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Today’s Buzz: Church Gunmen, Richard Roberts Resigns, Evangelizing America, Earl Paulk, & More…

Church security guards tied up at gunpoint, all for eight plasma televisions. Plus more news from ORU, a Sunday school for atheists, the Earl Paulk timeline, Susan Sarandon on Jesus, And the Pope doesn't like modern music, it seems. This and more, in today's buzz...

Gunmen Hit First Baptist Dallas
Two gun-wielding robbers tied up three security guards at First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas late Thursday night and stole thousands of dollars in church property.  Armed robbers tied up three security guards at First Baptist Church of Dallas on Thanksgiving night and got away with eight plasma televisions.  Read more here at the Dallas News...

Richard Roberts Officially Resigns as President of ORU
After a vote recently with over 80% of the Oral Roberts University faculty saying they wanted Richard Roberts to permanently step down as the University’s President (the vote was 118-12), Roberts did just that over the weekend.  Nearly 90 percent of the faculty thought the school’s current procedures for financial disclosure and accountability were inadequate and more than 74 percent of those polled did not believe that alumni would continue to support ORU if Richard Roberts remains as president, according to the survey. How are faculty and students reacting?  Watch this TV report to find out…

Nigerian Pastor Comes to Evangelize America
“America is fast becoming a mission ground again...We are surprised that the Americans who preached to us, the passion they had is almost already gone...As America goes, so goes the world. We shouldn’t allow the Christian influence to diminish in this country.” Those are the words of by Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian evangelist who is planning on travelling to the US and planting churches here.  More here...

Sunday School for Atheists
Without religion, there’s no need for church, right? Some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children… something like “atheist Sunday school at the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, CA. An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. “It’s important for kids not to look weird,” says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.  Read more of this fascinating article here at Time.com… (HT Cory at ChurchCommunicationsPro.com)

The Earl Paulk Timeline
We told you last week about the huge scandal once again brewing in Atlanta.  The Atlanta Journal Constitution has published a timeline (up until this most recent scandal).  Let’s just say that sexual allegations and scandal are nothing new to the Paulk family...

Susan Sarandon on Jesus and Organized Religion
“I believe in the divinity of every human being. And I try to live my life with as much compassion and kindness toward that end, of respecting other people. I suppose this, then, leads to some kind of sense of extended responsibility.  I believe in the power of a higher divine of some sort. But I think that is probably what informs all my decisions is the idea of the divine in each person. And I try to act according to that belief...I’ve always been very resistant to organized religion. Because, somehow, when religion becomes institutionalized, all the guys that started it that were so brilliant …their words get used to exclude other people. I’ve always felt that institutionalized religion never really made the transition from the words of Christ, or the words of Buddha, or the words of Confucius...I think that Christ was an activist. Christ wasn’t afraid. His life is an example of activism. I think that the gap between the rich and the poor contributes to the pain of the world. I think that that anything you can do that helps to alleviate this huge gaping gap between the rich and the poor will eventually make the world a more peaceful place.” More here at Beliefnet.com.

The Pope to Purge the Vatican of Modern Music
After reintroducing the Latin Tridentine Mass, the Pope wants to widen the use of Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music.  In an address to the bishops and priests of St Peter’s Basilica, he said that there needed to be “continuity with tradition” in their prayers and music.  He referred pointedly to “the time of St Gregory the Great”, the pope who gave his name to Gregorian chant.  Gregorian chant has been reinstituted as the primary form of singing by the new choir director of St Peter’s, Father Pierre Paul.  He has also broken with the tradition set up by John Paul II of having a rotating choir, drawn from churches all over the world, to sing Mass in St Peter’s.  The Pope has recently replaced the director of pontifical liturgical celebrations, Archbishop Piero Marini, with a man closer to his heart, Mgr Guido Marini.  (I don’t really know if anyone is still reading or really that interested, but this is my new favorite position title:  “The Director of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations”.  You gotta love that!) More here, if you’re so inclined.

That’s it for today… have a great week!

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This post has been viewed 2710 times and was added on November 26, 2007 by Todd Rhoades.
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  There are 21 Comments:
  • Posted by

    Sarandon makes some good points, ones with which I’m afraid I agree.  And . . .  I think her thoughts are representative of many in our mission field, and so they are instructive for me.

    Wendi

  • Posted by

    Wendi,
    I am curious which points you agree upon, can you enlighten?  I was not that impressed with her thinking in this article. 

    Putting on a level playing field Christ, Buddha and Confucius shows no real understanding of Christ. 

