Liberate Te Ex Inferis

Some friends of our who used to attend our church, but moved to another church locally to serve on staff, just learn that they lost their 37-week old unborn child. The mother had to give birth to a still-born baby last Sunday. Here is an excerpt from the email I received on this..
Under the circumstances, they are doing fine. Physically, they are still recovering & they both desperately need to rest. Emotionally, theyhave their ups & downs, but they are incredibly strong. Despite their
sadness & hurting hearts, they are praising God & giving Him the glory.
What an amazing testimony!

Now, I have never experienced this type of situation, nor do I know what it is like to be a parent, so I cannot relate to the types of feelings and emotions that they must be experiencing right now. And the purpose of my post is not to downplay their disappointment and suffering over this event, I have the utmost respect and share in the sorrow of this family that are my friends, but I must write a point of view that my Faith allows me to have during trials like this.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now, should we rejoice in this event? Obviously not. Should we be saddened? Yes, it is only natural. Should we be mad at God? Why? Because he gave us a life, something that only He could do, and then took it away, only to be with Him in heaven? This child will never experience pain, suffering, sadness, remorse. He will never know heartbreak, will never be tempted by human sexual perversions, will never have any addictions to drugs or alcohol. He will never have to fight in a war, only to be dismembered or killed. He will never have to experience a divorce. He will never know betrayal. He will spend his days in the loving arms of his Heavenly Father, who Himself called the child home, and didn’t have to accept him from a pre-determined murder at an abortion clinic.

This does not mean that we would not have happily watched James grow and become a Spiritual leader, husband and father as we would have expected him to, it simply means that God had other plans for him, to spare him the suffering in this lousy, rotten, twisted-ass world, and to call him home to Heaven earlier than planned by his earthly parents.

We should all be so blessed.

The Purpose

This morning was “Promotion Sunday” which means the beginning of a new year, in case you have never attended a Baptist church. They like to act like it follows a college semester or school year or something. Old habits die hard, I guess.

So to signify promotion Sunday, along with John Meador’s 1-year anniversary with FBC Euless, they launched both a new website and new logos, designs, team and class names for the church. It’s a whole new look and feel and for the most part I think that it is really good.

I like the new logo, but I don’t care for the Easter-Egg, Pastel colors that they chose. I would have preferred a slate gray/ navy blue/ silver / black / or dark red theme. I am sure they care about my opinion Either way, I think it brings a nice change to the look and feel of the new website and change can be a good thing when it means growth, and this church definitely has grown over the past 2-3 years.

It’s going to be exciting to see what comes about in the next several months in the life of this church, a place that tries so desperately to move forward and progress with growing times, but seems to get in it’s own way so often. For the most part, FBC Euless is one of the most progressive Southern Baptist churches in the DFW Metroplex. But as of late, it has taken a few steps backwards into the more traditional Baptist role that we are used to seeing in this area. I think the new website and it’s features are a good contradiction to that, and I am glad to see them, other than the fact that the site doesn’t seem to like Firefox.

The resignation of Claude Thomas , some three years ago, didn’t discourage or bring down this church body, but empowered them to the extent of “let us show you that we follow God and not a man of God” and that is exactly what has transpired here, with the paying off of a $6.5 million mortgage debt in this period of time. Whatever happens next should be worth blogging about.

Church, The Purpose

For the last few months, I have been attending a class on Sunday mornings led by Dr Jack Terry at FBC Euless.  He used to be a professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary and his teaching style reflects that of a college professor.  Since I have always wanted to attend Seminary but never got the chance to, Dr Terry’s class has been incredibly interesting to me over these past few months.  So I thought that I would write a blog and share some of the insightful things that are discussed in this class, because they are so interesting to me.  So look for more posts on this subject, perhaps not every week, but several times that I find something I can write about

The Purpose

John Chow dot com is a blog that helps you make money online. He is offering to link to your blog if you review his blog.

From his site (this is good info, so I am reposting it.)

The Importance Of The Anchor Text

This post is also a lesson on the importance of linking with keywords or phases. In the Evil Nintendo Wii Blog Contest, I asked people to link to me using “root of all evil.” If you do a Google search for that phrase, you’ll see I am now ranked number three, just behind Wikipedia and RootOfAllEvil.com.

While it’s fun to rank for root of all evil, not many people search for that phase. However, according to the Overture keyword selector tool, there are over 44,000 searches every month for make money online. If I can get on page one of Google for that phrase, it would mean a flood of new traffic.

Internet Deals

So I have had several comments and emails to my latest post. I guess I should have started talking about music earlier, it seems to get alot of attention

Anyway, I might have not conveyed my point correctly. I simply meant that the music taste isn’t my personal preference, I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything wrong with it. It would be wrong for me to say there is something wrong with old-style, gospel, or hymnal music, just as I believe it is wrong for someone else to tell me there is something wrong with Christian Rock. That isn’t what I believe at all.

And yes, music can be more about praising God than being evangelical, but to draw in a lost crowd of people who might not come to church on a normal basis, shouldn’t this music be a little more progressive? The message too, I think, but I am talking about music at this time. Why do you think churchs like Fellowship get so many members and attendants? The message is the same… the message is Jesus. No matter how watered-down or on-fire it might be, I don’t believe the attraction is the message. The attraction is the music. And after all, aren’t we trying to reach the lost?

Music