I confess – I did shake some hands yesterday.  But I went to the “confessional” and had GermX absolve any bad stuff from my palms and fingers.   We passed “the peace” by not shaking hands but saying, “God loves you and hates the flu.”  Laughter bounced off the pews with that one!

I admit I was bit by the media hype over the swine flu.  It did not keep people away from worship.  We did see people hugging more which was a good thing.  No one fell over from the H1N1 virus.  It seems to be more of an issue for the schools.  470 schools closed in 18 states.  How do you keep kids home when they will want to gather with their friends?  So I pray for our teachers and day care workers.

We will still keep an open mind at church but not one of paranoia.  Remember Y2K?  The world did not end.  This too shall pass.  But I recommend that we keep washing our hands.  And you are safe shopping for groceries at “The Pig.”

What did they do at your church?

More than half of all Americans have switched religions at least once, according to the most in-depth survey on the topic, released Monday.

And that may still be “a conservative estimate,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.  Read More

Reminds me of the REM song, “Losing My Religion.”

Some switched for good reasons and others have just “drifted away” from the church of their childhood.  If you have ever drifted away and have returned to an active faith community, what made you come back home to God?

Is there anything we can do to stop the loss of our youth?

Rob, our intern, told me today that the first people to knock on his door Wednesday morning to welcome him to the neighborhood were two Jehovah Witnesses!  Can you just laugh at that one? Read this from the Christian Apolegetics and Research Ministry:

“Is Jehovah’s Witnesses a Christian Religon?

The answer to the question is, “No. It is not Christian.” Like all non-Christian cults, the Jehovah’s Witness organization distorts the essential doctrines of Christianity. It denies the deity of Christ, His physical resurrection, and salvation by grace.  This alone makes it non-Christian.  To support its erring doctrines, the Watchtower organization (which is the author and teacher of all official Jehovah’s Witness theology), has even altered the Bible to make it agree with its changing and non-Christian teachings.
      Typical with cults that use the Bible to support its position is a host of interpretive errors:

• Taking verses out of their immediate context.
• Refusing to read verses in the entire biblical context.
• Inserting their theological presuppositions into the text.
• Altering the Biblical text to suit their needs.
• Latching onto one verse to interpret a host of others.
• Changing the meanings of words.
• Proclaiming some passages to be figurative when they contradict their doctrines.
• Adding to the Word of God.

      Additionally, the Jehovah’s Witness organization requires of its members regular weekly attendance at their “Bible Study” meetings where they are repeatedly indoctrinated with anti-Christian teachings. This is done by reading the Watchtower magazine, following along with what it says, reading the questions it asks, and reciting the answers it gives.  In other words, the Watchtower Organization carefully trains its members to let the Organization do their thinking for them.  For confirmation of this, please read Does the Watchtower organization control the JW’s thinking? ”

READ MORE…

I remember this day back in 1968.  I was a junior attending Washington Park High School.  It was Racine’s inner city High School at the time and very racially mixed.  The President of my class was a sharp black guy named Duke Hamilton and V.P. was Martha Contreras.  So I rubbed shoulders with people of other racial backgrounds.

The day after M.L. King was shot most of the blacks at Park High organized a protest.  They went around the halls calling for the school to be shut down.  Fearing a riot, the administration did cancel classes for the day.  The next day school opened with a general assembly in the gymnasium.  The principal allowed the leaders of the black students to express their feelings and thoughts about what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.  Do you remember that day? 

For the first time I realized how King was a hero and person of hope and vision for the black community.  And a white man shot him dead.  King was also a non-violent man following the strategy of Gandhi.  I thought everything was okay with my fellow black students and athletes since we got along in class and on the team.  Little did I know how different our neighborhoods were when I went home and when they went home.  We did not live side by side at that time.  Nor did we worship side by side either.  Racism is sinful.  We all suffer from it to some degree.

The school quieted down after that assembly and we mourned the death of a great leader and voice for social justice.  But some blacks smouldered with anger at what happened.  Later on I read a book of King’s sermons, “The Strength To Love.“  I highly recommend it to you.  (I let someone borrow my copy and have not seen it since.) My favorite sermon is that book was “A Knock At Midnight.” 

A good article describing the changing landscape of American Religion caught my attention yesterday.  What I noticed was a growing disaffiliation with any religious body among people under 50. 

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, documents new peaks, deepening valleys and fast-running rivers of change in American religiosity.

Based on interviews with 35,556 adults in the continental United States, it shows so much diversity and dynamism that a co-author sums it up simply. “Churn. Churn. Churn. The biggest news here is change,” says Pew Forum research fellow Gregory Smith.

Here is a neat graphic describing each state’s religious composition.  Check out the Badger state – I am an evangelical protestant by choice.  What do you think a church like ours has to offer in this “religious market place?”

TUESDAY.  Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday.  The day of feasting before fasting during Lent.  So get ready.

The Presbyterian Church I served in Monroe, Wisconsin always celebrated “Shrove Tuesday” with a pancake supper.  It was open to the whole community.  On this day (so the historians say) there were feasts of pancakes to use up the supplies of fat, butter and eggs – foods that were forbidden during austere Lent.

In England there are several celebrations on this day but perhaps the best known one is the Pancake Day Race at Olney in Buckinghamshire which has been held since 1445. The race came about when a woman cooking pancakes heard the shriving bell summoning her to confession. She ran to church wearing her apron and still holding her frying pan, and thus without knowing it, started a tradition that has lasted for over five hundred years.

My seminary advisor, Dean Pedersen (no relation), invited us over to his home for a dinner of “abelskiver.”  Little round pancakes.  My mother had an abelskiver pan which I inherited and to this day we make them for supper on Tuesday night before Ash Wednesday.  Mmm GOOD!

If you don’t have an abelskiver pan you can try this recipe…

On Christmas Eve someone broke into the apartment of an elderly member of Zion. June has been singing in the church choir for decades.  To think she came home after singing “Silent Night” in candle light to find her door busted and signs that someone was looking for money and drugs – they stole her cough medicine. 

This is a major security worry for June.  Her neighborhood has been changing and it has been a rougher place to live.  Then this last Friday night she heard a noise.  She found a person trying to break through her kitchen window as he was tearing away the screen!  It is not easy getting to sleep for June these January evenings.

She called me all upset on Saturday and in tears.  Her land lord is not much help.  He said he’d fix the screen in the Spring.  Not much encouragement there.  So I contacted John from our “Helping Hands” group at church and told him about the situation.  He emailed me today that he and Jack are going over to the apartment of June’s this week to see what they need to do to secure the window and place a motion sensor which will sound off and scare the burglars away.

This is the church being the body of Christ and serving someone, a widow, in a very practical way.  Cheers to the good guys from “Helping Hands” – John and Jack.

After studying for nine years the role that gratitude plays in happiness, Robert A Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California -Davis concluded that grateful people are happier people.

“People who show gratitude experience higher levels of joy and other positive emotions, have lower levels of depression are less bothered by minor illnesses, and actually take better care of their health,”Professor Emmons told the Sacramento Bee.

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Helen Keller said: “For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that He has granted me knowledge of His works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to – a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”

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May your stuffing be tasty,
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious,
May your pies take the prize.
May your holiday meals stay off of your thighs.”

Lowell Yoder – Holland, OH

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he Puritans were English Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were frustrated by the slow progress of the Reformation in the Anglican Church. They left a legacy of theological writing that is unsurpassed in church history. Their doctrine tended to be Calvinistic and Presbyterian, and their finest writings were both polemic and devotional treatments of theology.