Switchfoot . . . and Taylor Swift?

So, because I have a taste for the perverse... Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman sang alongside Taylor Swift in Glendale, Arizona on Oct. 21, 2011. They shared a duet of Switchfoot’s breakout hit “Meant to Live” before an arena full of little girls, who - judging from all three angles of the same concert - knew the lyrics.

Swift proclaims Switchfoot "one of her favorite bands" and she has included their "Dare You to Move" in her acoustic shows (top video), so . . . maybe there's hope for the younger generation after all.

Science vs. Religion Again? No, just common sense...

So we got another one of those weird "Teacher fired for teaching creationism and hating Evolution" cases...

Link? LINK!

While I hear of reprimands to such teachers and slapping on the wrists.... But termination of a teacher's position regarding such a matter seems to be the first that I come across (though I am sure it's happened elsewhere)....

But they had a whole trial for this man's removal as a teacher...

6,000 pages of transcripts and 350 exhibits later, the court agreed that the man was right to be fired....

Sounds a tad similar to the Scopes Monkey Trial at the beginning of the century where a man decided to teacher his beliefs in evolution and was removed from his teacher post, and later went to trial, which, is kind of a big deal in history books....

I have really no spin on this trial. I agree with the decision of the court... If you can gather 350 pieces of evidence demonstrating that a teacher was continuously refusing to teach the material that the curriculum asked him to teach then he should be fired.

Teachers like the rest of us are hired to do a job. And like most of us would get in trouble for spouting our religious beliefs in the workplace, I don't think the teachers themselves should be exempt just because they disagree with the curriculum. If the man didn't want to teach it, he could have resigned.

Words to Live By: The Bible

"Many Christians expect the world to respect the book they neglect." -Quoted by E.C. McKenzie (via David Jeremiah Ministries)

Review: The City Harmonic's "I Have a Dream"

To Be Released October 18, 2011

From our friends north of the border comes a band full of energy, inspiration and a contemporary take on traditional spiritual values. They portray the Christian messages intended clearly while adding in certain folk/contemporary flairs.

As their name implies, The City Harmonic offers close-knit harmonies with the message of hope and forgiveness thrown in. With the Canadian foursome’s creativity, they combine to create a rather interesting style of music. If you were to mix a Coldplay-style piano with some of Need to Breath’s acoustic and Hillsong’s synth and vocal style, The City Harmonic is what you would get.

I must admit the first band I thought of was Kings of Leon as soon as the first few chords of the first song Yours was played. The way in which they incorporated catchy melodies and upright piano sounds, along with great lyrics, into their music immediately caught my attention:

All hopes, all my dreams, all my hopes all my thoughts.

All the things I’ve loved,

All my sin, all my fear, all my sorrow for the things I’ve done.

You can have it all, it’s Yours, all of it! Yours! All of it! Yours!

Songs such as Be Still, O My Soul evoke a solitary figure sitting at the piano, singing introspectively to the Lord in a very devotional style.

I enjoyed the CD very much. Their sound, in my opinion, could be a bit more unique. It sounded a bit generic, but with today’s contemporary Christian music industry, everything is beginning to sound the same to me. New inspiration, vision and diversity is definitely needed for artists today and I believe that these young men have the makings of something spectacular. I wish them only the best in their years to come and I cannot wait to hear more and to see where God will lead them in the future.

-Reviewed by Tyler Cummings

Food for Though: Forgiveness Requires . . .

“Forgiveness requires healing grief. Forgiveness hurts, as all grief must, and if it hurts to forgive, it hurts equally to be forgiven. We can feel magnanimous when we forgive – in which case it isn’t real forgiveness because it does not involve grief. True forgiveness involves fellow-feeling with the one forgiven. When we accept forgiveness we accept ourselves as sinners, which is not popular today, even in the church.” - Madeleine L’Engle

Vote! An Accredited UPCI College?

If you've heard, Gateway College of Evangelism (in St. Louis) approached UGST (Urshan Graduate School of Theology) about the possibility of being acquired so UGST could start an undergraduate program--essentially giving the UPCI a Christian college (not strictly a Bible college but not strictly a liberal arts college).

UPCI General Superintendent David K. Bernard put together a task force to consider this opportunity. The task force is gathering feedback to do a presentation and proposal to the General Board at General Conference in mid-October.

Care to voice your opinion? Vote here to be heard.

Switchfoot: Dark Horses

Switchfoot's new Vice Verses album releases on Tuesday. It's quite different--not in a bad way, just different--from their usual heavy guitar, sunny California sound. Here's the first release & i s a good sample for the entire album:

Quick Thinker? You probably believe in God. Situation Analyzer? You probably don't believe in God

An interesting report published by some cognitive science researchers at Harvard reveals that people who are more intuitive in their thinking are more likely to believe in God. In contrast, more reflexive people are less likely to believe in God. Intuition in the study was defined as instinctive and "as the tendency to rely on first instincts and to reach decisions quickly and then stick by them. Reflection, on the other hand, is a slower process that involves questioning initial instincts and looking at a wider range of alternatives."

 The head of the research is adamant that there is no bias in the study and I tend to agree because if someone was doing a polemic against people who believed in God, there are several other more degrading words than intuition.


 Nonetheless, for me, the topic touches on an all too awkward issue.... that people's brain capacity and the way certain people think has a correlation with whether they believe or not... or in other words, heaven is that much easier to attain for those who are more intuitive whereas, if the study is accurate, reflexive thinks are less likely to believe by way of how their brain functions...

