Tag Archives: guest post

Odds and Ends

The King James Journey to the Grocery Store on the First Night of the Icy Weather

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(Photo Credit: Bill Morrow)

As I look at the forecast and see MOAR SNOW on the horizon this guest post from Ken D. seems altogether timely. Keep warm out there.

The King James Journey to the Grocery Store on the First Night of the Icy Weather

Yea, verily, unto the earth didst fall without number the small pellets of ice like unto the fine gravel of the road in their size.

And great was the upheaval and the consternation throughout the land, and great was the hustling and bustling in the much-trafficked aisles of the market, yea, of the grocer’s stall. For many were the hands that were laid upon the loaves of bread, the groping hands that seized the milk of the kine. Deep into their purses and devices of mechanical banking didst the teeming masses thrust their hands and brought forth money, yea, even lucre, wherewith to purchase victuals.

For in their hearts, they thought unto themselves, “We shall not surely starve. For if the electricity be off, yea, if the power of the lightning be cut off, we shall yet eat; for, verily, our cupboards are full unto bursting with bread and dry cereals. And our pantries what eschew the heat, they do hold unto themselves rich stores of milk wherewith we shall drench our cereals and wash down our breads. Yea, and we shall be sated. Though we be frozen as the stones of the ground, we shall be filled.”

Then, with their great bundles stowed in their carriages, the haughty people, yea, the proud ones who didst unto the last minute delay to buy groceries, even these drove away. And in their foolishness, they heeded not the the ice which as the fine gravel lay upon the road; and with all speed and carelessness of mind, they didst drive like unto maniacs until with great clamor and noise of destruction they skidded headlong through yon guardrail. And great was the crashing of metal; great was the splashing of icy waters. And their victuals didst take wing and fly hither and yon, and the birds and beasts of the field didst devour the bread and meat and carried them unto their young.

And they didst endure the storm being not hungered, but the foolish people perished, and they froze and wert hungered.

Preachers

The Ballad of Pastor Jed

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Today’s guest post comes from SFL’s very own Uncle Wilver.

Come and listen to a story ’bout a preacher named Jed.
Poor rural parson barely kept his family fed.
Then one day he went to Pastor’s School,
And when he returned, he was a Fundy tool.
(Gimmicks, that is. Proof texts. Lotsa rules.)

Well the next thing you know, the Mega Church looks great,
Buses everywhere throughout the Tri-State,
New Basement Bible College and Academy,
With just one man to rule so there is no anarchy.
(Dictatorship that is. Pastoral Authority. IFB heroes.)

Well, now its time to say goodbye to Jed and all his ilk.
Now that he is doing time his wife’s no more in silk.
You’re all invited to stop in on Thursday about noon
To commiserate with the former Fundy church tycoon.
(The Elm Street Embezzler. That’s what they call him now.
Property auction in two weeks. Ya’ll come bid now, ya hear!)

Standards

A Dress Code

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I have one more guest post that was submitted last week to share with you! The author is choosing to remain anonymous.

Victory Faith Bible KJV1611 Baptist Church Dress Code for Ladies’

1. That which pertaineth to a man

Ladies’ must abstain from all appearance of evil. That means our ladies’ here at VFBKJV1611 Baptist Church should not where pants or shorts.

2. Tops
Blouses and dresses must reach the colorbone and be buttoned all the way up. If the buttons gap open at the bust, ladies’ should go up a size or use safety pins to avoid having their braziers showing, which can be very tempting to our young men and therefore inappropriate. Blouses should be full and not darted, which means there should be no ungodly emphasis on the waistline or underbust. Arms should be no shorter than the elbow. Sheer materials should be avoidable, but if you must wear a sheer blouse, also wear a skin-collared brazier and a full slip to conceal you’re nakedness. Tee shirts, tank tops and other immodest tops are not acceptable.

3. Skirts
Skirts should be at least 3 inches below the knee so that you can sit, kneel and otherwise move around without expositing your knee. Your skirt should also be at least a-line and preferably circle or very full to avoid drawring unnecessary attention to your legs. The waist should hit at your natural waist (low waistts are not acceptable) and be gathered to avoid unnecessary attention to the hips. Your skirt should have no slits. Kick pleats should not be necessary if your skirt is properly full. All ladies’ should where a slip with their skirts to avoid immodest exposure that could lead to lustful thoughts.

4. Culottes
Box pleat culottes are required for outdoors activities, but we ask that our ladies’ not where them to services. Culottes should follow the same rules as skirts and reach at least 3 inches below the knee and be sufficiently full that we do not see the shape of your legs. Also, if you canot do it modestly in culottes, you should rethink doing it at all. It may just not be a ladylike actvitiy.

5. Legs
We know you have them. We do not want to see them. Please wear nylons or tights to conceal the flesh of your legs. Closed-toed shows are not mandatory, but we do ask our ladies’ to consider the fleshly desires of our gentlemen and dress accordingly. Heels that excessively “bunch up” the calf are nightclub attire, not church attire. Bobby socks and canvas tennis shoes are acceptable for certain functions. Please ask Mrs. Pastor for more information.

6. Hair
The KJV1611 says long hair is a glory. We request that our ladies’ discuss their hair with their husbands or fathers to determine the most appropriate hair length for godly glory. Hair should be a natural color (no red, pink or blue, please!) and cut in a flattering, modest manner that does not bring undue attention to our godly ladies heads.
7. Makeup and jewelry
Ladies, if the barn needs painting, paint it, but avoid whoriehs excessiveness. Lipstick should be natural-colored, and leave the false eyelashes at home! Jewelry should be limited to (one) wedding ring and (one) engagement rink. GOD Himself tells us that peircings are a sign of slaves, not godly women, so skip them!

8. Bodies
We understand that ladies come in all shapes and sizes. That said, ladies who are thin should consider the effect of their vanity on their soles. Ladies who are bigger need to worry about their husbands’ soles and maybe lose some weight so their husbands are not tempted to stray. The rest of you ladies need to wear looser-fitting clothes to conceal your hips and other lady areas. We recommend jumpers since these offer the best coverage of (we apologize for our course language) curves.

9. Other
Any other concerns not already mentioned can be discussed with our godly pastor or any of the deacons, who would be happy to set up a private appointment to discuss your modesty needs or evaluate a particular outfit.

10. Visitors
We understand that nonmebers may arrive wearing inappropriate clothing. Although we are always happy to welcome new people, we do feel it is important to emphasize modesty to protect our men from lustful thoughts. If you notice a visitor lady who is wearing a tight skirt, pants or a low-cut blouse, please let her know we love her as a sister, and offer her one of our spare sweaters (they are located in the church foyer’s coat rack) to wear over her top or place over her bottom half while she is sitting.

We appreciate all our sisters’ in Christ taking the time to keep our church modest! Let us know if there is any way we can support you in this endeavor. 

Please sign and date this document to signify your agreement to the dress code.

Signed

___________________________________________________________________________
Date

___________________________________________________________________________

Books

Fundamentalist, Interrupted

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Today we have a guest post by Robb Ryerse, a former fundamentalist pastor who has just released a new book about his transformation away from fundamentalism. If you’d like to hear more from Robb he’ll be on the Ragamuffin Show tomorrow night at 8.

When I was in high school, some of my friends and I wanted to play some basketball in the church gym on a Sunday afternoon. I called my uncle, the chairman of the trustee board, and asked for permission. He said, “No.” Sporting events weren’t allowed at church on Sundays. I could hear his TV in the background. He was watching the game.

For two summers in college, I did a pastoral internship at my home church. One morning, our senior pastor announced that I would be attending a sacred music conference sponsored by Patch the Pirate’s Majesty Music. I was going because he thought my CCM (Steven Curtis Chapman and Steve Camp) was too worldly.

In college I dated a girl who was King James Only. Though I attended a proudly fundamentalist Bible college, we weren’t taught to exclusively use the KJV. But she did. And so, every day for the two months that we dated, I proudly carried my KJV Ryrie Study Bible to chapel. The day we broke up was the last day I opened that particular Bible.

I’ve had countless conversations with church people about all sorts of “important” issues: Whether or not smoking is a sin. Whether or not a Christian can have a tattoo. If it’s acceptable for a believer to vote for a Democrat. If Christians should boycott Disney. What is the appropriate length of a lady’s skirt.

Like so many others who grew up in fundamentalism, I’ve experienced my fair share of condemnation and craziness. And eventually, it all got to be too much. I had to leave fundamentalism.

Ultimately, however, it was not the legalistic dos and don’ts that drove me away from the fundamentalism of my upbringing. It was something much more, well, fundamental than that.

About eight years ago, I was pastoring a fundamental Baptist church where I was preparing to preach through Genesis. I knew all of the answers I had been taught – literal seven-day creationism, a literal walking-talking snake, a literal garden with a literal angel with a literal flaming sword.

And I also knew the questions that began to gnaw at me:

• Why do Genesis 1 and 2 sound like they were spoken in two different voices?
• Where did Cain’s wife come from?
• What happened to the dinosaurs?
• Doesn’t a global flood feel like a bit of an over-reaction?
• How could God be willingly tied to such a family of scoundrels?

