church of Christ should read this book. In fact, I think every member of every Restoration Movement congregation should read this book.

I know that this book probably won’t have alot of effect on those who are ultra-conservative, however, it has some great information broken down into plain English, that would do many of our members good, no matter what their level of knowledge is about our beliefs and history.

This book is short…46 pages is all. However, it articulates our history, our initial focus on unity, and how that focus was shifted towards uniformity. It is a must read, and a book that should be on every Christian’s bookself.

This book is The Restoration Movement Sidetracked by Olan Hicks.

Hello all:

I’m ticked. Very unhappy. I was reading an email from Bobby Ross this afternoon, and saw that someone had labeled the Church of Christ a cult on national television…on CNN, during the Nancy Grace show. I went to the link he provided and read the transcript and saw that a Baptist Minister had indeed called the Church a cult while he was talking about the Winkler murder case.

I remembered seeing something on Travis’
pop up on my aggregator about Nancy Grace, so I went by there and found a good conversation going on about this accusation.

So, I was a little annoyed about this whole thing, but not totally surprised to hear it come out of the mouth of a baptist, as they have a history of not liking us here over in the Restoration Movement. Bob L. Ross (not to be mistaken with Bobby Ross of the Christian Chronicle) has written some nasty things about us, and so has Way of Life, which is a Baptist Fundamentalist publication.

I was just a little annoyed, but not to ticked….until my Father-in-Law called.

My wife grew up in the Assemblies of God churches. Her father was a minister there for many years. He isn’t involved with the ministry anymore, and rarely goes to church, though he still believes and tries hard to walk the path of Christ. We’ve taken him to church with us several times, and he liked it… he especially liked the a capella music, and made the comment on one occasion (not knowing our history, even) how it somewhat reminded him of what the early church must have been like.

So…he called, and asked his daughter about our status as a cult. A friend of his saw the Nancy Grace show and the Baptist minister calling us a cult, and made him a copy of the transcript….

My wife assured him that we aren’t cult members, but now he has a whole bunch of questions that he wants answered. I’m more than happy to answer them for him, and I’m sure that our minister and the elders will be happy to as well…. but it ticks me off…. we seemed to be making progress with him to get him to go back to church on a regular basis…and then this.

It just makes me wonder how many other people out there have been visiting our congregations, and will stop because of some misguided baptist taking a swipe at us.

If anyone would like to tell “Pastor” Tom Rahkula that we aren’t a cult, you can email him.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The Notification Email Function has finally been fixed….I’m not sure how, but it has. Since I made the move to a new server, I’ve been having to use a list serve type function to get notification emails out. I am now using the Wordpress Plugin again…which means you can subscribe yourself to email notifications.

So, if you haven’t in the past and want to, please feel free. You can also unsubscribe yourself again as well if you’d like.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Many of you may be aware of a new website out there focusing on unity within the Restoration Movement. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, go visit Restoration Heritage and see it for yourself. The site has been up for less than a month I believe, and there are tons of conversations going on there…best of all, its open and welcome to everyone inside, and out, of the Restoration Movement.

I went ahead with the permission of the board owner and replaced the forum on Restorationmovement.org with the forums at Restoration Heritage, and added an RSS feed on the front page so that you can get a quick glance of what is occuring there.

Thank you to Bob Hogue for the link and information.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I subscribe to the Gospel Advocate. My Grandfather subscribed to it as well. I enjoy reading it - usually.

I received my March issue today and found that the issue’s special feature was “Dangers Ahead: Roadblocks to True Unity.”

I read the first article by GA President Kerry G. Anderson and was appalled. I expect the Gospel Advocate to be against Instrumental Music, and I expect them to generally be against unity with the Independent Christian Churches. I expect them to tout the “Law of Silence” and how they believe that Instrumental Music is unscriptural.

What I do not expect from them, is a lack of truthfulness and a lack of integrity.

The first page of the article starts out by asking “If our beliefs on issues like worship, roles of men and women, and baptism are right, why should be apologize?” The article (and other places in the issue) goes on to talk about how Church of Christ leaders are being asked to apoligize “for causing the 1906 Division.” I’ve not heard anyone ask for an apologee, not once. Not on any of the discussion boards or blogs that I frequent. No where. Where is the evidence?

In the second to last paragraph of the article, Anderson states that he has been to various “worship services” where “a woman has preached, someone has spoken in tongues, the Lord’s Supper has been ommittedon Sunday, babies were baptized, unbaptized believers were welcomes as forgiven as sinners, and candles and incense have been given as offerings.” This is not a description of any Independent Christian Church that I am aware of. Independent congregations are much like Church of Christ congregations, except with Instrumental Music and occasionally a more relaxed stance on the roles of women - but not preaching. Anderson might have visited some Pentacostal Church somewhere, but he certainly didn’t see that at an Independent Christian Church congregation - they wouldn’t allow any of that any more than a Church of Christ congregation would. Anderson might be confusing an Independent congregation to a Disciples congregation, but even the Disciples don’t do all of those things.

My advice to the Gospel Advocate: If you don’t like something in the brotherhood, fine - teach against it, advocate against it, persuade others you are right, but don’t lie about it.

I’m not a fan of New Wineskins, but if the Gospel Advocate keeps it up, I’ll be switching my subscription over…

-Clarke

Hello all:

Phil Spadaro over at Restoration Unity has asked me to host a discussion on the ICOC Unity Proposal here.

I’ve not had time to review the proposal myself, but I will be reading it shortly and joining in the conversation.

Check out A Plan for United Cooperation and let us know what you think.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The Office of the General Minister and President of the Disciples of Christ has instituted a program called 10,000 Disciples Praying. This is an effort by Disciples President Sharon Watkins to get 10,000 Disciples and partners praying for the future of the Disciples of Christ.

I would urge each and every one of you to sign up and commit to pray for the Disciples. When you sign up, it asks for some information from you, as well as the name of your congregation and where it is located. I believe that a large amount of members from other Restoration Movement churches would show some solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Disciples and show them that there any many of us that have a heart for unity.

I’d like to challenge every COC, ICOC, and ICC blogger to sign up, commit to pray, and advertise the program on their blogs.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just found out that the 1st ever Stone-Campbell Symposium will be happening at Northwest Christian College on March April 3 - March April 5. NWCC is in Eugene, Oregon, which is only about two hours from me.

