Do Elders’ kids need to be saints?

I’ve had around a hundred topics or ideas that I’ve wanted to write about at some point, but life has not afforded me the time for writing and likely won’t in the future, so I’m going to try to set aside some time every few days for writing and see what I can come up with.

It won’t be much, but *something* is more than nothing. To start off my highly reduced blogging load, I’m going to address a few simple questions that I’ve received in the past and have not made time to respond to. The first question is one that has come up multiple times for me:

What does 1 Tim. 3:4-5, and specifically the comments about elders and their kids and the home, mean in practice?

In other words, does an elder in a church need to resign if his adult children no longer profess belief, or run off and live shameful, foolish or wicked lives?

What about if his young kids use the church’s fancy multi-function printer in a counterfeiting scheme to help the church fill the offering plate?

What about if one of his teenage kids one day proclaim that they don’t want to attend church any longer and start attending a local “free thinkers” club?

What about if his toddlers run in the sanctuary/foyer/worship center/praise plaza/whatever area of the church is sacred and while eating mouthfuls of ill-gotten communion wafers while screaming like a chimpanzee and pretending to smoke a rolled-up bulletin like a cigar?

What in the WORLD is the Mark of the Beast?

Well, it’s been a few moons and then some since my last actual writing on here!

2018, 2019 and 2020 have come and gone.

Most of us have survived the apocalypse while maintaining a decent supply of toilet paper and have kept our sanity…though not easily.  In times of trouble or distress, it seems like the peddlers of foolishness and idiocy have found fertile soil in the fearful hearts of people to plant desperation, doubt, despair and wild conspiracies…and Christians have not only proven open to these all but, in my limited experience, have rather been alarmingly deceived on multiple fronts over the past 12 months. I’ve been disheartened in watching many people I respect and care about swallow ideas and attitudes that were profoundly at odds with the clear teaching of scripture and/or the basic tenets of logic. One of the most frequent ideas was that everything was somehow the mark of the beast: 5G cellular technology, vaccines, coronavirus itself, closing down your church in response to government orders, Mark Zuckerberg himself (I mean, his name is MARK! What more do you need?), etc.

I’ve had this post bouncing around in my head for many months, so I’m finally just going to pound it out.

So what IS the Mark of the Beast?

First Post in FOREVER…

And it’s gonna be a short one.

I’m still not really doing anything with this blog since life is simply too demanding these days.  The short story is that I’m now a single parent and don’t have a shred of time for blogging…and no, I’m not going to explain.

Those that need to know definitely do, and I covet your prayers (if somehow you end up on here).

The only reason I’m posting is because today I did something that has been on my to do list for around 2 years.  Since today was a holiday, I spent a few hours working and converted the Generational Curse series into a short e-book.

My Bible Memorization Project: Proverbs

As I’ve been sorting though various sins and situations in my life, I’ve come to a renewed conviction about the vast importance of memorizing Scripture.  It’s something that I’ve done purposefully and aggressively in the past, but something that I’ve increasingly neglected over the past decade. I’ve fallen into the warning of James 1:22:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

Sadly, I’ve become a Sesame Street character with regards to Scripture.

Being a seminary-trained fellow that is very acquainted with the contents of the Bible, it’s an easy (and terribly wrong) leap from being familiar with Scripture to telling yourself that familiarity is the same as purposefully obeying Scripture.  Over many years, I was one of those guys who could kinda finish a Scripture quote (get the gist, but not the specific words) and remember the book and chapter (but not the verse).  That vague knowledge of Scripture wasn’t the same as having specific truths penetrate and permeate my heart and thinking to the point that they were regularly part of my thinking and decision making processes.

In order to both rectify that self-deceiving situation, I’ve been working on something.

A Good & Short Series on Guidance and the Voice of God

Instead of writing some long and substantial new post (which is slowly happening), I was going through my dozens of drafts and found a few things that I’ll put up over the next little while; articles that I’ve saved, brief thoughts, etc.  For now, I ran across a series of articles on the topic of Divine Guidance, by Philip Jensen.

For those of you who don’t know who that is, he’s a great Anglican from Australia who was previously the Dean of Sydney at St Andrew’s Cathedral and Director of the Sydney Diocesan Ministry Training and Development, but now has retired from those positions to simply work with Two Ways Ministries , which is named after the gospel presentation he wrote; Two Ways To Live. Philip Jensen devised Two Ways To Live in 1978 and also wrote a series of Bible Studies/Discipleship tools called Just For Starters.  Definitely tools you should check out.  In fact, if you or your church is looking for curriculum or discipleship resources on anything and haven’t checked out Matthias Media (Philip’s Australian publishing house), you really need to.  They have a wealth of solid resources that far too many people in North America are unaware of.

But enough of me promoting Matthias Media.

Here’s the articles from Philip Jensen on divine guidance: