Category Archives: Preachers
Illustration: “The Lost Day”
I personally heard this illustration from evangelist Ron Comfort…
Once upon a time, an atheist scientist discovered that there was ‘lost time’ in the cosmic record. Through some unspecified process he learns that several hours have just gone missing. His Christian friend told him he would discover the reason for the lost time in the Bible. After reading the stories of Joshua and Hezekiah the atheist realizes that the Bible is true. He falls to his knees and is gloriously saved.
Well…you guessed it. It’s just not so.
Regardless of the amount of time involved, the discovery of a “missing” period of time remains implausible. If the sun had indeed stood still for a day a few millennia ago, we would have no way of determining that fact through astronomic observations today. We have no frame of reference, no “cosmic calendar” or “master clock” to check against to see if we’re overdrawn at the Bank of Time. The concept described here would be like giving someone a non-functioning clock and asking him to determine how much time had elapsed since the clock had stopped running. One could note the positions of the hands on the dial and make a reasonable guess about what the time of day was when the clock stopped running, but without knowing whether that time was A.M. or P.M., and without knowing the calendar date on which stoppage occurred, one could not possibly make any reasonable estimate about how long ago the clock stopped.
Distrusting the Government
Feeling Bad
Fundamentalists take a fairly pessimistic view of most things including their own spiritual condition. They tend to look down on those Christians who go to church to sing upbeat music and generally be happy, preferring rather to spend their time in and equal mixture of guilt and grief. Repenting of something each time you go to church is seen as indispensable to the worship experience.
Fundy preachers would claim that other churches without “hard preaching” are just buildings full of people with itching ears who waste a lot of time hearing about how God loves them, when the truth is that He’s actually pretty unhappy with them most of the time. The concept that the itch that some people like to have scratched could just as easily be a craving for a dose of artificial guilt that builds until release during an invitation would be dismissed as just plain crazy talk.
For fundamentalists not only is the glass half empty but it’s also filthy and needs to get right with God.
Attendence Books
Memo
To: All Sunday School Leaders
From: Horace J. Studebacher, Sunday School Superintendent.
Dear Teachers,
Please take extra care when filling out your Sunday School attendance books for the coming months. The pastor has informed me that his review of the attendance record has turned up several discrepancies which he thankfully caught before sending the monthly numbers in to the Sword of the Lord. We need to do better. Let all things be done decently and in order, amen?
To that end, here are a few guidelines for keeping your attendance record books accurate.
– Sunday School attendance is defined as people who actually have visited your Sunday School class this week. “They were here in spirit” is not the equivalent of attendance nor is their spouse taking them home the handout enough to count them as present.
– If you are prone to filling out your attendance books on Saturday night, please do so in pencil so they can be corrected. Let’s make it as easy as possible for our pastor to spot those who are falling behind in their Sunday School visits.
– Pregnant Sunday School attendees do not count twice unless they actually give birth in your classroom on a Sunday between 9:30 and 10:15 a.m.
– While Pack the Pew week has always been a time of friendly competition between Sunday School classes for the annual Top Fishers of Men award, it is not appropriate to “trash talk” the leaders of other classes in church the parking lot. In addition the use of door prizes, and other promotional stunts such as swallowing goldfish is discouraged unless you are working in the bus ministry.
Hopefully these reminders will serve to get us back on the path to good honest record keeping. It is important to conduct ourselves in a Christlike manner as we all focus our efforts on getting our Sunday School numbers to new record-breaking levels.