The symposium features the editors of the Encyclopedia of the Stone Campbell Movement, Douglas A. Foster, Newell Williams and Paul Blowers. They will be lecturing on both the Encyclopedia and what we need to know about each stream of the Restoration Movement.

I plan to attend the Symposium and maybe if I have time I’ll blog on location, if anyone cares.

-Clarke

My grandmother is in the hospital, she has congestive heart failure and is not doing well. Please pray that God will ease her pain and be with her.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Alan Rouse over at Christian Unity is working on a project of inventorying the doctrines of the Church of Christ. His plan is to get the inventory going so that we can then analyze those doctrines in light of the Command, Example, and Necessary Inference (CENI) hermeneutic and see what insights we can gain on CENI.

Alan has moved the inventory to the Restorationwiki so that everyone can add and edit doctrines. If you’d like to check it out or contribute, feel free to head over there. Registration is not required, but is encouraged. Some of you from the more conservative congregations (such as JeffB and Jason) might be a great help on such doctrines associated with non-institutional or one-cup congregations.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Most of you have probably noticed my impulse over on the right side of the page to try and catalog all significant websites related to the Restoration Movement, and specifically the Churches of Christ. I will be adding several more links shortly, and you’ll see why.

Lets explore a little known fellowship within the Churches of Christ.

AD70 doctrine congregations, which are fairly rare in our fellowship, are preterists. That is, they believe that all prophesy contained in the bible has already come to pass and has been fulfilled. This includes the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection, Judgement Day, etc. The AD70 doctrine teaches that these prophecies were fulfilled at the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

While I could only find two congregations online that espouse this eschatology, they provide a lot of material on their websites to read. Both congregations sponsor websites that are specifically about the AD70 Doctrine, which is also known as Covenant Eschatology or Fulfilled Eschatology in addition to Preterism.

I also found articles on AD70 on the Christian Courier website, which provide some explanation (albeit very negatively) about Preterist beliefs.

Some of the views of the AD70 group are in line with the amillenialism that Churches of Christ traditionally teach, but they are obviously much more extreme. In fact, when browsing through general Preterist websites not specifically related to the Church of Christ, I found that many of the writers and proponents of Preterist thought are current or former Church of Christ ministers. It seems to me that our amillenial viewpoint paves the way for many to embrace the preterist doctrines of the AD70 group.

Do any of you have any experience with AD70 congregations? What do you think about this odd doctrine?

-Clarke

The City of Jerusalem Burning during the Roman Invasion of 70 A.D.

Hello all:

Well….its finally going to happen… I’m finally going to get to go back to school. Unfortunately, my wife didn’t find a job that allows me to quit mine and go back to school full time, so I’m going to be attending community college. However, they do offer religion courses there. So, I will be taking courses on the History of Christianity, and The Bible as Literature. I’ll probably also take a criminal justice course or something as well.

Also, I am going to be taking over the teaching of the teens in my congregation. They want to study World Religions, Denominational Doctrines, Apologetics, and the distinctive beliefs of the churches of Christ. I’m looking forward to it, it should be fun.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I am currently reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

This is the first church history book that I have read that focused on events outside the Restoration Movement. I’m at page 42 out of 370. I have a long way to go, but already I am stunned by the amount of violence the early Christians met. I was aware, as most of us probably are, that the early Christians were persecuted. We’ve all heard of the catacombs of Rome, we’ve all read the passage in Matthew where Jesus speaks about children turning against parents, brothers against brothers. But the contents of this book are beyond anything I ever imagined.

Already, its obvious in my reading of this book that there were persecutions and murders between factions in the Church. So far, the faction that has been responsible for those murders (The Aryans) are dead wrong and definite Apostates, but they are a faction none the less. This book reminds me of the need for us to love those who feel differently than we do. I’m not yet close to the violence against the protestant reformers, but the thoughts that come are that there would have been no violence at all if we practiced the love that we are supposed to be known for.

More on this book later.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Shortly after we moved into our home, we saw a sign pop up in storefront window at a shopping center down the street that said “The Church of Christ meets here.” I would assume everyone has seen this sign before…the old rickety wooden sign that looks like its about 40 or 50 years old…

So, once this sign popped up, I was curious who this group was. No one where we were going knew anything about them. I dropped by several times and didn’t find anyone around, but I did find some course outlines and such they kept in a box attached to the door.

I was looking online and found out they have a website. The congregation is listed in a non-institutional church web directory. Mystery solved, or so I thought.

I was talking to a friend the other day that we go to church with, who, like me, was once a member of a non-institutional church. He knew about the congregation up the street. Not only are they non-institutional, but they are a “one covenant” congregation. My friend explained to me that this congregation’s members had been a part of another congregation, but that they had been forced out because they taught that there is only one covenant, not two.

I’ve never heard of this split in the churches of Christ before, and I don’t see mention of it in the directory I have access to (although it is an old one…). Is anyone familiar with this group, and can you shed some light on them for me?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I transferred everything over to a new server last night and this morning.

The bad news first:

I haven’t had time to uploaded the MySQL databases for Restorationwiki, so it is currently down. Also, I haven’t uploaded the MySQL databse for phpBB either, so it is currently out of commission on Restorationmovement.org

I recently installed a classified ad server to use on Restorationmovement.org as well, but I haven’t given out the link, and its down, so I doubt anyone cares. That will be up soon though so that if you’re church is looking for a preacher, or if you want to advertise your business or service, for free, you’ll be able to. It seems like a nice little system.

Good News:

Our hosting services gives me six, count them, six, domain names. So, Restorationmovement.org is actually Restorationmovement.org, and not clarkecomments.com/restoration. That also means that there can be restorationmovement.org email addresses. I might offer some of these out if anyone is interested.

My wife finally has hosting space for her domain name that we bought a long time ago but didn’t.

I have three more spaces for domains, and my server will pay to register the names. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with those spaces, but it leaves lots of space for future projects.

I have 20 gigs of webspace. So we shouldn’t ever run out…

The new hosting service should be much more reliable, and they actually give refunds if they cause downtime issues.

Finally…thank you to all of you that recommended different web hosting ideas..I just had to go down with this one, it was too good to turn down.

Also, it looks like the notification emails aren’t really working. If you’ve gotten a whole bunch, let me know..but out of the several I sent, my test account only got one of them…

-Clarke

Hello all:

The congregation that might wife and I are now attending is a small one that has gone through several splits in the last couple of years. It was a congregation that at its peak had about 450 people in attendance on a Sunday morning, and is now down to about 65 regulars. The main reason for the splits, a person, is long gone, and the church has been trying to recover for about the last 18 months.

