From Dr. Chapman’s Blog

Dr. Chapman’s blog today has some excellent questions, and a reminder about the one whom we serve. He states:

The beginning of our Convention was characterized by deep biblical convictions that led men to sacrifice their will to the Will of the Father. Our future was a bright as the promises of God. Thousands upon thousands have been saved due to the faithful witness of all who have gone before us. We stand upon their shoulders and listen as others identify us as the largest non-Catholic denomination in the world. We have experienced “showers of blessings” from above and have reason to be eternally grateful for the heritage of our yesteryears and the opportunities of our tomorrows.

God raised up a large army of believers called Southern Baptists. Whether we shall be as mighty as the smaller armies that preceded us is open to question. Our Convention has changed. Our annual rate of baptisms has slowed and in danger of declining. Confusion has been interjected into the trustees and staffs of our entities. Special interest groups are desperate for their place in the sun. There are many possible answers, but so little wonder-working power. Could it be that we have become accustomed to the power generated by human will and less dependent upon the spiritual power generated by an almighty God who created the heavens and the earth and all therein? Have we become accustomed to doing too many things our way instead of His Way? Time will tell. Until then may God help us ensure that His Spirit reigns supreme leading us to abandon self for a close walk with the Savior.

Superman = Jesus?

I never, ever, ever, made this connection, though I did see the fall of man in The Little Mermaid!

From CNN.com:

Jesus Christ Superman
Superman seen in many ways through eyes of beholders — us

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — First there were the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Now, for many Christian moviegoers comes another gospel.

As the hype machine shifts into high gear for the upcoming release of “Superman Returns,” some are reading deeply into the film whose hero returns from a deathlike absence to play savior to the world.

“It is so on the nose that anyone who has not caught on that Superman is a Christ figure, you think, ‘Who else could it be referring to?’ ” said Steve Skelton, who wrote a book examining parallels between Superman and Christ.

We’ve become a more lonely people

It appears that we are loosing friends. Relationships are decreasing. In a technologically connected world, our relationships are being disconnected. All of this appears in a recent study, which has measured friendships, relationships and connectivity since 1972.

Here’s the article:

Americans are more socially isolated than they were 20 years ago, separated by work, commuting and the single life, researchers reported on Friday.

Nearly a quarter of people surveyed said they had “zero” close friends with whom to discuss personal matters. More than 50 percent named two or fewer confidants, most often immediate family members, the researchers said.

“This is a big social change, and it indicates something that’s not good for our society,” said Duke University Professor Lynn Smith-Lovin, lead author on the study to be published in the American Sociological Review.

Smith-Lovin’s group used data from a national survey of 1,500 American adults that has been ongoing since 1972.

She said it indicated people had a surprising drop in the number of close friends since 1985. At that time, Americans most commonly said they had three close friends whom they had known for a long time, saw often, and with whom they shared a number of interests.

They were almost as likely to name four or five friends, and the relationships often sprang from their neighborhoods or communities.

Ties to a close network of friends create a social safety net that is good for society, and for the individual. Research has linked social support and civic participation to a longer life, Smith-Lovin said.

People were not asked why they had fewer intimate ties, but Smith-Lovin said that part of the cause could be that Americans are working more, marrying later, having fewer children, and commuting longer distances.

The data also show the social isolation trend mirrors other class divides: Non-whites and people with less education tend to have smaller social networks than white Americans and the highly educated.

That means that in daily life, personal emergencies and national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, those with the fewest resources also have the fewest personal friends to call for advice and assistance.

“It’s one thing to know someone and exchange e-mails with them. It’s another thing to say, ‘Will you give me a ride out of town with all of my possessions and pets? And can I stay with you for a couple or three months?” Smith-Lovin said.

“Worrying about social isolation is not a matter of nostalgia for a warm and cuddly past. Real things are strongly connected with that,” added Harvard University Public Policy Professor Robert Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone,” a book on the decline of American community.

He suggested flexible work schedules would allow Americans to tend both personal and professional lives.

Never go to church again

I found this interesting article by a guy named Dwight Friesen. He’s a missional thinker in the Seattle area. I found him through a paper he had done while working on his D.Min at George Fox Seminary in Emerging Culture. That’s where I’m doing my D.Min. starting in August. This title of the article “never go to church again.”

He states:

I am diligently working to destroy the erroneous notion of “going to Church.”

Christ never called us to “go” to anything. Christ’s invitation to follow Him has always been correctly understood to be an invitation to a life of following. And the church is meant to be God’s new community of followers on earth.

We cannot go to church any more than a parent can “Go to Parenting.” Once a person becomes a mother or a father their entire life is forever and irrevocably altered. Though “Mom” and “Dad” are titles, those terms describe a life focus for the bearer of the title. To be a Mom is to be a person of action. A woman can not become a mother and continue her life exactly as it was before. In fact if a parent were to continue with life as usual that person would be abusive, negligent, absent, or dead. When a couple has a child their priorities change, the way they use their time is altered, it changes the way they look at life. Parenting is not something a person attends (like a movie) and then return to their life, instead parenting forever changes the person.

When a person encounters Christ and the grace he extends, God adopts that person into his family. We call that family the Church. To be part of the church is to receive a new set of lenses to see the world through. Church is not an event to attend. Church is a lifestyle. Church is living life as a person in communion with God, and in community with like-minded people. Its clear in the Bible that God has always wanted church to be more of a verb than a noun. We church when we our lives are marked by action.

He goes on to share what he sees as the core of what marks people as people of God and states what when these core things are done, people become the church, they don’t go to the church. Facinating essay.

Great story on Tony Dungy

Over at ESPN.com

Here’s an excerpt:

But because so many (maybe millions) are watching, Dungy believes — just as he told Brackett — that God has placed him in this position not for him and his family to suffer but so they can be an example to others, a testimony.

“Our God is bigger than our pain,” Dilfer says.

Dungy saw the evidence of that the day after James’ funeral, when a man approached Dungy to tell him that he’d heard him in the eulogy talk of men striving to be better fathers and role models and of parents not taking their children for granted. The man also said that he’d been inspired to take the day off from work and spend it with his son. Dungy’s seen it in the thousands of letters his family has received, citing one in particular: A girl wrote to tell him that because of what she saw and heard during James’ funeral at the Idlewild Baptist Church in Tampa that she’d come to know God and had been baptized there.

Dungy could see God at work in the letter informing the family that two people can literally see now because they received James’ donated corneas. In January, Dungy managed to pen an encouraging letter to Rhonda Brown, wife of former NFL defensive back Dave Brown, after her husband died at age 52 of a heart attack while playing basketball.

“I [wrote], ‘I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling but I know that the Lord can get you through it.’ That’s the encouraging thing, that I can say to people now, that you’ll make it,” Dungy says.

Day by day, blessing by blessing, Dungy can make more sense of something that seemed so senseless just seven months ago. According to Lutz, Fla., police, James’ girlfriend, Antoinette Anderson, said she’d discovered James’ body and that the 6-foot-7 Dungy, who was attending Hillsborough Community College, had hanged himself from a ceiling fan using a leather belt. James would have turned 19 on Jan. 6.

Listening to Dungy put it into perspective, it’s easy to understand how he’s taken his many difficult professional losses in stride. The man is simply unwavering in his beliefs. He can be calm in even the worst storms. Nothing, it seems, can shake him from his foundation.

“The Lord has a plan,” Dungy says. “We always think the plans are A, B, C and D, and everything is going to be perfect for us and it may not be that way, but it’s still his plan. A lot of tremendous things are going to happen, it just may not be the way you see them.

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