92 thoughts on “Control Redux”

  1. To which the response would probably be something along the lines of “We ought to obey God rather than men…and since the preacher speaks for God, therefore we should obey him and submit ourselves to him without thinking.” Goes hand in hand with the whole pastoral authority gig.

  3. Bill may have put himself in a tough situation. One that may permanently change the direction of his life, which is in his opening statements. He also mentions early on that he must keep his word. So if this ever happens, he must take possession of the offending device, i.e. steal, and risk arrest and jail time, or do not take possession of the offending device and break his word, i.e. lie, and loose his good reputation before his congregation. A tough choice for a fundy preacher. Hopefully, no one there took him seriously.

  4. No Bible…lots of stories and illustrations….and a heart rending closer. Include an empty threat from an empty suit and ask me why people are leaving pseudo fundamentalism.

  6. LOVE that the guy who just made a dubious argument on the about page, gets featured. That site is still begging for a FWOTW! 🙂

  9. I agree with the pastor’s stance on no phone usage in church. The issue of phone usage in church is a matter of respect, common courtesy, and most important of all OBEDIENCE!!!
    Most people that go to a fundamentalist Bible-believing church go there to fellowship with fellow believers, and to have the Word of God exposited to them so they may understand what God wants for them, and EXPECTS of them.
    I really challenge the level of devotion that a Christian has to his faith, if one is so easily distracted by the need to fiddle around with an electronic gadget while the preacher is unpacking the truths written in the Bible.
    Did you go to church to chat with friends, or to be taught the fundamental tenents of Christianity?
    It is utterly disrespectful to a Pastor to purposefully not pay attention to what he is being led to teach to you, when he has spent countless hours in intense study and prayer in order to expound to you the wisdom of the Scripture in the matter of one hour or so. A pastor loves his flock (congregation), and is responsible for being a circumspect man, leader, and teacher of God’s Word. If one can’t refrain from HAVING to twitter, or text, then don’t go, and willfully or ignorantly disrespect God himself, by putting your fixation in a place of prominece above receiving the Word of God into your heart and mind.

  10. Um…you’re totally missing the point, Jeff.

    Texting in church is tacky and disrespectful. I don’t think many will disagree with you there.

    Unlawfully taking someone’s property without their consent is stealing. Perhaps you’d explain to everyone here how it’s not?

  11. Jeff, you sound like a real shitheel. If that guy tried to take something that was mine I’d be hiring a lawyer alright. Just not for the reasons that he thinks.

  12. Now, now. No need for name calling.

    Jeff does appear to live in Florida, so I’m going to make a wild guess that he actually goes to this church and that’s why he’s defending it. Call it a hunch.

  13. @jeff
    OBEDIENCE… to what or to whom? If you say pastor you prove the whole point of the article. You paint an excellent portrait of the ideal pastor… few there be that live up to that ideal, but many who claim it. The whole Clergy/Laity approach to “church is flawed, and it is manifest in the pews filled with passive hearers who are paying someone to think for them. Ephesians 4 is not followed in any of the IFB churches I have ever attended over the past forty years I can remember save one… but that one was trying to shed itself of the IFB albatross. In fact most churches look on the pastorate as an office to fill and the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is how cults are formed when one man has that much power. A humble man would ask politely that everyone turn off their cell phones ringers (a lot of people have a Bible app on their phones as well) but it is a dictator that threatens to illegally confiscate personal property from the pulpit.
    If our churches were truly filled with Born Again Redeemed Children of God then there would be that hunger for the Word you speak of but for generations our churches have been filling up with people who have saved themselves and are contend to substitute an emotional religious experience for their training in the ministry and true worship. Content to pay a man to stand before them and tell them what to think… not how to think.
    So in my ears you praise of the pastorate rings hollow.

  14. i so want to try him. but it’s far away and i really like my phone.

    completely off-topic: stuff fundies like: kung-fu-death-grip handshakes. has that one been done?

  15. If this preacher “spent countless hours in intense study and prayer” for this exposition (?)……………………….

    What about passing notes? Do it. All you’ll lose is paper.

  16. What Darrell said. Believe me, I fully agree that texting and talking on the phone is rude in church, at the movies, in the checkout line (that cashier is a fellow human being and deserves your respect!), and will curse the day that some foolish airline decides to allow phones use while in the air. However, that’s not the point here. The 8th commandment is, as are the control issues.

  18. attention all units: we have report of a robbery. the suspect stole a cell phone and was last seen driving an ice cream truck with the license plate “kilo-juliet-victor-1-6-1-1”. over.

  19. suspect has been spotted putting 3×5 comic books on the windshields outside Sacred Heart. suspect fled the scene before he could be confronted by parishoners. over.

  20. attention all units: we have report of a robbery. the suspect stole a cell phone and was last seen driving an ice cream truck with the license plate “kilo-juliet-victor-1-6-1-1″. over.

    I need to start letting all of you write the posts and I’ll just comment 😀

  21. @ Reader, That is too funny! =)

    What a sad, strange little man this “pastor” is!
    He needs to do a study on the beatitudes. He is far from being poor in spirit! Nor does he mourn over his sin due to the fact he thinks he has no sin. As far as he is concerned, it is the rest of us who are sinners. He is a sad example of what a true preacher of God’s Word is.

    What is sadder is that folks actually sit under this kind of “preaching” with sincerety. I would have a very hard time not chuckling at such an inane comment. My husband would have definately pulled out his cell phone, iphone or any other phone and surfed the net for the rest of the service not our of pure disrespect, but a “service” like that is far from the preaching of God’s Word. What it is, is the preaching of a man….a sad, strange little man who deserves no respect when it comes to spiritual matters.!

    I went to may sisters IFB church a few years ago. Before the service started I put a piece of gum in my mouth and began to chew away. My sister looked at me with horror and told me I can’t chew gum in church, the “pastor” (much like this guy) would call me down from the pulpit. I said, “Let him go for it!” and continued to chew my gum. It was then others around us began to get very uncomfortable. The “pastors” wife, who was not far from us, came over and offered me a mint. I declined. During the “preaching” the pastor looked straight at me many times, but never once called me down. In fact, after the service he never made so much as eye contact with me again. I believe that he knew he had met his match and I wasn’t going to sit down and roll over every time he spoke. These guys aren’t dummies. They know who they can and cannot bully.

  25. I just don’t get why he felt the need to be so controlling about it. What’s wrong with pointing out that using your cel phone in church is just disrespectful? He could state this at the beginning of his sermon. Instead, he’s a bully, and threatens people. I would have pulled out my phone just to make him prove his point…

    It’s true that you really shouldn’t be surfing the web, texting, or “Twittering” as he called it during a service, but I think there are much kinder and appropriate ways of letting people know it’s not cool.

  26. @Sandra very very true in all of life RE: bullies know who they can & cannot bully. Not just bullying, most victim/prey relationships tend to develop from early life abuses where people learn to either become one or the other, and have an inate sense of finding the opposite in most of their adult relationships. Sad stuff.

  27. I want to go and text during the service. Then hope he gets a lovely roommate named Bubba and a great new orange jumpsuit. What a dweeb!

  29. I think I know where I can find a 6′ 3″, 240 lb. attorney who will show up in this “banty rooster’s’ church and start “twittering”. Anyone want to be there? As my Dad used to say, “If you can’t bite…don’t growl.”

  30. I really enjoyed when he said that he would “possess” the person’s phone. I know that I took it the wrong way, but it was definitely funnier the way I took it, because then the church would have to go freaky fundy and have a phone exorcism.

  32. Yes @Kevin! Another one on the bandwagon of @Reader Mo needs to become @Contributor Mo! 🙂

  33. BTW, wrong lingo, I meant camp, obv we don’t do bandwagons/circles/groups/etc in these parts.

  35. I made it halfway through the video/sermon. His message was about not appreciating things until you lose them. He completely lost me when he chided only the “Ladies” for losing their virginity before marriage.

    Stuff Fundie Men Like: Double Standards about Sexual Purity

  37. @Morgan:

    I’ve heard a pastor say that the Levite’s Concubine in Judges (the one that got raped to death and then quartered) was killed because she didn’t stay under her husband’s authority when she went back to her father’s house. So, yeah, it was HER fault.

    Didn’t realize that it was so rampant in Fundyland, thought it might’ve been just him.

  38. I use my phone in church because it has the Bible App on it. If someone wants to sit next to me and judge me because they think I’m texting and not paying attention, that’s their deal.

    Secondly, I also text in church. 🙂

  39. I once attended a “revival” meeting with an evangelist who was famous for snapping at people who weren’t paying attention. I guess there wasn’t enough misbehavior in that evening’s congregation, though, because he yelled at a young lady for reading her Bible while he was speaking. He seemed especially proud of himself when she started crying.

  40. Oh come on guys. He’s using it as a threat to try and stop the teens from ignoring the whole sermon. I should know. I go there….and I’m one of the teens. Does anyone here remember the passage in the scritpures about teens insulting Elisha? Have some respect for the minister. Insult his God if you wish. That’s what you’re doing anyway.

  41. So what if he was only “using it as a threat”?

    We still run into the same dilemma, either he was threatening to break the law or he was lying about his intention.

    As someone who knows the situation first hand, can you tell us which it was?

  42. Oh, and your attempt to cast the modern day pastor as having the power and authority of a prophet isn’t lost on me.

  43. If you only allow those two possibilities then yes, he was lying. If you were to allow me to chose the words I would say he was kidding. Your choice anyway. You don’t care what I actually think.

  44. “I was just kidding” is often the excuse of bullies when they’re called on their actions. There was nothing in the context or the verbal or non-verbal cues that indicated he was joking. If he was, it wasn’t apparent and as such it was an ill-advised jest. Especially if he was going to post it on the interwebs.

    On that last, I noticed that last Sunday’s sermon hasn’t made it on the web. A little skittish now?

  45. Oh come on now. You weren’t even there! It was quite obvious he wouldn’t actually carry out the threat. I help in the video recording too. The guy who does the editing is having to learn how to upload it to our web tech now. He did the initial upload Wed. night. He probably doesn’t even know this is going on.

  46. @Lissy and Morgan

    This is NOT the view preached or supported at my church. I remember actually being quite shocked at his poor wording this time. He doesn’t normally make these kind of weird errors. Virginity is important for everyone. There is no “double-standard” at my church on that issue.

  48. Oh come on now. You weren’t even there! It was quite obvious he wouldn’t actually carry out the threat.

    “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?”

  49. @K-Wiley I wouldn’t just assume it was a slip of the tongue on the preachers part. See recent SFL: on “Silent Change”. You just don’t know in Fundy-land when a preacher is going to decide he has missed the boat, isn’t hardcore fundmentalist enough, and jump on a bandwagon. Have any example of preacher correcting himself or stating it was a mistake? If they’ll pull the threaten to “posess” someone phone for texting/tweeting stunt, I wouldn’t put blaming rape on the victim stunt past them/him. I’d certainly ASK if that was what he meant to say or not. We correct from the pulpit anytime a preacher/speaker says something askew like that.

  50. @Darrell, btw do the rest of us have the ability to do the indented quote thing like you do? I don’t see/know how you do that exactly?

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