My wife and I have been going there for about 3 or 4 months now, and we love it there. The people are wonderful, and the minister is excellent.

Before I go into my main theme on this post, though, I’d like to ask you all to pray for one of our elders who was placed in hospice yesterday. His name is Charlie, and he is a wonderful man that has been very kind to me and my family. He has cancer and is not doing well. I would assume most of you know what going into Hospice means, so I won’t elaborate. But please pray that the Lord will comfort him and ease his pain.

So….to names. Our congregation has gone through some painful times, and we seem to be starting to recover. We are starting to get people either coming back or visiting for the first time. When we placed membership, being a small, young family, it seemed to have a very positive effect on the congregation. We are planning some new ministries to do some outreach, and we have been praying for God to send workers to our congregation. Alot of things are changing, and I think it is all for the better.

So, one of the things we are thinking about changing is the name of the congregation. We are currently named after the street we are on. The name has a lot of baggage because of what has happened over the last few years, and when I think of the name itself it conjures up thoughts of an old, dying out congregation.

We are considering area names such as “Southeast Church of Christ,” and there have been thoughts about naming it after the city we are in. My wife came up with the idea of “Southside” as well. (The congregation is on the Southeast corner of Portland, barely outside the limits of Portland).

So, I thought I’d ask if any of you have any ideas for a name for the congregation. The only real rule I would think is that it has to have “Church of Christ” in it (I’m sure I’ll hear it about that!)

So, what do y’all think?

-Clarke

I am being bad and doing this in secret! (it’s the wife)

I Just wanted to say Happy Valentines Day to an Amazing Husband and Father! You are a wonderful man and you make my life wonderful. Thank you for everything you do for me! (including going to that job you hate) I promise one day life will be the way we want it to be, and you will go back to school and pursue your dream. LOVE YOU SWEETY! Have a wonderful day…

Love,

Sara

Hello all:

One thing that I find really interesting is that throughout the streams of the Restoration Movement, only two names are used.

In my fellowship, we call ourselves the “Church of Christ.”

In the ICC, they call themselves a “Christian Church” or “Church of Christ”

In the ICOC, they typically call themselves the “Church of Christ,” sometimes with the word “International” tacked on to the front, and more and more now, I am seeing congregations calling themselves a “Christian Church.”

The Disciples of Christ call themselves “The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).”

Furthermore, DOC and ICOC members both refer to themselves as “Disciples” pretty often.

I’m intrigued by this similar system of naming. Of course, because we all come from the same heritage, there is going to be some crossover. I like it. It reminds me that we are all family, and that is important.

I’m also intrigued by the recent use of the name “Christian Church” by ICOC congregations. I think its kinda neat and interesting to see the ICOC using the same names that the Independents use, even though the ICOC came of out a fellowship that had split from the Independents 80 or so years before. I’m sure some in the ICOC don’t like it because it masks the heritage of the congregation, but I think its interesting just the same.

I wish the a capella Churches of Christ had “Christian Church” counterparts like the Independent Christian Church congregations have “Church of Christ” counterparts, but that doesn’t seem too likely. The newer church plants that have removed “Church of Christ” or consciously de-emphesized the COC label seem to stay away from the “Christian Church” label….

One last aside, I’ve seen some websites, mainly Piney I think, bash the name “Christian Church” as unscriptural. I think that’s garbage. If I remember, the bible says that disciples were first called “Christian” at Antioch.

-Clarke

Hello all:

For the last couple of months I’ve been playing with different themes trying to find one that I really like….well, I think I’ve finally found it. I’ve spent several hours today customizing this theme, adding buttons, and tweaking features. I think this one will probably stay up for a while….. What do you all think about it?

If I can get my lovely wife off her message boards and onto paintshop pro, I might even have a cool (at least to me) header graphic up soon.

—————-

Also, its come to my attention that the comments are bugging out a little bit. This was happening before I switched templates so I think its a WP2.0+ bug…. I’ve had that problem on a couple other people’s wordpress blogs as well…. anyone else having that problem?

Looks like its fixed now.

If you submitted a comment before you saw this, try submitting it again, there is nothing in the moderation Que and I see some people stopped by without commenting which is uncharacteristic of them…

-Clarke

Hello all:

There has been a lot of talk about Unity on this website, and on others such as Alan’s and Phil’s. While talking and starting a dialouge is important and necessary to unity, action is what it all comes down to.

In the last couple of years, four congregations, two from a capella Churches of Christ, and two from Independent Chrisitan Churches, have come together and formed two new churches.

Christ Covenant Church, of Beaumont, Texas, merged in 2005. This congregation came together from the mergers of the Parkside Christian Church and the Cornerstone Church of Christ. The ministers from the respective congregations were introduced by a mutual friend who had a passion for unity in the Restoration Movement.

Northwest Church of Christ, of Shoreline, Washington, is the other congregation that has merged recently. This congregation formed after the Northwest Church of Christ and the Shoreline Christian Church came together in September 2004. This merger resulted after prayers for unity and a search for identity came together. Milt Jones, their minister, recently wrote the book “The Other Side of the Keyboard.”

These two congregations are living, breathing proof that the unity that occured during the days of Campbell and Stone is still possible. Rumors of mergers between mainline churches of Christ and ICOC congregations have been heard far and wide.

Maybe, after 100 years, we are finally learning that the divisions are evil, and that division achieves nothing other than it keeps us from sharing the word as efficiently and powerfully as we should.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The more I read about the church from authors in different places, and the more I talk with and read the comments of other bloggers out there, the more I realize that the church of Christ in the Northwest is a heck of a lot different than the church in Texas or Arkansas or anywhere else…

First off…Oregon, where I live, is the most “unchurched” state in the Union. Christians are definitely a minority here. However, I’m not just surrounded by a sea of atheism like New England is…. we have plenty of “spiritual” people here….lots of Buddhists, Wiccans, Hindus and Mormons, and newagers all around. I know of two Buddhist temples in the area that I could actually find… and we have two Mormon temples in the state as well.

Second, “mainline” churches are the huge majority of churches of Christ here…. I know of only two “one-cup” churches in the state, no “no-class” churches in the state, no charismatic churches…. and we only have a small handful of non-institutional churches here.

