ClarkeComments.com

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:

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

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

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