These questions exposed that the pat answers of my fundamentalist upbringing were no longer resonating with me. If the answers I had always been told were shaky, maybe the whole system was too. This I knew with certainty – if I verbalized the doubts I was experiencing in a sermon, I would be fired.

This realization sent me spiraling into a spiritual depression, a dark night of the soul, that lasted for many months. When I eventually emerged from it, my own fundamorphosis was well underway. A fundamorphosis is the theological transformation that frees someone from fundamentalism.

My fundamorphosis has freed me to embrace grace and mystery like never before. I now have a belief system that is big enough to handle my doubt. I am very comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” I don’t feel the need to convince everyone to agree with me nor to condemn them when they don’t. I think I’m a lot more humble, honest, and hopeful. More than anything, my fundamorphosis has been about becoming something fundamentalism never encouraged. I became authentic. I am finally free to be me.

—

Robb Ryerse is the author of the new book Fundamorphosis: How I Left Fundamentalism But Didn’t Lose My Faith. Available now on Amazon. He is the pastor of Vintage Fellowship (www.vintagefellowship.org) in Fayetteville AR. He blogs at www.thegrenzian.com.

 

Preachers, Sermons

Field Report 2011 Sword of the Lord Conference

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If you’ve been on SFL for a while, you’ll remember that last year an anonymous attendee passed along his observations of the Sword of the Lord Conference. Well this year we’ve done one better with our very own SFL personality Don (who was accompanied on a few of the nights by another reader) attending each night single night and writing down what he saw and heard. Here are his notes from Day 1:

Where do I begin?

Back on June 28th Darrell posted A Doctor (or 14) In The House and it was suggested that we have a representative do a field repot. That put into motion a series of conversations and a mission sanctioned by SFIE.

A team was assigned and Operation Mothership was a go. The mission’s theme is reflected in the modified poem, The Charge of the SFL Brigade

Fundies to right of them,
Fundies to left of them,
MOgs in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the two from SFL.

Due to work obligations only the evening services could be covered. Monday evening arrived and at 1800 we embarked on our mission. We began our recon in the Exhibit hall. Upon entry the first booth that greeted us was a Tie vendor. Selling ties. Not just novelty ties but top of the line neck ties. Continuing down that aisle we have a vendor with a table full of cd’s and dvd’s selling sermons of a Who’s Who of fundy heavy weights, Hyles, Roloff, Sightler, and a host of others.

We were asked if we wanted some good preaching. I came very close to saying, “Sure, where is any.” But our mission was recon only not confrontation. There was a vendor that had the History of the Bible. They actually mentioned the Bishops Bible, the Geneva Bible but the line ended abruptly at 1611 and the King James Bible. It was interesting that in this booth there was also a plaque of Martin Luther. (That ol Catholic) I guess he got props for breaking away from the Catholic Church.

There are several colleges represented here, PCC, West Coast, New England Baptist College, Midwestern Bible College, Shawnee Baptist College, Gethsemane Bible Institute, Commonwealth Baptist College, Berean Baptist College, Heartland Baptist Bible College, Landmark Baptist College, Baptist College of America, and Ambassador Baptist College. These are what are listed on the floor plan and I really did not take a complete inventory.

The pièce de résistance of the Exhibit hall was The Suit Man. Here in the middle of the hall was a tailor shop to outfit the M-O-g with a suit worthy of his position. Off to the “sanctuary” for preaching time.

Monday Preaching
Opens with hymn “Wonderful Grace of Jesus.”
Opening monologue:
• Raise the heat , people don’t stay as warm as they need to stay, turn up the heat in the pulpit
• Let the Lord do something special (I’m sure he will appreciate you allowing him to do that)
• This is the 400th year of the King James Bible (a-mens all around)
• This is a critical time in our history and we need to be watchmen.
Opening Prayer: by Dr. Rydell, just finished a 43 year pastorate, and he’s available to come preach.
Shelton Smith Leads off
The Text is John 4:1-6 (and out of that text he was able to preach on all these topics)
Pre-sermon:
– David and Goliath- the Battle is the Lord’s- David had the stones in the bag already ready
Preaching Time:
– Jacobs well
– (sic)

“…hope you found John Chapter 4. That is, IF you got a fully inspired Bible. If
your’s is not fully inspired then sit on it so nobody’ll know you got a bad Bible. If you got one that’s fully inspired, forever pereserved, and flawlessly perfect I want to read some out of it.”