While I was perusing a copy of the directory of churches of Christ in the United States, I was amazed how many “no-class” and “one-cup” churches there were in places like Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and even California. Also…this directory was several years old, and it listed a total of 35 churches of more liberal persuasion that don’t totally hold to traditional doctrine…. it stated that those churches were pretty much distributed throughout the country…but, Oregon had 3 of those… which shows how we are just a little different here….

Also…we have several “churches of Christ” in the area that are instrumental and part of the Independent Christian Churches. While we don’t generally fellowship with those churches, there is more of a feeling that those churches are still “churches of Christ” than I think is probably predominant in most of the country. They are typically referred to as instrumental congregations and part of the Christian churches… and some of their members
defiantly definitely make it a point to attend our events and such….one of them went to Columbia Christian College and then was my choir teacher taught at the campus school when I went there..

We also have the Portland International Church of Christ here, with good old Kip McKean himself living and preaching in Portland….some of the Portland ICOC members attend Cascade College and I here they have some “bible talks” going on on campus….

I’ll end my ramblings here. Just interesting thoughts for me to reflect on…

-Clarke

Hello all:

My lovely wife has finally and graciously agreed to let me go to the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in May.

If any of you are planning on going, please let me know. If I remember correctly, Greg said he might be going, so maybe we could have a little COC blogger get together down there…

-Clarke

A couple bits of news today:

I added several publications to the list…including Leaven, POWER, and some others…if you know of other church of Christ publications or media that should be on this list, drop a comment or an email…also, if you know of publications from other streams of the Restoration Movement that aren’t listed here, comment or email as well….

If you tried getting on here earlier today you probably noticed some theme errors or even got a 404 error. Our webhost seems to be having some major problems, not only with this page but on other pages I own as well. I am investigating other web hosts and will probably fire the current one unless they really get their act together soon….I’ve had a lot of problems with them in the last few months.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Well…I got tagged by Salguod, so to keep the chain going, here are my survey answers and additional tags…

Four Jobs I’ve Had

* Anti-terrorism Specialist for a major metropolitan municipal utility. (Its not nearly as exciting as it sounds…)

* Police Officer for a small city.

* Repossession Agent - “The Repo Man”

* Public Safety Officer for the Oregon Zoo.

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over

* The Sum of All Fears

* The Matrix

* City of Angels

* Spy Game

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over

* WIthout Remorse, Tom Clancy

* Fool of God, Loius Cochran

* Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Thats about all I can think of…..

Four Places I’ve Lived

* Gaston, Oregon

* Portland, Oregon

* Cascade College (in Portland)

* Redmond, Oregon

Four TV Shows I Watch

* E-Ring

Other than that…I don’t really watch TV…

Four Places I’ve Been On Vacation

* La Quinta, California (Stayed in a $2.5 million home with a wall around it.)

* Searcy, Arkansas (If you can believe that…)

* Taliqua, Oklahoma.

* Washington, DC

Four Websites I Visit daily

There are plenty I visit daily….but since I have to list a couple:

* Hans Rollman’s Restoration Movement Pages

* Restorationmovement.org (of course)

* Ebay

* Amazon.com

Four Favorite Foods

* General Tsao Chicken

* Pizza - From Sunshine Pizza Exchange

* Pan Fried Noodles

* Red Beans and Rice

Four Places I’d Like to Be Right Now

* Malibu - On the Pepperdine campus, watching the waves….

* Washington, DC, sight-seeing.

* The Cane-Ridge Meeting House

* In worship

Four Bloggers I’m Tagging

* Travis Stanley

* Greg Kendall-Ball

* Bobby Ross, Jr.

* Mark at Conservative Culture

-Clarke

Hello all:

As many of you are aware….I’ve been thinking about going back to school to study church history and theology…

But, I decided that instead of racking up thousands of dollars in student loans like some of my fellow bloggers out there that are attending seminary, maybe I should just do it the easy way.

Instead of toling away for a year or two for my M.Div, why not just click my mouse a couple of times, fill out my name and address on a form, and poof! now I can perform weddings and funerals and baptisms and absolve the sins of all my friends and family…

It might be cool to know about the 2,000 years or so of church history and Christian theology, but it might be much cooler to charge $250 a pop to sign a marrage license and to say a couple words about how solemn marriage is.

Then again, maybe I’ll just ordain my cat instead.

-Clarke

_______________________

If you’d like to get ordained now, without waiting or giving out your name or address, and have the certificate ready to print now…click here

Hello all:

Wow…I’m not even sure how do follow-up that last post after 60 comments….I’ve never had that many comments on one post before.

Anyway, as a couple of you know, after hanging out over at wikipedia for a while, I got inspired to create my own wiki over here about the Restoration Movement. It doesn’t have much on it, just a little bit of info here and there…. which is where you can help out… I know that several of my regular readers help maintain the church of Christ entry on wikipedia, so I have a feeling that it shouldn’t be too hard to get going well…I know Travis has a lot of input..

If you don’t know what a wiki is, google wikipedia and you’ll get the general idea. If you want to go and check it out, or add content, head on over to Restorationwiki and participate. It will only be as good as we all make it.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Over at Travis‘ blog, I noticed that he had a small button near the bottom of the page that said “Gender Justice and Churches of Christ.”

I checked out the page and unsurprisingly found a webpage advocating wider women’s roles in church. The page itself is at Gal328.org…. Galatians 3:28 says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

This verse, of course, is true. Our status does not matter to Christ. We are all able to be saved. We are all welcome to Christ’s table.

This verse, however, doesn’t cancel out verses that we don’t like. 1 Corinthians 14:35 says “If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”

I’ll admit, I don’t know why Paul says that it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. I’ve heard different theories… but, in the end, I don’t think that it really matters why. Do I like it? No, I don’t. D0 I think women have spiritual gifts that equal that of me? I sure do. But, for whatever reason, God has placed a limitation on certain roles relating to Gender.

While I love my brothers and sisters who feel differently, I cannot support efforts such as Gal328.org. Nor do I think efforts such as these are good for creating unity in our fellowship.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Today kicks off the 2006 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This is one of those “denominati0nal” things so we in Churches of Christ haven’t been very involved with this.

However, I think that this is a good cause, and its not bad just because our religous friends partake in a week of prayer as well.

I plan on trying to pray every day this week for Christian unity, but especially for unity within our own movement. This being the 100 year anniversary of the split, I think it is especially meaningful this year.

You can find more information about the week of prayer from Disciples News Service, the official news services of the Disciples of Christ.