 It's these scientific arguments that make me sympathetic to the predestination arguments. However, the fact that what we are dealing with here is correlation, or an association between intuition/reflection, belief/unbelief reminds me that we are not dealing with a fact of causation where if one is intuitive in their thinking, they will definitely believe in God
  The article is here.

Words to Live By: Finding God

“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever will find him must go to the foot of the Cross.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today's Teens are Amoral, not Immoral

David Brooks of the New York Times reports on a book that reveals how young people today are incapable of defining morality. While that's hardly news, it does make you wonder how hard we Pentecostals are working to make sure the next generation is learning how to define the great truths in their own words.

Say Brooks:

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

Alzheimers = Death = Divorce

Apparently Pat Robertson said that Alzheimer's is equivalent to death, so a Christian spouse could divorce their loved one with Alzheimer's. Really? That's a pretty interesting reading from the Gospels.

Like Jessie Jackson on politics and race, Pat Robertson has long, long ago stopped speaking for Christianity, but lazy members of the media just can't stop quoting them as if they're authorities. Still, it's the latest example of how society will paint us (or allow ourselves to be painted) if we don't work hard to counter stereotypes through love.

Facebook Church?

The link of the day is an article in the ever illustrious New York Times.... 

Which continues with our theme of from last week about the difficulties/advantages of church oriented activities happening online and more specifically on Facebook (Last week we had an evangelist "Type in tongues" on her Facebook posts),,,

At the surface the article is about the popularity of a "Jesus page" on Facebook which is more popular than Justin Bieber's Facebook page (I don't understand why the New York Times would think that would be such a shocking fact)....

But the more interesting issue which the article seems to be really getting at is the validity of church communities that not only interact with members online, but also exist as a church community through online alone.

The most open to such a viable "online-only" community was a rabbi...

"There are some people who will always prefer the in-person, face-to-face experience, who love being in a room with other Jews and smelling the freshly baked challah. And some people will prefer being online,” said Rabbi Baum, 31, who is one of the leaders of OurJewishCommunity.org. “There are those people who prefer to check out our tweets on their phone or listen to our podcast. I don’t think the use of technology needs to be for everybody. But we have found a community online. Many of them have never felt a connection to Judaism before."


The Rabbi gets to a very important question.... It's not about real or virtual in terms of church. Rather, it's simply about what about those who would never go to real church in the first place? Do we draw the line of where Christianity is active/inactive and just choose to not reach out to those who will only go to church online?

Words to Live By: True Love

"The native language of love is lavishness." -William Hendriksen

Which is true, you know. Don't tell me you love someone. Show me how generous you are to them with your time, money, and willingness to change for them and I'll know how much you love them.

Women preacher types in tongues

So I initially came here to post one thing. And now I am no longer posting that one thing and instead posting on another thing. And by another thing, the source can be found here. Basically a big time Pentecostal Televangelist, Juanita Bynum has taken to typing tonges within her own Facebook status...

Normally, I probably wouldn't blink twice about such things, but I stumbled upon the story on a secular "pop news" website which usually could care less about religious matters. And sure enough, other secular websites seem to be picking up on the story......

I don't know what to think yet. Really, I'm dumbfounded. Not that I would ever judge the authenticity of someone's Pentecostal experience, but I'm more so confused about what this implicitly says about social media (Facebook) and it's accommodation of church matters..... I honestly had thought that in many respects Pentecostalism was completely unique in many ways that it could never be imitated online. And the case of "typing in tongues" puts up a challenge to that notion....

Snapshot: 100 Most Powerful Women in the World

Forbes magazine offers their list of the World's Most Powerful Women. After the usual politicians, there are business leaders, philanthropists, and even Lady Gaga (who saw that coming?), but no religious leaders. Should religion = power, though?

Anyway, it's worth a scan.

Who Has More Fun: Atheists or Us?

An interesting take (rated PG-13) at RealClearReligion on whether Atheists have more fun in life than believers - and if it's worth it.

Rick Warren Storms Europe!

The Financial Times takes a look-see at the movement that is Rick Warren, and his current attempts to spread the Gospel in Europe.

It's always interesting to see a reporter who doesn't have a religious background try to find the right vocabulary to accurately describe a believer trying to make a difference. Almost always, they fall back on political language.

NAYC 2011: Videos Galore!

Check out all the NAYC 2011 video clips on YouTube!

"WE ARE . . . "

"GIANTS!"

NAYC Quotes: Paul Pamer

Barberton, OH's Paul Pamer offered these 2 gems at the mid-Friday General Session:

• "If the only thing you do is go to church then someday you won't."

• On cell phones (& technology in general): "It's time we stopped using them as toys and started using them as tools."

Youth Congress 2011

Just returned from the spectacular North American Youth Congress 2011 in Columbus, OH. While attendance probably didn't break the 15,500 mark any night (and honestly, since when is 15,000 teenagers worshiping God a negative?) there was always an overabundance of the move of the Spirit.

All 3 night speakers were spot on, but so was Music Coordinator Kristin Keller. On both Wednesday and Friday nights, she ended the evenings on amazing worship highs. She was pitch perfect in music and Spirit, and - at the risk of being accused of overstatement (or carnality) - held the crowd in her hands as masterfully as Bono. Except God received all the glory.

Didn't see the usual Youth Congress article from the local paper of record, but they did cover the North American Bible Quiz Tournament. (Make sure you read the comments at the bottom.)

While I'm sure there were disappointments and frustrations, congratulations to all who contributed. It was spectacular (again).