A Cold Chill Spreads Across The Land…
This morning I awoke to hear the local weatherman (Not Dallas Raines or Johnny Mountain, seriously two of our meteorologists) say that people are going to be turning off their AC and lighting their fireplaces. We went from being in the 100’s a couple weeks ago, all he way down to the frigid chilling temperatures of mid-70’s. That’s right. Time to hanker down and endure another long winter of 70 degree temperatures. But if you are jealous of that, don’t worry. It’ll actually be in the 80’s next week. We won’t have to endure the 70’s for awhile still.
A Few Interesting Things…
I was checking out Todd Bolen’s personal blog for the first time in awhile and found a couple snippets I thought I’d post up here.
1. This article was posted on the Jerusalem Post. This is the Elvis Inn, just down the street from where I stayed in Israel. We’d walk there to get ice cream and take pictures with a giant statue of Elvis Presley in the Middle East. Just completely random. The place is just off of the main highway connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and is basically a shrine, plastered with pics of Elvis, t-shirts, food, ice cream, and large statues.
2. Also, The Master’s College ranked 2nd in the west. Read on and I’ll stand off to the side and gloat.
Santa Clarita, California, August 27, 2007—The Master’s College has been ranked 2nd in the West (the top tier) as one of America’s Best Colleges in the category of Best Comprehensive Baccalaureate Colleges in the 2008 Edition of “America’s Best Colleges” released by US News & World Report. This marks the eighth year in a row that The Master’s College was listed in the top tier of Western Region Baccalaureate Colleges. The publication also cites The Master’s College as one of the best values ranking 4th in the category of “Great Schools, Great Prices.”
Other rankings were:
· 2nd in SAT Scores of Entering Freshmen
· 2nd highest graduation rate of 61%
· 3rd in Freshmen Retention Rate
· 3rd in Academic Reputation
· 5th in Percent of Classes with Fewer than 20 Students
· 5th in Portion of Freshmen in Top 25% of their High School Class
The colleges are ranked by gathering data from each college for up to 15 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects what US News judges about how much a measure matters. Next, the colleges in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score. The indicators used to measure academic quality are Peer Assessment (25 percent), Retention (20 percent), Faculty Resources (20 percent), Student Selectivity (15 percent), Financial Resources (10 percent), Graduation Rate Performance (5 percent), and Alumni Giving (5 percent).
For more in-depth information log on to www.usnews.com
Top Objections to Christianity- Part 3: Part 2
Alrighty, people. We’re going to try this again. I’m going to present an argument that is very common, and one that you would probably be confronted with at some point. So how do we answer this objection. Give it a try, leave a comment, nothing to fear:
I could not possibly believe in Christianity because there are so many hypocrites in the church. It seems like we’re always hearing of pastors and priests getting arrested for something and then so many of the Christians I know totally don’t live like Christians. There is really no difference between me and them. So why be a Christian?
Fun with Zach’s Wax
This past Saturday, some of the high schoolers joined the wife, child and I at the LA County fair in order to raise some money for our OneVerse campaign and for the Make-A-Wish foundation. We joined a friend from college of our head pastor who has started a fundraising business called “Zach’s Wax”. Basically, its colored hair gel that washes out in one wash. You can use it for spirit days, showing off team pride, Halloween, or just for fun. I decided to put a Red Sox logo on my head, and gave one of the high schoolers a Dodgers logo on his.
Eric, the owner of Zach’s Wax, is a great, generous guy. He allowed us to keep $1 from each application we made, and we decided it will go to our OneVerse campaign to translate John 1. OneVerse is a division of Wycliffe, and it exists to get people involved in supporting the translation of the Word of God into languages where translations don’t exist. We have supported a tribe in SouthEast Asia and have collected about $500 so far. Most of the money comes from recycling bottles and cans and getting money for them.
Not only did Zach’s Wax give us a dollar for every application, but the proceeds from every application goes to the Make-A-Wish foundation. And if you were to buy the gel online, each color represents a different cause or charity, so money is sent to the charities for each bottle bought.
This is a product that is fun, and it makes a difference in the world. Not often those two are combined. If you would like to buy some Zach’s Wax, or are interested in using it as a fundraiser at a school or organization, go to Zachswax.com or nomorecandybars.com.
Darin McWatters as You’ve Never Seen Him
Here’s another fun thing you can check out. go to Revveduptv.com for some interesting videos. Now i’m telling you from the get go, that there may be some things that may offend some people. They are meant to be funny and satire. So please take them as such. For those of you who don’t know, Darin is the former lead singer of “everybodyduck”
, who used to be the worship band at Hume Lake. Now he works there full time at Hume as a higher up type person, directing a lot of people, organizing speakers, running programs, and apparently making videos.
Chocolate Rain
Here’s a random video that I can’t get out of my head. It’ll be stuck in yours, too. It’s apparently all about racism, but it is oddly hypnotising. check it out.