-Clarke

Hello all:

A small group of us went to see the Pepperdine University basketball team play against the evil University of Portland.

It was a good game, we all got Pepperdine t-shirts, and we ran into some people that I knew from different congregations that I have attended over the years. It was alot of fun.

The game went into overtime, tied 72-72 at the end of the second half. Pepperdine played hard and was definatly the superior team, but every time Pepperdine pulled ahead of U of P, the refs called a foul. The final foul count ended up being a whopping 33 fouls by Pepperdine and 17 by U of P…. except that there were about 20 or 30 fouls and several jump balls against U of P that should have been called but were blatently overlooked by the refs. The officiating was absolutely horrible. I think the refs might have all had rosary beads in their pockets…

All together though, a good game, very exciting, especially during overtime. Unfortuantly, U of P won over Pepperdine, 84 to 82.

Maybe next time. Pepperdine’s womens team plays U of P next month.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’ve just added an email sign up form on the sidebar of the site. Please, PLEASE, please sign up for email notifications…… I will love you forever if you do. And just think…you’ll be instantly notified when I have some hair to write something on here……so you know you want to sign up.

Also…… we have reached post #100. Thats awesome.

Make sure you read the post below.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I am currently reading The Gospel Advocate’s January 2006 edition.

I was excited when I opened up the mailbox and saw “The 1906 Division” on the front cover of the magazine. However, my excitment soon turned to disappointment as I opened it up and read the editorial by Neil W. Anderson entitled “Unity, good or bad?” I was especially surprised that Anderson stated that unity with the Independent Christian Churches would be to return “to the bonadge of human creeds by merging with thsoe who do not share in the precious faith of the scriptures.” WOW.

Statements like Anderson’s, with all due respect to him, show a lack of understanding of what divides us. The last time I checked, the Independents were less creedal than we are… we are the ones who published “A Christian Affirmation, 2005,” and not they….

I guess I should say that the stance that they have taken doesn’t totally surprise me, but I was hoping that if they tackled this issue at all this year that they would take a slightly more balanced approach and not just call the return to unity an evil thing. I expect writing like this from the Firm Foundation, not the Gospel Advocate.

I think I might just have to write a letter to the editor on this one.

-Clarke

Hello everyone:

I will be leading the Lord’s Supper for the first time on Sunday. I’ve led singing alot, and assisted with the Lord’s Supper… but never lead it. I’m trying to decide what to say….. does anyone have any thoughts or tips they’d like to share?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’ve been thinking about the fractures that have occured in the Restoration Movement, and specifically within the churches of Christ.

Thomas and Alexander Campbell were both anti-creed. They believed that creeds were one of the most divisive things in all of Christendom, and that by doing away with creeds and returning to the bible, unity would be made possible.

Looking at the history of our movement, it worked for a while. People from all denominations rejected creeds, embraced the scriptures, and lived with differences…. even with differences that I would have a hard time dealing with.

It seems to me that we in churches of Christ have created a few unwritten creeds. Instead of requiring someone to sign a piece of paper that lists out our view on the hot button topics we are interested in, we instead have the creed that others must adhere to in our head. Sometimes we write it down in the form of magazines, or promote them through lectureships, through sermons, and now through the internet.

We must really return to the removal of all creeds, written and unwritten. We cannot with good reason limit our fellowship outside of salvation and those specific instances of disfellowship directly commanded in scripture.

When we do, I believe the Lord will bless us greatly. We may live in a different age than the Campbells, with a different culture and different norms, but the Christ is still the Lord, and unity is still what the Lord prayed for in the garden before his crucifixion. The setting and methods may be different, but the message will still work.

We must be united to shine the light of Christ into the dark world that surrounds us.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope 2005 went well for everyone, and I hope 2006 is a very successful year for preaching the gospel and reaching the lost with the good news of Christ Jesus.

I’ve not been very prolific since Christmas. I saw in the stats that very few people were visiting during the week between Christmas and New Years, and no one has been updating their blogs, so I decided to take a break as well. That probably worked out for the best, as my whole family has been sick on and off for the last week or two.

I spent last year exploring change, fellowship, and unity. I suppose I will continue to go down that road for a while. While it is important to me to look out at those that we should be united with, I think it is also very important to look inside and see those that we are lacking unity with, as well. I hope to be looking in alot this year.

Also, what, if anything, would you like to see on this blog? Is there anything in particular that you like to see, or don’t like? What about restorationmovement.org?

I look forward to the conversation that we will have over the next year.

-Clarke

Hello Everyone!

I am very, very happy to proclaim that my wife Sara, today, put Christ on in baptism for the remission of her sins!

It is an absolutely wonderful day, and it is the best Christmas gift ever. PRAISE GOD!

-Clarke

Hello:

Quick question. I’ve noticed that I have a consistant reader from the USCG. Just curious who you are. If you’d like, you can email me at clarke (at) clarkecomments (dot) com if you won’t want to post a comment.

-Clarke

My Town - Montgomery Gentry.

To most of you, its now obvious why I posted the video…if you’re just joining, it mentions the church…

-Clarke

Originally posted on Restoration Unity.

Hello all:

I’ve been thinking alot about the silence of the scriptures, why the churches of Christ generally hold some of the beliefs they hold, and why I hold the specific beliefs that I have.

I was taught from a very young age to respect the silence of the sciptures. I’ve heard more times than I can count the old Restoration slogan “We speak where the Bible speaks, and we are silent where the bible is silent.”

I have always taken that slogan to mean that where there is silence, there is prohibition - that we have no right to do anything that is not specifically mentioned in the New Testament for the practice of the church, - and I have taken that slogan quite seriously. It is an important principle in understanding where we are in the churches of Christ, and why the divisions that exist today exist at all.

However, the Independent Christian Churches understand that slogan and concept quite differently. To them, “being silent where the bible is silent” means that they do not restrict fellowship based upon beliefs and practices that are not specifically mentioned in the New Testament.

We in the a capella churches of Christ have taken silence to be restrictive, and the Independents have taken it to give them liberty.

That is quite a clash in belief.

I have come to question whether or not silence is meant to be restricting or meant to be granting liberty. The main reason I question this principle of ours is because of our fellowship itself.

I attend a “mainline” church of Christ congregation. Not a liberal congregation, not really a conservative one either, mostly just middle of the road. I have also attended non-institutional churches, and I grew up in both mainline and non-institutional churches. I, however, am not against institutions.

