Author: Robert

our pastor was sick yesterday and i was one of the individuals called to fill in for the morning message. after preaching i made a new discovery concerning preaching to groups that are primarily adult. in the past i said that i didn’t like preaching to mainly adult church services, rather i would like to stick with youth and those who love youth. yesterday i realized that this isn’t quite true. there is one thing that i do like about preaching to primarily adult groups – the positive feedback at the end of the message.

yesterday i preached at two of our worship services and then spent 15 to 20 minutes after each service listening to members of the congregation tell me how they liked the sermon. truthfully, it was a nice bit of ego stroking and i have to admit that it was enjoyable. i love teens but i can go months without hearing a positive or negative word from a teen concerning any messages i’ve done. of course, i dod “cheat” and read the blogs of so of my kids looking for what they say about each week’s message. still, yesterday i received more compliments from the too church services that i preached than i have received from our youth worship service in a year’s worth of services (maybe two year’s worth).

now don’t get me wrong – i still prefer delivering messages to people involved in youth ministry and specifically my teens. teenagers let you know if you are connecting or not. if my youth get bored they go to sleep, start talking to the person beside them, or begin passing notes. i can tell if i’m connecting with my kids or not. most of our church adults on the other hand, simply stare straight ahead – i can’t read them at all. with nice, passive, polite, “let’s pretend that we’re listening when i’m really not” adults i can’t figure out if things are tracking or if i’m losing everyone. i really don’t like that feeling.

so basically me desired plan is to speak to our adults once every six months or so and get the ego stroking that i need every now and then. the rest of the time i’ll spend on my kids – the ones that i really like doing messages for.

everyone else seems to be doing this quiz now and thus i will be a good little mindless sheep and follow the crowd. so here are my results:

You scored as Neo orthodox. You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Emergent/Postmodern 75% Neo orthodox 75% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 61% Reformed Evangelical 50% Charismatic/Pentecostal 46% Classical Liberal 46% Modern Liberal 39% Roman Catholic 29% Fundamentalist 25% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

the cool thing is that i’m not emergent (i’m neo-orthodox) and yet i am emergent. 😉

i feel so much better about myself having settle once and for all what i am. at least i think i feel better.

i’m scum! plain and simple. there is no other way to put it – i’m pure, unadulterated scum.

now you must be asking yourself “how is robert scum?” so i’ll tell you. i forgot my mother’s and my father’s birthday. my parents’ birthdays were this past week. the big thing is not the gift because my parents are at the age that they go out and buy whatever they want. no the gifts are not the thing that i feel really bad about. nope i feel bad because i didn’t call on their birthdays. that’s the terrible thing about all this.

actually it wasn’t really my fault. you see i desperately wanted to call my parents and say “happy birthday” on their perspective birthdays but i wasn’t able to. the reason for this is because i was threatened with bodily harm concerning calling them. my kids, adam and noah, told me that they would beat me senseless if i called my parents and wished them happy birthday. you wouldn’t really think that an 8 and 11 year old could be so threatening but you would be wrong. they’re like mafia don’s and they know how exert a little muscle in order to accomplish what they want. i really wanted to call my parents on their birthdays but i was simply to scared to go against the threats of my kids. so i guess my parents should blame the whole thing on their grandkids. let me make sure my parents understand this perfectly – it was the grandkids fault and not mine. 🙂

i absolutely love whoever came up with this t-shirt. it’s brilliant.

i can’t really think of a better more honest invitation to church. i like it so much i’ll probably rip it off … uhmmm … i mean borrow it, while giving full credit to the people who deserve it. 😉 anyhow, i’ll probably use it someday.

sometimes what i have in my mind doesn’t come across well when we actually do it. the above “worship station” is one such situation. wednesday night at “the view” i was talking off of james 4:8 about we believers focusing on one thing. soren kirkegaard says that “purity of heart is to will one thing” and i thought that would make for a great discussion. the message was okay – not great, not terrible. as a part of the message i wanted to set up a worship station in the back of the room to help people to consider what (or more importantly who) their “one thing” was. for me looking at myself in a mirror has always been a challenging thing. for some reason looking at myself for an extended time causes me to have to consider what GOD thinks of me and thus what i think of myself and how it relates to GOD’s thoughts. i was hoping to do a station that held the same effect for others. instead the whole thing came across as boring – at least to me. it just didn’t seem to make it from my mind to actual practice. sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

SIDE NOTE – i think my mother is reading this blog now (which is fine and dandy but strange because i don’t really think that she would find any of this interesting). she usually reads my other blog. if you are reading this HI MOM!

i read aboutlifeway’s survey of top ten issues facing the church first on steve mccoy’s emerging sbc leaders and i was blown away. here’s the list (developed by visitors to lifeway’s website:

10. Abortion
9. Homosexuality
8. Relevance
7. Marriage
6. Apathy
5. Doctrine/Worldview
4. Evangelism
3. Leadership
2. Discipleship
1. Prayer

i can’t believe that social justice issues didn’t rate at all. how absurd is it that “leadership” makes the list and “taking care of the poor” doesn’t. what is wrong with us? how can we (southern baptists) ever hope to be considered “relevant” when we don’t fight for the needs of those who have been pushed to the margins of the world? i know we do allot of good in social justice issues (providing food, bringing clothing, etc.) but when do we actual fight for justice? maybe our “prayer” and “discipleship” would improve if we were focused on praying for the things that are important to our LORD and the marginalized are important to our LORD.