Church and plants
Dear friends,
So, we've been enjoying the nature right behind our house before we have to completely launch ourselves into our studies again. Thursday evening we found a tremendously productive muscadine vine, and picked probably 3 pounds in 5 minutes, which we've been eating on ever since. We've just hired a new campus minister, which Kelly and I are very excited about. We're hoping that this will bring a slightly more intellectual angle to our church experience. We've also been without a preacher for a few months, so we've been hearing inspiring sermons like "Judgement Day will be the Great 'I Told You So'," in which Christians finally get to laugh at the following: atheists, secular humanists, people who are mad at God, and finally experience the "payday of heaven." So, Bren's sermon on the function of the church was relieving this morning.
Still, we've been struggling with how to deal with a church that is at times outright anti-intellectual. One can't expect to have the church fulfill the intellectual need, I don't think. All aspects of the spiritual relationship are ultimately the responsibility of the individual Christian, though it seems that one can reasonably expect some kind of guidance or community in struggles. That's not to say that there hasn't been any; some of the graduate students here are great people to talk with. This, I suppose, it what the church actually is, a community of believers, though I don't know what exactly the role of authority should be in this situation. We've been in a situation where we essentially are required to be the authority dealing with intellectual struggles where a guiding voice would be very comforting, and it's always difficult to draw satiating intellectual substance from where there doesn't appear to be much. So, I appreciate the addition of someone who reads Greek and quotes church fathers from the pulpit.
In other news, I found a plant that I've been looking for for about a year, jewelweed. It's a treatment for poison ivy that's rather effective. I'm trying to cultivate it now, though it'll be a while before I know whether I've been successful or not. I've taken a clipping that I'm trying to get to root, though I don't know if jewelweed will do that or not.
Regards,
Jeremy
7 Comments:
Jewelweed seeds, I think.
Also, halfway underwater.
Bren is preaching at your church? I heard he got mugged...
Responses:
Yeah, seeds are ideal, but those come in the spring. I've got my clipping halfway underwater, which I think is what you're referring to. I wait for small roots to appear.
I think you're right, Luke.
Ashley, there are at least two things there are more than one of in the world: ways to skin a cat and people named Bren.
You should consider some homemade muscadine wine. That 'heaven is the final payday' sermon reminds my of my dear old Uncle J's sermon at HUF, in which he proclaimed that heaven will be great because, quote, "there won't be people like [serial killer] Ted Bundy there."
I am indeed considering said wine. I went back and picked about 3 quarts more the other day. I had to hop a fence to get to some of them. Once I got over, I realized that it'd be trickier to climb a 6 foot fence with a full bucket of muscadines, so I scampered on down to a place where I could slide under. A friend of mine is building a still, so if we get muscadine wine, we may get muscadine brandy. Mmmm... homemade liquor. Just like mom used to make it.
Also, I believe that the comment your uncle made was that he didn't want to go to hell because people like Ted Bundy would be there. The difference is somewhat slight, but in theological points as fine as this, accuracy in terms is key.
Jeremy, we also are struggling witht the church situation here in NJ. One of the Harding Church plant groups is here, but it is not the ideal place for us. It is made up of mostly new Christians, maybe 25 or 30 people altogether.
We've been there twice, once we heard how God rescued the Israelites from Egypt because they were good and obeyed Him and that God doesn't show favortism. These were in the same sermon, completely disregarding that the Israelites weren't good and didn't obey Him, so in order to be rescued God had to show favortism to the Israelites.
The second time we heard about what a good person David was and that if we're as good as David God will choose us to go to Heaven, like he chose David to be king. I feel like this is in disagreement with the accepted scholarly rendition of a "man of God's own heart" which is usually taken to mean the person whom God choose because he wanted to choose him, for reasons we can speculate about but can never know.
So we aren't exactly sure what to do, we have also been to the Episcopal church once and we rode an hour and a half with Justin and Cathryn Burton to Stamford, Conn. one week. That happened to be one of the best church experiences we've had, but being so far away it excludes any real opportunity to be involved.
I don't know what we'll do in the long run, but for now we love our Sunday night study at the Burtons with a few other couples in grad school here. Good luck with your situation.
Post a Comment
<< Home