So, I look to my brothers on the right, and I will take the non-institutional churches as an example, and I disagree with them, and they disagree with me. They disagree with my beliefs so much that the non-institutional congregation that is just one mile up the road does not fellowship with my congregation. Neither use instrumental worship, both teach baptism for remission of sins, both practice the Lord’s Supper in the same way, but we don’t communicate because my congregation isn’t against using money received in the church collection plate to support the local Christian college.

I would say that the non-institutional churches have made an issue out of an opinion. The non-institutional churches would say that institutions are not in the bible, and that congregations pooling resources is not in the bible, so it is not authorized and therefore forbidden.

That is quite a clash in belief.

So…lets say I place membership at the non-institutional church down the road. They would certainly have me as long as I don’t advocate institutionalism, which I wouldn’t. So, lets say that I did….. we can then look to our brothers on the right, the non-class, one-cup congregations. I disagree with them, and they disagree with us. Of course, we hold to the same non-instrumental worship, again we all teach baptism, we all do the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. But, the NI and mainline congregations use multiple communion cups, and we have Sunday school before services. We would hold those to be matters of opinion, but the one-cup, no-class church would claim that it is not in the bible, and therefore not authorized and prohibited. Because of that, we don’t communicate.

I wrote on Clarke Comments recently about two churches in Wilsonville, Oregon (not too far from me). One congregation is a non-institutional church, the other, a one-cup church. Both had gospel meetings around Thanksgiving, and they went on during the same time during part of the meetings. Neither communicate with the other. They might not even know that the others exist.

That is quite a clash in belief.

I could keep going. There are further splits in the one-cup congregations over wine vs. grape juice, breaking the bread and splitting it up vs. keeping it intact and passing around the loaf, over beliefs on divorce, and even over unity and fellowship itself. Not to mention splits over instrumental music, premillenialism and other beliefs.

Most of these splits have occured because of the “Principle of Silence.” Jesus prayed for unity. The apostles speak of unity in their epistles. God does not want a divided church.

I understand that many of the things I have just written about are convictions that are held by many, and to them are not just opinions. So be it. However, we must not cut off our brothers and sisters in Christ over issues of Silence.

We must not cut off our brothers in the Independent Christian Churches because they hold a belief about instrumental music that is divergent from our own. The non-class churches must not cut off us because we hold a belief that having a Sunday school class is okay. We need to accept the differences that each of us have, love one another as brothers and sisters, have a true dialoge, and work to bring others to Christ.

I believe that the principle of silence, while meant to bring us all back to the pattern of the New Testament church, has created a major problem for unity. When practiced to its extreme, it can create division over very small issues, that honestly, to most, don’t really matter. At the same time, the principal of silence is not without merit. It has forced people to think about the scriptures, about innovation, about what practices they feel are important.

So, do I wish to disregard the “principle of silence”? No, I do not. However, we must teach our children, and our brothers and sisters in Christ, that we must not divide the church over matters where the principle of silence is the cause of a disagreement. I do not feel that any of us could defend such a division standing in front of the Lord, no matter where in the division we are. Instead of excluding those we have an honest disgreement with, we must treat those brothers and sisters with love and respect, and hope that they do the same to us.

-Clarke
Clarkecomments.com

What I’m currently reading:

People Need the Unity-Committed Church — by Mark Henderson ACU Lectureship February 19, 1996.

This is a great essasy and lecture on unity. There were quite a few passages in the essay that struck me quite hard. Henderson’s comments on how many divisions can be found within churches of Christ, Henderson’s belief that the church of Christ has a very noble desire to understand and follow God’s word, Alexander Campbell’s call to exclude those who divide by binding opinions on others, and finally, the anecdote about the ministerial fellowship meeting that Hnederson attended.

The essay quotes an article in a magazine in our fellowship stating that there are Eighty-Four seperate tests of fellowship in churches of Christ. That article was written in 1974. It makes me wonder how many there are today…

The author echoed my feelings on the Churches of Christ and the Restoration Movement by talking about the noble desires of our members to understand and follow God’s word. While unity has not always been included in that, I believe that it should be and can be, and hopefully shall be again.

Alexander Campbell’s call to exclude those who divide is quite powerful. Campbell stated: “If a man causes divisions and offenses by setting up his own decisions, his private judgment, we must consider him a factionist, and as such he must be excluded–not for his difference of opinion, but because he makes his opinion an idol, and demands homage to it.”

Campbell’s words convict me. I pray that the call for unity will not divide our churches even more.

The ministerial meeting that Henderson described got me. How amazing that an Assemblies of God minister would thank God in prayer for the Churches of Christ, and raise up one of our ministers and churches to God ask for blessings upon them… even though I disagree with the Assemblies of God in many places, we must have the attitude of their preacher, to lift up those we feel are in error and ask God to bless them.

Finally, I was struck by Henderson’s comment that by reaching to the left, we not only may be able to learn from those to our left, but that we will have things to teach those to our left as well. I believe the churches of Christ have alot to teach others, and I think that is yet another great reason to work for unity.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I put up several new links on the ICOC section of the Restorationmovement.org website. Included is a site called “Restoration Unity” which I would recommend checking out.

Also, I placed a link to Christian Church Search in the Independent Christian Church section. That site is maintained by Mark Vernik over at ConservativeCulture.com.

Hello all:

I complied a Dictionary and Primer for all of the abreviations and sects in the Churches of Christ. It is posted as a page and can be found at the very top of my blog.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My last post on the Restoration Plea left some of the questions Joel asked unanswered. So, I’d like to tackle what I think some of the answers might be. Again, below, is Joel’s question, which he posted in a comment on Travis’ blog.

BTW…Joel, if you are out there, feel free to come on over and comment on my answer to your question to someone else lol….

I would like to hear some discussion on the evolution of restoration theology. Is there a place for the restoration plea in the 21st century or is it a completely dead idea altogether? What will restoration churches look like in the future and what divergent paths will we take. Are we doomed to more division or will we see a new unit form from all of the factions that exist today?

Thanks!

Posted by Joel Maners Tuesday, December, 6, 2005 at 9:50 pm

Joel’s question got me thinking a bit about what the Restoration Movement will look like 20 or 30 years from now. While no one but God knows for sure, I’d like to take a crack at making a couple of guesses. I think there are probably two or three models of what could occur in the future.

