I was watching an episode of Carnivale (an HBO show set in a traveling carnival during the Great Depression) and in this episode the carnival was almost flat broke. The manager of the carnival declares they’re going to have a fireball show.

“What’s a fireball show”, I thought to myself, “this could be interesting.”

They start showing the fireball show. The scene opens with a carnival barker enticing people to come into the tent and see the man eating chicken. He talks about the dangers of the man eating chicken and how when its done there’s nothing left but bones. When the room fills up with paying customers he pulls the curtain, and there, is a man eating a chicken. Needless to say there are no refunds. The fireball show also featured rigged games so no one wins, and a museum of fake creatures, such as the turtle boy, which is a turtle shell with a doll’s head. As all this chicanery is going on, the carnival sends out pick pockets to rip off as many people as possible. The scene ends with the carnival manager going through wallet after wallet, taking the money and discarding the wallets.

But that still didn’t satisfy my curiosity. Why is it called a fireball show? The show didn’t answer that. So I turned to my trusty friend google which turned up this nugget:

A show with a poor performance which allowed so many dishonest practices on its grounds that the towns played by it were literally “burned up” for any show that tried to follow it.

Ah, now that makes sense. Sometimes I get asked why I bother writing about the sites that are written about here. The reason is that Slice, C?N, and the rest of the watchbloggies are fireball shows. Anyone who comes across them are burned up for any Christian or church they encounter in the future. And its not because of their theology, no matter how flawed it may be, and its not because of their biases and prejudices no matter how much it skews the stances they take. Instead it has everything to do with how they make their points.

When they write, there is no compassion, grace, mercy or love in their words. All these things are commanded by scripture, especially so in our dealings with other people who Christ has suffered and died for. Their fire breathing is in direct disobedience to the scriptures, and as a result they’ve obscured the gospel.

In Matthew 17 we see an exchange take place:

24After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax[b]?”

25″Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own sons or from others?”

26″From others,” Peter answered.

“Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27″But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

A temple tax was extracted from Jesus. In this conversation with Peter Jesus clearly indicates that they are sons of God and that the king doesn’t tax his sons. In other words the temple is Jesus’ house. If he wants to he could pull up a cot and take up residence. By right, he should be exempt from the tax. Instead of going in and demanding this exemption, he pays the tax, so that he “we may not offend them”.

Can you imagine any of the blogs that have been criticized in this space putting aside their rights in order to avoid giving offense? I can’t.

I hope and pray this is just a very vocal minority getting lots of attention because of their screeching. I pray that our churches don’t act this way in general, because if so, the gospel is getting burned out in towns across the country.

It appears that the article in question has magically disappeared.  I wonder why…

I am going to try really hard to not assail any individual at Slice, but the article written today about the late Tammy Faye Messner has been bugging me all day. It’s something I have not been able to shake. It is one thing to write mean spirited words about men and women who can defend themselves, it is another thing to speak ill of the dead. It is even more cruel when the mean spirited words are only half true.

Ingrid posted the following quote from an interview with Tammy Faye

Larry King to Tammy Faye Messner: “What do you want to be remembered for?”

Tammy Faye: “My eyelashes.”

She continued to talk about what you are going to be know for, basically explaining that Tammy Faye is known for the wrong reasons. The article failed to address Messner’s continued statement, as pointed out by many comments on the article. One commenter wrote:

I thought that she was just joking, She said my eyelashes, of course (because she like you said wore heavy make-up and was always being made fun of) then laughed and said no, she wanted to be remembered for her faith in Jesus….that’s how I remembered it.

To Ingrid’s defense, the rest of the statement was not published in the news article provided. But I think this illustrates a huge problem with watchdoggie blogs. Taking one line, or a few lines out of the whole piece can dramatically change the meaning of it all. It literally enables people to completely re-write the life of a person and twist it into being overly shallow and meaningless.

