Church

I know it's been a while without a post, and this isn't even a good one. Deal with it, punks.

I finally finished school with an A in CTQR (math) and a B in Michelangelo. That pulls me up to a cumulative 3.033. What am I going to do now that I can get my scholarship back? I'M GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!! (sorry, couldn't resist!) No, but really, Momma told me that if I get my Life scholarship back she would take Laura and me to Disney World over fall break, which is really cool. I also get to continue my pursuit of a 4-year degree at WU instead of starting over at York Tech. Yipee (?)

Also, LJ has been moving into her new trailer for the last week and we still aren't finished. Albert Patterson just finished painting it, and it looks wonderful now. The previous tenant had but white trash stickers and yellow paint all over the walls. She even painted her lovely cherry-wood-colored cabinets with yellow and green paint, followed by wood-colored contact paper. It looks like most of the paint will come off though. I certainly hope so...

Lots of new ideas about church have been coming my way lately. See my cousin Lauren's post about church, along with my reply (posted below her article and also this entry). My reply is mostly a summation of what David Taylor [see Monday, June 12th, 2006 entry] said at the Something Else cookout on Sunday concerning his withdrawal from Oakdale Baptist Church in Rock Hill, SC.

BTW, David is going to be touring churches in South Africa as a missions trip. You can learn more here.

Here are some of my thoughts that I wrote out in reply to Lauren:

It's so true what you say about just getting people to church to boost numbers. More and more churches are doing that. If we were to follow Christ's model, church would be reserved solely for for teaching and discipling members, while the time outside of church would be for evangelism and service to the community.

Some churches will claim to have 20 souls saved in a service each week, while the people of the church are hungry spiritually and not growing in Christ. If that church has 500 members who were properly discipled, and everyone could reach just 1 person for Christ each MONTH, you would have 500 people saved instead of 100. Imagine the impact of service to the community if each person would participate, rather than sit back and do nothing.

On the one hand, I can see the need for an evangelistic service, because some people DO come to church - some seeking answers, others wanting a social club. If we follow Christ's example, many people would be turned away to get their lives straight before joining. Christ went and reached out to people in order to train them. Who are we to break from HIS example?

Well, I suppose that's all for now. That turned out to be a much longer post than I had planned. Catch ya on the flip side...