Unification

I think that in 20 to 30 years, we might see a more unified Restoration Movement. The International Churches of Christ no longer have a denominational structure and are, for now, congregational. If the ICOC remains congregational, and the talks that are occuring between some ICOC and COC congregations continue, I believe that we could see mergers occur. I’ve already heard a rumor of one or two congregations merging, but I do not know if that is correct.

I also believe that a merged ICOC and COC would make fellowship between churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches easier. From what I have heard, many ICOC congregations use instrumental music, but that they don’t always use it all of the time. Because attitudes towards instrumental music have been changing, the scenario of wider fellowship is more likey, but if ICOC churches and COC churches integrate, there will be a large number of members who are already used to the the idea of instrumental music.

However, this is not to predict that churches of Christ will move to instrumental music. In fact, I would say it is safer to stay a capella and just extend fellowship, without making a switch. Advocating instrumental music would be a dangerous play that would cause more splits, not unity.

My bet is that the Restoration Movement will move towards the pattern of churches of Christ in Australia and New Zealand. The churches in these two countries affiliate with both the a capella churches in America and the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. While there are a few a capella chuches that don’t fellowship with the larger body, the most are unified, and have quite a focus on unity.

So, I see our churches becoming affiliated with the Independent Christian Churches, so that the ICC churches really are “Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. However, I alo see scattered one-cup, no-class and non-institutional churches remaining, with little to no fellowship occuring between mainline congregations and those congregations.

Disintegration

Another model that I could see occuring is disintegration. That being, more and more splits, with weaker and weaker lines of fellowship.

The reason I can see this occuring is because of the sweeping calls for change occuring in our churches. While some of the calls for change are good, especially regarding issues such as holiness and social justice, some of the change can be not so good as well. Holiness and Social Justice attitudinal changes are defensible, even demanded, by the bible. However, some change, such as wider roles for women, instrumental music in worship, praise teams, etc., are not very defensible in a fellowship that looks for authority in scripture for everything that we do. Strong pushes for these changes will most likely result in splits and disunity.

So, not only might we see one-cuppers, no-class, and non-institutional fellowships that don’t associate with other groups, we could start to see non-women leadership churches, non-praise team churches, non-this and non-that churches of Christ.

Status Quo

Finally, there is the chance that the status quo will remain. New programs, styles of music and ministry will continue to develop, but change will be small and incremental.

Let us hope and pray for more Unity in the church. Let us hope and pray that we can establish ties to our one-cup, no-class and non-institutional breathern as well. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, whether we are liberal or conservative.

-Clarke

Hello all:

If you are viewing this, than you obviously see that I am changing the template. It took me a little bit, but I figured out how to manipulate some of the template code so I was able to move so things around. In the next couple of weeks I’m going to explore some of the addons and such for wordpress that I don’t use right now to make the site better.

What do you think about the new look? Better, worse? I perfer to have the links of the left side of the page, but do you?

Also, I took Gabe Peterson’s link off for the time being since he’s not writing in his blog.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Over on Travis’ blog there is a conversation going on about the imminent reincarnation of the MISSION journal and what people would like to see in it.

In that conversation, the comment was made:

I would like to hear some discussion on the evolution of restoration theology. Is there a place for the restoration plea in the 21st century or is it a completely dead idea altogether? What will restoration churches look like in the future and what divergent paths will we take. Are we doomed to more division or will we see a new unit form from all of the factions that exist today?

Thanks!

Posted by Joel Maners Tuesday, December, 6, 2005 at 9:50 pm

While I won’t go into the evolution of Restoration theology here, I am driven to answer Joel’s question about whether or not there is a place in the 21st century for the Restoration Plea.

There is most certainly a place for the Restoration Plea today, and I believe there always will be.

The Restoration Plea hinges on two beliefs:

1) That Christians should be united.
2) That unity can be built around the abandonment of written creeds and a return to the pattern of New Testament belief and practice.

Obviously, opinions on what constitute New Testament beliefs and practices varies widely. One person will read the New Testament and come away with the belief that we should all use one communion cup, another will come away with the though that a capella singing is what is called for in worship, others believe that the use of the instrument is fine. Some feel that because a college, ministry group, missionary society or other para-church organization isn’t mention in the bible, that they are a departure from what we should do.

That is the nature of a movement that calls for a return to New Testament practices. There are honest differences of opinion, and there will always be those two disagree with one another on the interpretation and application of passages in the Bible.

The key is that we allow room for opinion. We even need to allow some room for error. There is nothing wrong with some healthy debate now and then, and if you genuinely feel someone is wrong, gently teach them the correct way. But, we must not disfellowship and divide over matters involving silence in the scriptures or opinion of man.

If the issue is not one that effects salvation, then we agree to disagree, and continue to love each other. There will, of course, be those that don’t agree to disagree as well. We must continue to love those individuals as well and show them that we truly are their brothers and sisters in Christ whether they agree with us or not.

Now that I’ve dealt with some of the internal issues of Restoration, let looks at why we need the Restoration Plea in the 21st Century.

People need to hear the Gospel.

As we all know, people need to hear the good news. And, unfortunately, the majority of those out there telling people about the good news are telling people that they can be saved by reciting the “Sinners Prayer.” The scriptures specifically promise salvation to those who repent of their sins and are baptized. Restoration Movement churches have close to a monopoly on teaching baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. While some churches ordain baptism by “church ordinance”, just as many do not.

Furthermore, as we all know, Restoration churches emphasize the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis, while most other churches practice it at most once a month.

Restoration Churches hold the New Testament to be inerrant, and usually hold it to be relevant to our lives. We are more-or-less a people of the book, and have a strong desire to do what the Lord says.

The Restoration Movement has a lot of merit to it. One stream of the movement is the fastest growing church in the United States. While not everything that has occurred during the quest for Restoration has been positive, we have, and continue, to do alot of good works that glorify God.

For my next post, I think I will try and tackle the other questions posed by Joel.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The site is nearing completion. The full template is now online and can be visited at either www.restorationmovement.org or www.clarkcomments.com/restoration

Some people have reported that the restorationmovement.org URL doesn’t redirect for them, but the majority of people I have spoken to report that it works. I have added a forum to the page, as well as more links and information. All pages that were on the original site have been ported to the new template.

I will be starting on the ICOC pages soon. If you have any content suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email them to me at restoration (at) clarkecomments (dot) com.