The Slice writer continued to explain that Messner was in the wrong because homosexuals were mourning her death. She was remembered for her compassion and love for those in a gay lifestyle. And obviously because gay people love her, she had to have been wishy-washy in her doctrine. As Ingrid put it

I am sorry for Tammy Faye. I do not understand how someone who at one time was presented the Gospel could reject its core message. Jesus said that narrow is the way, and few there be who find it.

It’s almost as if someone is not hated and mocked fro their faith, then they did something wrong. If non-believers love you and mourn your death, that shouldn’t be as sign that you are apostate or unorthodox. After Slice was called out for its hurtful and incorrect interpretation of Tammy Faye Messner’s life and death, the writer had this to say

While I’ve been attacked here at Slice for commenting on Mrs. Messner’s remarks on Larry King, I’d like to point out that she was the one who sought the publicity, as she did all her life. When asked if she had any regrets, she said she couldn’t waste her brain on that kind of stuff… Some reader just told me that I should have had compassion on her and not posted this because she was grimacing in pain on Larry King. Why was she on Larry King? Because she asked to be on. One last go at the media.

Tim already wrote an article on the subject, so I will keep this brief.  The Willow Creek Arts Conference video clips that Slice is up in arms over are short commentary about a 90 minute talk that the speakers gave at the event.  To make statements about the small amount of content in the clips is akin to walking in on the last 5 minutes of a 90 minute conversation and feeling you have a handle on the while thing.  From someone who was actually at the event, Donald Miller’s content was hardly controversial and, in my opinion, timely and very biblical.

In closing and responding to many of the comments at Slice, many people have questioned the whole reason for having an arts conference.  Let’s not forget that once upon a time, the church was known for its art.  In fact, the church was the artist center for the culture.  Everything from the Sistine Chapel to the David statue, the artists communicated biblical truth thru their work.  And, it was from this art culture we received many of the hymns that more believers hold as holy and sacred.

I re-iterate a point I made earlier if if you can’t understand someone from your own country, speaking your native language, born in roughly the same time, and raised with roughly the same traditions how can you possibly understand scriptures written by men thousands of years ago, in a language you weren’t raised with, in a different country with different traditions? The charge this time, is that Donald Miller has obscured the gospel by speaking with too much complexity. The problem with the critics’ charge (*sigh* yet again)? Miller was talking to a bunch of Christians and wasn’t giving the gospel. Rather, he was talking about how how to communicate the gospel to people who think artistically (right brain) rather than like logicians (left brain).

His answer? Go back to the scriptures. He points out that the scriptures aren’t left brained documents, there’s no bullet points anywhere in there, its only been our communicators of the scriptures that have made them into left brained documents.

BTW, that’s a great answer, I love that answer, and it seems to be the answer I have to give to the watchblawgies over and over again. Maybe someday they’ll actually listen to it.

Is it just me or did anyone else read this post and say, “Um What?” This quote really made me shake my head.

It is my belief that we should develop a bridge that connects the seriously Christian men to the seriously Christian women. There are
small isolated pockets of both scattered across the
U.S. We need to unite Godly couples who can
grow together, marry, and nurture a family so we who
are the remnant can stand firm throughout these
tumultuous times. (emphasis added)

Didn’t God say He has kept to himself a remnant. This post actually illustrates the dangerous ideology that drives many watchblog mentalities. “We are the chosen few, the only one’s holding the standard high. God is so happy to have me on His side.”

I  had the privilege to perform at the Willow Creek Arts Conference this year.  I have to say that it was a pretty amazing event, having 5,000 Christian artists from round the world worshiping in one place.  It was obvious that God is once again moving through the arts in the church.

One session on Wednesday Afternoon, Dan Kimball spoke for about 20 minutes on his new book, followed by a group panel discussing issues of the day.  The goal was to address hard issues of our day, like the rising topic of homosexuality, increasing ethnic diversity, and the hot topic of 18 – 30 year olds in the church (or lack there of).