Hume Colloquium Recap
This past weekend, the wife, Micah and I, along with the best of the best of our college group headed up to Hume Lake once again for their college retreat, “Colloquium”. This camp was a much more relaxed version of Hume. It only really spanned 48 hours, starting on Saturday afternoon to Monday at noon. But we headed up on Friday morning so we could have a little more time to hang out and miss the Labor Day traffic.
On the Saturday, we helped out at the Hume Lake Fair. They had a bunch of food booths, along with an auction, and a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t want for sale. They did have a tent with kids games, but as far as fairs go, it was pretty disappointing. That is unless 5 gallon buckets for $4 and old fashion tools floats your boat.
I ended up working the “Corn Dog” booth. When we got there, we hear rumors of massive dissatisfaction with the quality of the corn dogs being produced. Within an hour of our arrival, we were rolling and producing the highest quality, hand-dipped corn dogs. While I’d love to take credit, I was mostly on lemonade and chip duty, with the occasional money handling responsibilities. Our girls had the responsibility of working the pie and ice cream booth, but had to work from 10:30-2:30.
The speaker was P.J. Lewis from a church in Carson, NV. He was a really humble, low key teacher. He was very upfront that what he was going to be teaching wasn’t ground breaking. It was all very common, simple things, but sometimes the simple things are the most meaningful and impacting truths.
One morning he spoke out of Matthew 10, and shared three reasons why we can trust in God. He rooted it well in the context of the disciples being sent out into a very dangerous and dark world. He told them that they were sheep going into the midst of wolves, and that they would be flogged, beaten, dragged before rulers, and they could be betrayed by their own families. Then he says in verse 26 that they shouldn’t fear them.
How could that be?! the first reason was that God has all of the power, as we see in verse 28. God has the ability to crush a man’s soul, and all they can do is kill you. They can’t harm you eternally. They may be able to cause you pain, but your soul is safe in God.
The second point to remember is that God has all of the knowledge. In verse 29-30 we see that God knows when the smallest sparrow hits the ground, God knows. Nothing escapes him. And if God knows how many hairs on your head, don’t you think that he would know the greater details of your life? nothing escapes the knowledge of God.
The third point is that not only does God have all of the power, all of the knowledge, but He loves you! In verse 31 the obvious is stated. That you are obviously worth more than many sparrows. If God knows everything about a small bird and controls what happens with them, don’t you think that He would do the best for someone that He loves. God bought us with the price of His own Son, and has adopted us to be His children.
If we know for a fact that God has all of the power, and he has all of the knowledge, and loves us, then we KNOW we can trust Him with anything that happens in our lives. Faith isn’t necessarily great when you think that God will provide, but also when you have the ability to trust in a mighty, omniscient, loving God during the tough times.
I will later provide a top 5 list of things I learned at Hume Colloquium!
Ben Stein: Creationist?!
I know those are three words I never thought I’d see, but apparently Ben Stein is a pro-Intelligent Design and has made a documentary about it. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Ben Stein, he came to fame in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” as the teacher who dryly continues to call out “Bueller…. Bueller….” though Ferris has taken the day off. He also hosted a hit game show on Comedy Central called “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. And apparently he is a notorious Pro-Life, worked in the White House for Nixon and Ford. He was even rumored to have been “Deep Throat” during the Watergate scandal. He was also a lawyer, and even taught at Pepperdine University Law School.
Now Stein is taking on the education system’s bias against teaching or even handedly discussing Intelligent Design with a new movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. It is Stein’s view that Intelligent Design is mocked in scientific circles as well as educational circles and those who believe in Intelligent Design are thought to be lesser minds and ignorant. He says that there is no freedom to discuss this, and anyone who does is immediately black listed.
Ironically, one only has to look at the comments left on the blog on the website to see how true this really is. Peruse through the comments, and he is lambasted for the movie and the ‘moronic and idiotic’ arguments it makes. Check it out if you want to get frustrated.
I can say, especially after speaking with my sister, that this is definitely a problem. Intelligent Design is not seen as a credible option and anyone who claims it as their view is mocked and ridiculed. But is this a profitable conversation? I’m not so sure. I really don’t think that many people will have their mind swayed by this film, because both sides just spout off normal speaking points.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the issue is big and important, I’m just not sure if it is profitable for debate. People get very animated on both sides, and everyone reverts to dogmatics and speaking points. The only thing that happens is one side is made angry, while the other side is made more resolute in their argument. This movie isn’t likely to sway one side to the other, but it may be important nonetheless. It may be important to just raise the argument that there really isn’t freedom of thought. Check it out if you’d like!
Top Ten Objections to Christianity: Part 3
Time for another objection! The last one could be a little difficult, so I will provide an easier one now, but still a very common objection. Again, leave time for the students to respond first, and if possible, try to provide some Scripture. Here it is:
I could not possibly believe in Christianity because there are so many hypocrites in the church. It seems like we’re always hearing of pastors and priests getting arrested for something and then so many of the Christians I know totally don’t live like Christians. There is really no difference between me and them. So why be a Christian?
