Brother Fairasee

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Thanks to Bob West, creator of Theophilus.

By the way, Edward Fudge notes that Bob West is producing a comic-strip style set of serial Bible stories that he is offering to email as each new strip comes out. The series is titled “Our Father’s Children.” To access archives of present strips, go to http://ourfatherschildren.com/contents.html. To sign up for free email strips as completed, write to Bob here.

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A Lover’s Quarrel: More Responsibly Biblical

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Garrett’s seventh wish for the Churches of Christ is —

Let us become more responsibly biblical.

We have supposed that the New Testament produced the church, when in fact it was the church that produced the New Testament. …

The New Testament is more descriptive of what the church should be (or not be), than prescriptive, as if a code of law. … 

I suggest one basic rule of interpretation, a negative one, that I call “the spirit of Christ rule.” I think it will prove to be liberating, especially for us in the Churches of Christ: No interpretation is to be accepted that runs counter to the spirit of Christ.

(emphasis in original). Continue reading →

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One Church

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Jay F Guin


Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” was written in 1809. This is one of the founding documents of the Restoration Movement, written for the purpose of calling people away from division and sectarianism to join in a common communion, a single church of Christ.

To celebrate the event, many churches are planning to host communion celebrations in their hometowns, inviting all churches with a Restoration Movement heritage to join together for just one Sunday to celebrate the unity the Movement was founded to establish. Continue reading →

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10 Stupid Things that Keep a Church from Growing

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Jay F Guin

I read a review of this book — not yet released — and thought the partial list offered in the review worth mentioning —

*  “Trying to do it all.”

A comical quote at the bottom of the chapter page cleverly conveys the problem that pastors often find themselves in: “Just because I’m the janitor doesn’t mean I can’t perform your wedding.”

“Pastors tend to default to doing everything themselves rather than working through people in the congregation,” Surratt explained to The Christian Post. “They take on a lot of different hats and wind up overworked and underproductive because of that.” Continue reading →

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A Little Help?!

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Okay, I’ve come to this self-realization. I need help. 

You see, I just don’t have the patience to maintain this website like I should. I mean, I just updated my indexing system going back to November. I’ve been meaning to get to it ever since, well, November. But 70 or so posts later things had gotten pretty far behind, and I just hate doing it.

And WordPress has come up with this really easy and cool system to help me properly tag my posts. I know if I bothered to tag them like I should I’d have a lot more readers. I might even pass Al Maxey (Well, I can dream, can’t I?). But I just can’t make myself do it. Continue reading →

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Woohoo! One In Jesus makes top 10 Church of Christ blogs

Posted on January 17, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Over at Kingdom Living, Matt Dabbs has used the Alexa service to rank the 25 most popular Church of Christ blogs (and blog-like sites). Not surprisingly, the top 3 are Al Maxey, Edward Fudge, and the late Cecil Hook.

Astonishingly, One In Jesus is ranked 7. Even more astonishingly, One In Jesus is ranked well ahead of some very well-known blogs — so it’s quite a compliment.

On the other hand, as Matt has pointed out, a number of sites have recently changed URLs, which surely throws off the numbers. And when John Mark Hicks is number 26, well, Alexa just has to be wrong. Or maybe Alexa includes in its sample period the time that John Mark took off.

So the numbers are subject to interpretation. But it’s still nice to be in the top 10.

Anyway, I’m hiring a kid to log into One In Jesus 1,000 times a day, so I’ll surely beat Al Maxey the next time Matt does his figuring!

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A Lover’s Quarrel: Radical Congregationalism

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Garrett’s sixth wish is —

Let us reject our radical congregationalism and become more responsibly organized for the tasks before us.

No local church, nor group of area churches, can do what the church as a whole can do. We have paid a heavy price for what we call “congregational autonomy,” given all our duplicate programs, ineffectiveness, and work left undone. …

If we were properly organized for missionary and benevolent work — with centralized ministires responsible to the congregations — the results would be remarkable!

Now, this isn’t as radical as it sounds. But it is pretty radical.

Let’s consider the alternatives. Continue reading →

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Why I Do This

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Jay F Guin

I get emails —

Jay,

 In your “2008 Update” posting you included the following:

 “And (do you believe it?) David Graves will be teaching a class on my The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace at the Union Valley Church of Christ <http://unionvalleychurch.com/index.php/news> . He’s actually put the full text on the church website for the students to download. Not bad for a 1994 publication.”

I wanted to give you an update on David and this teaching effort. Continue reading →

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Church Planting

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Over at his site Who Told You That, Dell Kimberly has asked for reader input for what I think is a critically important question: How can an established church act like a church plant?

 This is the most unusual post I have ever written.  It is also perhaps the most important I have ever written.  At this point I am not presenting information.  Instead I am asking for information.  I would appreciate your help.  I hope that you will post your answers on this blog.  If you are more comfortable you can email them directly to me at [email protected].   It is important for me to hear from each of you.  None of the answers you give will be unimportant or without value to me. Continue reading →

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Faith Lessons by Ray Vander Laan: Misguided Faith, Part 4

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Jay F Guin

Dwayne Phillips asked in a comment to Part 3 of this series,

I enjoy reading your blog. This entry, however, sounds much like what I heard years ago from people who refused to say the pledge of allegiance and who now condemn any Christian who serves in the US armed forces. Please help me understand the differences.

It’s a good question — especially because it’s helped me clarify my thinking. Now we’ll see if it’s helped clarify my writing!

Okay, let’s start with first principles. Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matt 6:24). I take this very seriously, so seriously that I don’t think I can serve the US government as a master at all. There is no balancing or weighing my loyalty to Jesus with or against my loyalty to my country. There’s just Jesus. I’m loyal to no one else. Period. Continue reading →

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