Ranting!

The alarm went off way too early this morning! 4 am! Preacher man has a meeting with the Bishop about the first 100 day's in your new church! He's not the only one, everyone going to a new church as the Sr. Pastor has to go. So we got up at 4, I fixed him Bulls eye's, and off he went. Yesterday, we filled the truck with our second load of belongings to be deposited at the parsonage in Sherwood. Squatted that baby down, which is hard to do on a 4x4.


So you may be asking, What are you going to do today with Preacher man gone, and the whole day ahead of you? Well, I'll tell ya. I know for sure that I'm going to lunch with Anne and Vickie and having dinner at Tammy's, watching American Idol to see who wins. Other than that, shower, pack, read, blog maybe.


I do want to comment on GC2012 (General Conference 2012), you knew it was coming, you just didn't know when huh? Well, I said a while back, that the only thing that was going to save the Methodist church was the African church. I need to correct that by adding the Filipino church to it! I want to thank them for voting the way they did! I also would like for Adam Hamilton and Bishop Minerva Carcano to stop speaking for me!  


There very well may not be a middle ground here. What has to happen is that the church, that's you and me, has to make up it's mind which side of the fence we're going to stand on. There is no fence standing, aka luke warm church. I do foresee a split in the UM church. When that happens, what are you going to do? How are you going to get people into your church? Don't tell me that's the Preacher job either, WE are the Body of Christ, the church! 


See, part of the problem is we have tried to become everything to everybody and it's just not working. Your contemporary service may be growing, but they aren't giving cuz the Pastor doesn't want to scare them off by preaching about tithing. The lights in your church may be great at showing off your "stage" but how come the people aren't singing? You may take pride in the amount of food you give to the pantry, but when that 28 year old comes into your church on Sunday morning and tells you that her 3 month old baby just died last night at Children's hospital, and she needs to get down there, what do you do? Give her a box of noodles? Tell her you don't have any money available until Thursday? Push her off on someone who isn't as busy as you are?


It is not about entertaining people! It is about teaching the truth, no matter how it hurts, calling for repentances, a turning away from and going the other direction. It's about calling sin, sin and teaching people about grace. We, as the church, have got to get our act together and remember that Jesus was the same yesterday, as he is today, as he will be tomorrow! When I hear big name preacher say things about the Bible being written in a time that doesn't understand the time we live in, I want to scream. Just look at Rome. Super power, everybody having sex with everybody and everything they could. Moral decay at it's best, right there! 


Time is drawing short. You better know what you believe or they'll tell you. Then they will give you that stamp.