    Calling Christ an activist (in the way she sees activism) makes Christ a miserable failure and activism an event not a way of life. 

    The gap between the rich and the poor is an interesting thought but the article was not inclusive of how this happens.  It was such an incomplete thought that for me to form an agreeable position would be very difficult. 

    Finally the exclusiveness or inclusiveness of Christianity has been well documented.  My faith heritage has been used for great harm.  However, I have found many people feel excluded not because they are excluded but because they want to be included without surrender to Christ.  Sort of like “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” but blame the light for being light. 

    In a very simplistic way this is what happened to Christ… He was killed for being right.
    er

  • Posted by Eric Joppa

    Leonard,

    I think I see where Wendi is coming from. I know that you were “not at all impressed” and that putting Jesus and Buddha on the same level is not accurate, but I wonder if you are having trouble seeing those statements from an un-churched perspective.

    She tries to put them on the same level, but only talks about Jesus. That tells me something about the weight He truly carries with her.

    The valid point that I think she made, and I am guessing Wendi agrees with, is that ..."when religion becomes institutionalized, all the guys that started it that were so brilliant …their words get used to exclude other people.”

    I believe that she has made a fairly accurate observation. This is quite often the case in many churches.

    just my thoughts…

    E

  • Posted by

    I have to agree with Wendi.  Not that I think we need to do away with the church, but it does have its fault and always will as long as frail humanity is a part of it.  Nevertheless, we are charged with a mission and as Wendi said, Susan Sarandon’s remarks are “instructive”.  Sometimes our critics make valid points that we can use and learn from to make the church even better and more effective in reaching the lost.

  • Posted by

    Another interesting quote:  “Jesus was not afraid.” I think she’s onto something there—many Christians who are caught shouting ugly things or otherwise drawing tight circles to exclude people who are different, are operating out of fear...as were the Pharisees, one could argue.  How interesting that she picked up on that fear.
    --S

  • Posted by Kurt

    "I believe in the divinity of every human being. “ What in the world is that supposed to mean? There aint nothing divine about me. Im just a sinner saved by grace.

    This muddy mixture of minimal biblical knowledge and humanistic understanding is commonplace in hollywood.

    When you live the life that Sarandon has lived and you are now older you are faced with your own mortality, this will get the spiritual juices flowing.

    Just ramblin…

  • Posted by Camey

    About the robbery: FBC Dallas is showing real grace and mercy from what we’ve read in news stories and seen on local TV. Now that is something to be thankful for!

  • Posted by

    Eric, no matter what view point (churched or un-churched) I see Mrs. Sarandon’s thoughts from; if they are wrong they are wrong.  I get the way an un-churched person feels and thinks but I will wait for Wendi to let me know what she agreed with. 

    I mean let’s be real.  Are we divine?  Last I checked the answer was no.  Have you ever listened to Mrs. Sarandon speak of conservative leaders?  She seems to lose her sense of the divine in them. 

    I guess I am not that impressed by her thinking because most of it is wrong about Christ, wrong about people, wrong about the church.  For me to understand her thinking it is not that difficult but for me to become agreeable to it… I don’t think I can.

    As for her view of exclusion.  This is smoke and mirrors to put down faith.  As for Christianity, the church has its share of sins but the impact of the church is huge.  If the church pulled out of every mercy and grace giving operation in the world right now.  Millions of people would die of starvation, disease, crime and would be left without the only message that can change an eternity. 

    Mrs. Sarandon does not know this because she is willing to morph Jesus into something he was not and thus eliminate who he really is.  She is willing to create her own standards of morality while decrying standards that Jesus held to. 

    It is all good to learn from people who do not have a biblical world view but we must be extremely careful not to let them become our instructors or teachers.  Why should I allow someone whose Jesus is no better than an enlightened teacher, whose Jesus has been recreated in Her image to care about the things she cares about, whose Jesus is right but most of the people who died martyred deaths got it all wrong, even those who knew him personally… become an instructor for me? 

    As for how Unchurched people see God and the church?  I get it.  I think you know that too.  I have invested my whole life into getting it and building a church that gets it.  I just refuse to think Mrs. Sarandon gets it or speaks for most people.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    "I believe in the divinity of every human being.”

    Uh… why believe this? There is no good reason except picking and choosing what you want to be true.

    Sorry, couldn’t get past it.

    Easier to believe in the depravity of every human being based on the evidence… And that seems to jive with scripture, too!

