Tag Archive for 'Faith'

What’s your theological worldview? Reformed Evangelical

I recently took a little quick quiz called “What’s your theological worldview?” over at Quizfarm.com after seeing it in the sidebar Parables of a Prodigal World. I can’t say I have much a problem with the results. To God be the Glory…

You Scored as Reformed Evangelical

You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God’s Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.

Reformed Evangelical
86%
Fundamentalist
75%
Neo orthodox
68%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
61%
Roman Catholic
43%
Classical Liberal
25%
Emergent/Postmodern
18%
Charismatic/Pentecostal
11%
Modern Liberal
4%

People Connecting to God

Tape 2464.02
Senior Pastor, Jeff Jones

Our natural mistake: reducing spirituality to a formula. Genesis 5:22-24. 2 Peter 3:18.

  • You can do the formula and not get the result.
  • You can not do the formula and get the result.
  • No one-sized formula works for everyone.

True spirituality is not a formula but a relationship.

God is a person, not a computer. It’s more like falling in love than a recipe for making cookies.

Our spiritual pursuit: Finding a way of relating to God that works for you.

  • God’s commands, His Truth. John 14:15-24. God is authority and a close relationship with Him requires obedience. So get over it, submission is part of the deal.
  • The need for discipline. Philippians 3:10-14.
  • The disciplines that lead to growth.
    1. Word of God, but there is a warning not to just build your brain. James 1:22-25.
    2. Gathering
    3. Community
    4. Prayer
    5. Serving

Listen to People Connecting to God with iTunes.

Replant 2007

This morning Jeff shared the vision for replanting FBCN in the community.

When we are engaged at FBCN we are:

  • People Connecting to God –> Worship Service
  • People Connecting to People –> LifeGroups
  • People Connecting to Need –> Bridge Building Lifestyles
  • Relationships
  • Compassion (via LifeGroups)
  • Global Outreach (much bigger focus)

We make it happen by giving and serving. Everyone should be serving in 1 area. These 3 areas exist among all 3 ministry areas: adults, youth, children.

FBCN will soon introduce a unique service geared toward the emergent culture during the 12 o’clock service. Sean Carter will lead the worship. The goal is to reach a different crowd. Once we move to Legacy, this service will meet in the youth building at the same time and will share a video feed of the main sermon.

Building Update

Move in target September 2007…250 days.

  1. Pray for 100% participation. Unity is the goal.
  2. Pray for the 650,000 people within 10 mile radius.
  3. Pray for current and future leaders.

Future Leadership Training

March 13, 20, 27

Hey Christians, want to win $50,000?

I ran across this over at Kottke’s site today. David Sklansky thinks we Bible-believing Christians are 1) lying about our faith and 2) just not that intelligent. What’s that you say? Here is David’s proposal to us all:

This is an open challenge to any American citizen who passes a lie detector test that I will specify in a moment.

We will both take the math SAT or GRE (aptidude [sic] test). Your choice. We will both have only half the normally allotted time to lessen the chances of a perfect score. Lower score pays higher score $50,000.

To qualify you must take a reputable polygraph that proclaims you are truthful when you state that:

1. You are at least 95% sure that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.

AND

2. You are at least 95% sure that adults who die with the specific belief that Jesus probably wasn’t ressurected [sic] will not go to heaven.

If you pass the polygraph you can bet me on the SAT or GRE. Again this is open to ANY one of the 300 million Americans.

Also, for those who think I am being disengenuous [sic] because I would make the offer to anyone at all, you are wrong. I am now so rusty that at least one in 5000 Americans are favored over me and I would pass on a bet with them. That’s 60,000 people. If the number of people who would pass that polygraph is between 10 and 30 million, which I think it is, that means that at least 2000 of these types of Christians are smart enough to be favored over me. Given such Christian’s intelligence is distributed like other American’s are.

But I’m betting fifty grand they are not. Their beliefs make them relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning). Or only relatively stupid people can come to such beliefs. One or the other. That is my contention. And this challenge might help demonstrate that.

PS Since this challenge is open to any American, anyone who reads this should feel free to bring it to the attention to any smart Christian they know. Any math whiz, any professor, etc. But I need to warn you that they will almost certainly turn you down. And the reason will NOT usually be because they think they will fail the math test. University professors will probably not fear this college dropout. But given they are expert mathmeticians [sic], their real fear, though they won’t tell you, is that you will find out how badly they fail the polygraph.

He should have used spell check before posting. What a dope. It reminds me of Elijah on Mount Carmel. I really wish that a number of Christians would take him up on this.

One has to wonder why Sklansky thinks we Christians are so dumb? What about other religions? What about Jews? Buddhists? Muslims? Hindus?

As some have suggested in the forum, Mormon, Ken Jennings certainly could challenge him. I appreciate Ken’s straight forward answer that Mormons do not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven.

Send the ACLU a Christmas Card

I heard Mike Gallagher mention this as I drove to work this morning:

IN THE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTMAS SEASON WE WANT TO LOVE OUR ENEMIES LIKE THE GOOD BOOK SAYS. WE HERE AT 9-20 WGKA KNOW OF NO GREATER ENEMY TO OUR WAY OF LIFE THAN THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION. SO WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO JOIN US IN SENDING THE ACLU A CHRISTMAS CARD.

Sounds like a great idea to me. Will you send a Christmas card to the ACLU?