-Clarke

Hello all:

Unity is on my mind. Its kind of been my theme lately, and its something that I really would like to have a hand in working towards. The a capella churches of Christ and the Independent Christian Churches have been officially divided for 100 years this upcoming year. There will be a number of events that focus on unity between the churches of Christ and Independent Christian Churches and among all streams of the Restoration Movement as well.

One of my New Years Resolutions is going to be to work towards unity through networking. Lord willing, I want to make contacts within the Independent Christian Churches, expand my contacts in the non-institutional churches, and also make new contacts in the “no-class, one-cup churches”. Once that happens, I’ll have to see where the next step is.

One of the things I am going to try to do is to make it to places and conferences where we all gather. I’m going to try to attend the Oregon Christian Convention (which is for the Independent Christian Churches) as well as the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. There are other things I’d like to attend, but due to cost and distance I won’t be able to make them.

I’d like to challenge everyone to be Unity minded in 2006, and I’d like to hear what your efforts for unity will be this year.

-Clarke

————————————–

Below is a list of Unity Events which I pulled off the North American Christian Convention website:

Feb. 19-22, 2006
ACU Lectures/Restoration Forum XXIV
Abilene Christian University
Abilene, TX
www.acu.edu/events/lectureship.html

Mar. 23-25, 2006
International Soul Winning Workshop
Tulsa, OK
www.tulsaworkshop.org

May 2-5, 2006
Pepperdine University Bible Lectures
Malibu, CA
Email: patricia.atkisson (at) pepperdine (dot) edu

June 11-13, 2006
Stone-Campbell Dialogue
Nashville, TN
foster (at) bible.acu (dot) edu

June 27 - 30, 2006
North American Christian Convention - Together in Christ
Louisville, KY
www.nacctheconnectingplace.org

Aug. 7-10, 2006
Kentucky-Indiana Fellowship Week

Hello all:

An update on Restorationmovement.org.

First, we have picked out a good template and we will start transferring the existing content into this new template. It will give the site a much better look to it.

Second, I have added quite a bit of content lately for the Independent Christian Churches and the Disciples of Christ. I am going to start working on the ICOC soon. Alan and Doug, I could use all of the links that you have for ICOC related institutions, magazines, etc, if you want to volunteer them.

Also, if anyone out there wants to add a link to their ministry, college, bible school, etc., email me at restoration (at) clarkecomments (dot) com.

-Clarke

Hello all:

My wife and I rented The Passion of the Christ and watched it last night. Neither of us had seen it before, and I had resisted seeing it in the past. I’m not much for commercialization of religion, and I wasn’t sure how the movie would be. After talking to several friends, I found out that I’m pretty much the only person around who hasn’t seen it.

The movie was the most powerful film I have ever seen. My wife and I cried off and on during most of the movie.

I’m sure we’ve all imagined what Christ went through long before this movie ever came out. We’ve all read about his Crucifixion in scripture. I couldn’t believe how seeing it depicted in front of me made me feel. The amount of guilt I felt last night trumps anything I have ever felt in my life.

I kept picturing myself as a member of the crowd condemning Jesus, or part of the Roman guard that tortured Him and led Him to Golgotha. I could not get it out of my mind that I have done so many things in my life that have resulted in Jesus being beaten and scorned and crucified.

Thank God for that sacrifice.

-Clarke

Hello all:

From my family to yours, we’d like to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving! We’re getting ready to eat lots of Turkey and stuffing.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I’m still reading Directions for the Road Ahead - Consistency in change among churches of Christ . I haven’t had a lot of time to read, so its taking me a while. However, I just read a chapter on Baptism written by Prentice Meador Jr. Meador is a trustee at ACU

I would highly recommend that you read the article if you can get a hold of a copy of the book. Meador writes an ancedote about his own baptism, and how he has come back to it over the years to learn more about the phenomenon he experienced that Thursday night long ago. The article is a beautiful treatise on what happens when someone puts their faith in Jesus and puts on the cross and are buried in the waters with Christ.

-Clarke

Hello all:

A few posts ago I mentioned that there would be a gospel meeting in my area held by a one-cup, no class congregation. It will be starting soon and I hope to attend at least one day of it.

However, Sunday night I attended a non-institutional congregation where my friend is the minister. While I was there I saw a poster for a Gospel meeting in the same small town of Wilsonville. This meeting is being held by the non-institutional congregation there (I didn’t even know there was one there). While not being held on exactly the same days, there will be small overlap where both meetings are going on at the same time.

So, two meetings going on at the same time in the same small town. Two groups that have so much in common with each other. They are both non-institutional, both believe in believers baptism, both partake of the Lord’s Supper (albeit in different ways), and both are very conservative.

These two churches are probably somewhat aware of each other-when I attended a non-institutional church in Forest Grove, we had a one-cup church down the road a ways that we all knew about-but probably have zero in the way of fellowship, and probably don’t know about the meetings the other is having.

I was hoping to make it to the meeting for the NI congregation that started last night, but it didn’t quite work into my schedule. I wonder if there is a way to bring these two groups together, even just a little bit.

What I would really like to do is get to know people in both groups and maybe facilitate something, but am I being presumptious?

-Clarke

Hello all:

I was reading through the latest edition of The Firm Foundation and there was an article on Premillenialism. I’d recently been doing a little bit of reading about the “premils” and so I read the article.

The article was chock full of inaccuracies about what the Premillenialists in our fellowship believe. It claimed that Premillenialists believe that the church was a mistake, that Jesus was unsuccessful in establishing His Kingdom, and that none of us can be saved until the Jews are saved.

Furthermore, the article claimed that the doctrine of Premillenialism is so flawed that belief in such a doctrine would jeopardize ones salvation.

I have no problem with debates over doctrine. I have no issue with one person attempted to change the mind of another. I have no issue with someone claiming that a particular doctrine is wrong. However, if we are going to do so, we must make sure that we have a good understanding of the doctrine that we are refuting.

A good primer on premillenialist beliefs in the churches of Christ can be found in R.H. Boll Interviewed.

I’m still making up my mind on this issue. I’d like to hear the opinions of others on this subject.

-Clarke

Hello all:

The last days I’ve spent trying to figure some things out. I’m currently working my long week (four days in a row), and its now my Friday and I look forward to four days off….

I’ve had some time to sit at the computer. but I haven’t had much to write. I’ve just been doing a lot of web surfing when I’ve been sitting at the computer.

I’m not sure where I should be going with my life. I’ve prayed some, and I’ve asked others for their prayers as well. I’m impatient. I want to have a clear focus. I have the opportun