  • Posted by

    Susan Sarandon is typical of the lost.  She is not breaking any new ground here.  Because she is a “celebrity” people tend to listen to her.  She mentions Jesus and that is one of the points of contact for witness should begin.  Also, I would probably challenge her thinking, in my witness to her, about her idea of activiism and her definition of poverty.  But she is her own “god” - much like all others under the great deceiver - and thus we should pray for her soul and God’s grace to save her.

  • Posted by Daniel

    Just to stir the pot a little here… If Adam and Eve are created in the image of God, as representatives of God to the world, how are humans not ‘divine’?
    Are we gods? No. Do we bear the fingerprints of divinity and do we represent divinity? Yes. Saved and lost alike are children of God.
    Face it, you just don’t like the fact that she said ‘humans are divine’ instead of ‘humans bear the imago dei‘. And yet the two are very proximate… The only way what Sarandon said (on this particular point) is false is if divinity implies perfection--but clearly this is not what she means.
    So let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s no Christian to be sure, but she may have an ‘idol to an unknown God’ that provides an entry point for the Spirit, if you know what I mean…

    Cheers,
    -Daniel-

  • Posted by

    the webster defines divinity---THE STATE OR QUALITY OF BEING DIVINE, GODHEAD, A PAGAN OR HEATHEN DEITY, but do not put jesus in the same catagory as budda, you would think people would know better than to do that in the last two thousand years.

  • Posted by

    If I were sitting with Sarandon in Starbucks and chatting over a cup of coffee, and she’d said only the things quoted in this short article, I might respond this way:

    “You make a very good point Susan.  The work and legacy of many brilliant leaders has gotten abused and exclusive once it became institutionalized.  Christian history and even pre-history proves your point, as does the history of many other religions. And I understand how you see Jesus as an activist.  When He entered history, he really shook up the religious institutions that had been created His own people.  In fact, I feel sure that if he arrived today as he did 2000 years ago (as a human being), He’d again go around shaking up much of our Christian establishment and institutions.

    I notice another thing in your comment that personally, I think you are observing without fully understanding.  You said that you believe in the divinity of all humanity.  I believe that we were created by God, and that He created us in his own image.  I sure don’t understand all that means, but I believe that somehow, imbedded into every human being are the fingerprints of God Himself.  I disagree with you that we are divine ourselves, but I sure think that we have the ability to reflect the divine, and some people reflect God’s image better than others, regardless of their religious (or non-religious) beliefs.”

    Perhaps I’m stretching here, but I think that Paul was instructed by the Greeks at the Areopagus.  He could have said, “You guys are typical pagans, you just don’t get it.  Your perspective certainly doesn’t surprise us, coming from Athens (insert Hollywood with a sarcastic tone of voice).  You guys have a twisted view of reality and know nothing about the real God (like we do).” Instead, after reasoning with them for several days, letting them “instruct” him, he said (Hammond paraphrase), “Hey, I’ve noticed something I really admire about you guys.  You are quite spiritual and have recognized that all your gods are not enough, because you identified an unknown God.  You’ve tried to make an image of him, but although He can’t be formed out of bricks and clay, He can be known.  Wanna know more?”

    Leonard, I’m instructed by Susan’s comments in that way.  Her comments help me exegete this culture.  And when she tries to pick a fight with me (to the extent that I’m a conservative . . . or whatever), I’ll refuse to get defensive and make her into my enemy.  I’ll keep thinking and praying about how to posture myself and represent my faith in a way that opens (instead of closing) conversational doors.  The Susan Sarandon’s of the world help me think about this.

    Does that explain my comment better?

    Wendi

  • Posted by

    On the Sarandon quote...nice observation on rich/poor, coming from a Hollywood elite with her lifestyle?  Here’s something: sell all you have, give to the poor, and follow Jesus, or Budha, or Confucious, or whoever.

  • Posted by

    My community is made up of the Susan Sarradon’s, lots of movie and rock stars, politicians, etc.

    She sounds like everyone of them.  Most of them tried church at one time or the other and were burned.  So, when she talks about church leaders, she probably does from experience.

    And the “divine in everybody” gobbledee gook, means that she believes, as I hear almost daily “God is in everyone.  We just need to encourage the good.”

    I’ve found that this type of person, doesn’t use intellectual reasoning.  You could talk all you want about those points to her but she would most likely not budge an inch.

    What does work is community and real Christian living in action.  They are stunned.  They are nonplussed.  And they don’t know what to do with it.  Because it goes against everything they’ve seen or assumed and concluded about Christians.

    We had a woman come and sing with us for Thanksgiving.  (We put an ad in our local paper, looking for singers, who wanted to sing gospel music.)