Many of the watchdoggie blogs have jumped on a video that was meant to be an “after thought” on the session that just happened.  The problem is that these writers missed the 90 minute conversation and presentation that went on before the video was filmed.  In fact, the clip was meant to be a “bonus” to the conference for those that attended the event.  Once again, the context in which this video was filmed was not addressed or even known.

The article written at one of these sites had little to no content on the film.  Really, the only substantial  comment made about Dan Kimball was the following

One humorous note about this clip of Kimball. He tells us with a straight face that church should be about its mission, not trends. Apparently that doesn’t apply to emerging hairstyles.

Once again, if you can’t beat ‘em, jut make fun of how they look, right?

One writer at CRN wrote this strong statement:

Please understand that there is an impassible chasm between men like me who proclaim the Gospel to unbelievers and men like Dan Kimball who want to talk about it with them…. Men and women, we have now reached the point where either men like Charles Spurgeon and Dr. John MacArthur are Christians or people like Rob Bell and Erwin McManus, both leaders in the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church, are.

With this attempt to let the truth be known, no writer at the watchdoggie site bothered to add this quote from the clip to their article from Dan Kimball

But you can’t argue against the teaching of Jesus.. and that should be why we want to change, not just because this is trendy or this is trendy.

I found this video and somehow thought instantly of some of the conversations we’ve had here.

As a quick aside keep in mind that Martin Luther composed A Mighty Fortress is our God. It brings out a bit of a joke in the dialog.

From here:

You have me heard talk here at Christian Research Net about how apostatizing $evangelicalism$ is now passing your youth through the fire of Molech.

Lets just stop pretending we’re dealing with serious people here. Unless we’re talking about youth ministers literally burning children alive this is just hysteria. It reminds me of politically minded people who refer to their opponents as Hitler or Nazis because of some decidedly non-genocidal position they’ve taken. Even if the details of the charge are correct, the massive amounts of what would be hyperbole if they weren’t so earnest shows them to be so irrational they have almost no connection with reality on the subjects they write and talk about.

I am appalled about this blog. Here is a critic going after external things that Jesus simply doesn’t care about. He shows pictures of these pastors and then tears them a new one for the way they look, they way they talk, the sermon topics, their age, their muscles, their tan, etc.

Some scripture here:

1 Timothy 4:12
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

1 Samuel 16:6-13

6 When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”

7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

8 Then Jesse called Abinadab and had him pass in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “The LORD has not chosen this one either.” 9 Jesse then had Shammah pass by, but Samuel said, “Nor has the LORD chosen this one.” 10 Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The LORD has not chosen these.” 11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered, “but he is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down ^[a] until he arrives.”

12 So he sent and had him brought in. He was ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features.
Then the LORD said, “Rise and anoint him; he is the one.”

13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the LORD came upon David in power. Samuel then went to Ramah.

Notice that the scripture says that David was actually quite good looking.

I don’t know what else to say. The blog speaks for itself.

It seems that the new tactic of the watchdoggies is to claim that all purpose-driven/emerging/emergent/ Harry Potter churches are simply clones of one another. That there really isn’t anything new going on with this new movement, and most of the people involved can’t think for themselves or are simply little worker bees doing as told. I find it funny coming from the people who are calling for all communities of faith to have pews, hymns, three piece suits and an institutionalized methods of church. And the emerging church is the cloned one?

There was recently a checklist published entitled “How to Make a Relevant Pastor Blog.” It was designed to show how all relevant pastors today really are just drones. 10 out of the 13 points listed were superficial, dealing with music, photos and the language people use. I often wonder why these leaders feel it necessary to cut down people in ministry for simple aesthetics or the things they enjoy in life.

Sometimes I think it is out of fear. Fear that they are quickly loosing touch with this generation, and watching their communities die. Fear from not understanding an ever changing would in which they now find themselves. Fear that their way of doing things is slowly being replaced with other methods (and I say that with all sincerity, sympathy and sadness). I can understand why many of these writers would respond out of fear like this. But, I guess if you can’t beat them, then just make fun of their clothes