The Layman Online, Briefly
The Layman Online, November 21, 2006
First Presbyterian Church and two other congregations in Kingsport, Tenn., have figured out how to beat City Hall.
They are banding together to buy four city-owned lots, which they’ve used for years for staging a living Nativity scene, but not without complaint from the separation of church and state crowd.
By owning the lots, the city will no longer appear to be sponsoring religion when the church members stand for Jesus in the public square.
First Presbyterian, First Broad Street United Methodist and First Baptist made a joint bid for the four parcels after the city’s governing body approved the sale on the first reading. All three churches are on Church Circle in Kingsport.
City officials say they’ll save $4,000 a year in lawn mowing and landscaping.
Giving thanks or grumbling, what will it be?
This is a worship quote e-mailed to the friends of Chip Stam of Louisville – not of the PCUSA crew at the denomination’s headquarters, but the director of the Institute for Christian Worship at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
“We are to be ‘always and for everything giving thanks’ (Eph. 5:20). Most of us give thanks sometimes for some things; Spirit-filled believers give thanks always for all things. There is no time at which, and no circumstance for which, they do not give thanks. They do so ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ that is because they are one with Christ and ‘to God the Father,’ because the Holy Spirit witnesses with their spirit that they are God’s children and that their Father is wholly good and wise. Grumbling, one of Israel’s besetting sins, is serious because it is a symptom of unbelief. Whenever we start moaning and groaning, it is proof positive that we are not filled with the Spirit. Whenever the Holy Spirit fills believers, they thank their heavenly Father at all times for all things.”
The quote is from John Stott’s Baptism and Fulness, Second Edition, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, p. 58.
Raising the right question
Jefferson Sanders of the Blogger News Network raises a question about the Presbyterian Publishing Corp.
Based on the disavowal by the PPC Board of David Ray Griffin’s Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, “how can the publisher continue to sell it? The board admitted that the book did not live up to its editorial standards and admits that theologian Griffin’s theory about the attack on America in 2001 ‘is spurious and based on questionable research.'”
“(Griffin, of course, sticks to his fantasy, demonstrating that conspiracy buffs love the theory more than the facts). Why does the Presbyterian Publishing Corp. leave the book on sale? Isn’t a recall in order?”
Davis Perkins, PPC’s president, may have provided the answer in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal. Perkins said PPC’s John Knox/Westminster Press had sold 8,500 copies. At $17.95 a pop, that’s gross sales of $152,575 – a substantial volume for a religious book, and better than what O.J. Simpson will not make off If I Did It. But Simpson’s publisher took public concern in mind and the loss in stride after canceling O.J.’s book, whether he did it or not.
Couric blogs about pastor, sermon, church
CBS News Anchor Katie Couric, a Presbyterian, lauded her preacher, one of his recent sermons and the church she attends, Brick Presbyterian in New York City, in her Nov. 20 blog.
Brick is a 1,500-member congregation that has been serving the city since 1767.
“The minister at Brick Church is Michael Lindvall and the sermon was on the existence of doubt as it relates to faith,” she wrote. “Many people explore their faith and end up on different places on the road before we all arrive at the ultimate destination. Doubt and questioning can leave us feeling guilty and inadequate (Great! Like I need more reasons for that!) But his thesis is that doubt is a part of everyone’s journey. I thought I would pass along some of the key passages from this sermon, because it really resonated with me and I found it both intellectually stimulating and comforting. I was so happy I was there to hear it.”
The concluding excerpt that Couric quoted:
- “So ask the hard questions. Doubts are indeed the ants in the pants of faith.
- “Bring an honest readiness to learn.
- “Bring the awareness that human understanding has its limits, and the deepest kind of knowing may be beyond its long arms.”
- “And finally remember that you learn through the doing. You grow faith by living in faith. You learn to ride a bicycle by riding a bicycle. The road itself is the teacher.”