    She is exactly where this woman is.  After rehearsal she began hanging out with us and is now regularly coming to church and bringing her live in boyfriend.  Her comment was “I’ve been to every church in this valley.  I just don’t know where to put this church.  I had to come back and see more.”

    She has publicly professed all this new age crud.  But she has to see more.  And she wants to experience it.

    I think that is what we as churches need to be reaching for.
    Logic and Apologetics are good, but most don’t respond to them in this age of relative thinking.

  • Posted by

    jan you are right people need to see who christ is, and as for the rich, i am glad we have rich people, because they give us poor people jobs, if every one was rich what would the world be like, i beleive every one should have enough to live, and to help others, if i was rich i would probially give it all away so i would not stay rich very long. but susan should hear the truth of gods word, and the action that goes with it,

  • Posted by

    Wow, some good stuff going on here.  Let me comment on the “divine” in all of us.  My understanding is that when man sinned, we forfeited our “divine” position.  When Adam & Eve were created, their spirits ruled over their souls.  In other words, in the absence of sin, their emotions, will, mind and bodies were completely controlled by their spirit which was in continual communion with the Father.  But when they sinned, things became drastically out-of-sync.  Now the soul reigns in all of us.  As Christians, we are continually caught in that tension. Our emotions, will and mind, all stained by sin, continually tries to exert control over our spirits.  This was not what God intended for us.  I agree with you, Wendy, that there are times when our lives truly glorify God and reflect Christ, all by the grace of God.  In those moments we may come a little closer to the “divine.” But we must never forget that sin has done a dangerous work in our lives.  And the only thing “divine” in our life now is Jesus Christ Himself.

  • Posted by

    amen debbie jesus is all.

  • Posted by

    Debbie –

    Did human beings ever have a divine “position?” I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by a divine position.  And I guess the theology works that in an unfallen state, Adam & Eve’s spirit, in communion with God, ruled their soul.  Guess it depends on one’s understanding of soul.

    My point is that even unregenerate people are capable of good, in fact very much good.  (Am I giving away my distaste for the idea of total depravity – as some profess it?) What do we do about someone like Gandhi or Oskar Schildler or any of the people we know in our own lives who are tremendously selfless and giving, and spend themselves for others, but do not love Jesus?  My sister-in-law is Buddhist.  My own selfless sacrifice, in attitude and actual giving of time and resources, pales in comparison to hers.  I understand that she’s sinful and fallen in nature, just like me.  But I also believe that its God’s fingerprints, the image of the divine if you will, that enables her to do good.  In fact, because we’re all fallen and selfish, what could possibly compel a selfish and fallen person to do good and make the world He created better except God Himself planting in us the seed of desire to do so?

    I realize that Susan Sarandon doesn’t understand it this way, but I think her comment gives evidence that she has experienced something (good in people) which she doesn’t really understand, and she’s doing her best to make sense of it. 

    Wendi

  • Posted by

    Did human beings ever have a divine position?  Absolutely.  In the garden.  Before sin.  When they communed with God all the time.  They reflected the glory of God in every way and every form because their spirits were perfectly aligned with God--to me, that is divinity.  That changed when sin entered the picture.  Scripture tells us that “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the GLORY of God.”

    But what about your sister-in-law.  I know people like that.  They seem so unselfish and giving and kind, but don’t love Jesus.  And here I am, loving Jesus with all my heart and I struggle with selfishness and self-centeredness all the time.  While I do not believe we are inherently good, I do believe we are compelled to do good--at times-- BECAUSE THAT"S WHAT WE WERE CREATED TO DO.  Go back to the garden!  Go back to when we fully reflected God’s glory!  You’re right, the stamp of God is still there and we want it back! 

    Here’s some final thoughts:  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” In other words, Truth is A PERSON.  Life is A PERSON.  Not some philosophical definition.  EVERY TRUTH is embodied within Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the source of ALL LIFE.  Not Buddha.  Not Confucious.  God rest their souls, yes they were wonderful PEOPLE!  But they were not the SON OF GOD; they were not Truth and Life! 

    I don’t know how God will judge your sister-in-law’s self-less and giving gestures.  Or Susan Sarandon’s.  But while their efforts may bring some fulfillment or worth here on earth, they may have no lasting ETERNAL value.  Why?  Because Jesus said, “Build up your treasure in HEAVEN.” And because they do not know Truth or Life.

    Blessings.

  • Posted by Peter Hamm

    Sorry, Debbie, we were never divine. We were never God.  We were never the creator. We had a sinless position, but not for long… That’s different from saying we had a “divine” position.

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