(set the tone for the whole week)
– How to dig a well

*Sermon Title: There’s Still Water in the Well
– Senseless prejudices: (based on the scripture comparing Jesus baptizing more than John)
– To Judge someone is senseless, just because somebody may not be like we are (yep he said that)
– Immorality; how America is becoming more like Sodom and Gomorrah (+1 for hot button mention )
– Against “Happy Hour” ( +1 for Prohibition anti alcohol )
– How great it is that we don’t have to invent something anew every time we use it
– Keeping the well clean
– Commentary on worldly music ( +1 for music reference )
– False Christs
– False prophets
– False Preachers
– False Apostles
– False Teachers
– False Brethren
– Dispensationalism: Re: the Rapture ( +1 for Rapture reference )
– Heretical doctrines
– Three Point Calvinists ( +1 for anti Calvinist reference)
– Manning the wells
– Buying the ropes and buckets (because God needs you to get the water out of his well..)
– In order to get the water out of the well and give it to those starving for that water
– Give a commentary on the King James Bible ( +1 King James Bible reference )
– And talk about “Bad Bibles”
– A dig on CCM music ( another +1 for CCM reference )
– All the music this week will be, “Solid, Evangelistic, Soul-winning, music” (amens all around)
– Church is God’s idea. (I believe this was regarding how the local church is practiced. )
– A Dig on Campus Crusade for Christ dropping Christ from their name.
( http://www.ccci.org/about-us/donor-relations/our-new-name/press.htm )
– Finally gets back to the first text of the evening.
– Fire up the pulpit
– The Bible Well
– The Church well
– The Soul-winning well (whatever that is)
– props to “Dr” John and “Dr” Curtis for the work they did.
– He (Smith) didn’t have to build from scratch able to stand on the shoulders of these two.
– Patriotism ( +1 rounding out the sermon with patriotic reference)
– Keeping the well of your church clean
*Not bad for just six verses but the masters are yet to flex their preaching muscles.

Offering –announcements- special singing

Mike Allison batting in the number two spot
Hebrews 12:1-3
Opening Monologue:
– (96) were saved in a missions conference and Vacation Bible school ( a very successful ministry for sure sporting those types of numbers )
– (5) surrendered to full time service ( wonder if he brought them with him to visit The Suit Guy in the Exhit it hall?)
– Lyndon B. Johnson got saved
– as little girl named “Faith Booger” got saved. (he saw her name on the card and made a joke out of it.)
Preaching Time:
– Quoted much of General Douglas MacArthur’s address to the 1962 graduating class at West Point
– Patriotism again
– MacArthur used the mantra of Duty-Honor-Country
– Changed to Duty-Honor-The Saviour
Sermon Title: “Duty – Honor – The Saviour” ( KJV spelling to be sure )
– Martyr hystory (quoting some from the Foxes Book of Martyrs)

– Laurentius (aka Saint Lawrence) (uh oh does he know he is praising a Catholic?)
– Michael Sattler (Anabaptist) (uh oh a former catholic monk, but, but, the Baptists never came out of the
Catholic Church they were always Baptist?? How can this be? )
– Anabaptists (praising the Anabaptists)
– Wm Carey ( Uh oh Carey was a reformed Baptist, i.e. Calvinist; though no mention of this was made)
– David Livingstone
– EJ Cooper
– Christ is at the head of this long line of saints robed in white
– Being in Church to hear the word of God preached on Sunday Nights instead of being at home (+1 being in church )
– Church comes before sports
– God’s people are to be in the house of God ( every time the doors are open. Outward performance shows how right you are with God. )
– Faithfulness to the choir if you are in the choir (more performance sanctification.)
– Standards according to Titus 2 11-12 proof text (This is the proof test to end all proof test on how Christians are to live separate from the world and they should all look just like Independent Fundamental Baptists.)
– Separation ( means to look like a good Independent Fundamental Baptist)
– Wonder why more are not surrendering to Full time Christian service ( This means that there is a numbers gap in the IFB movement, They are losing numbers and the number of wide-eyed preparation KYH hair jelled preacher boys fawning over their spiritual hero and jockeying for the #1 position at the
head of the line is declining.)
– Full on assault of Calvinism ( The Sovereignty of God in relation to Election, and salvation is in direct conflict with the IFB, man made, soulwinning / church growth programs. This “fad” is cutting into the IFB numbers and they are running scared so they are in an “all out” assault against Calvinism. And anything that looks like the Sovereignty of God is labeled Calvinism)
*quote of the evening*
“Nobody ever became a Calvinist by reading the Bible.”
– Calvin became a Calvinist by reading after that Roman Catholic Augustine
– Calvin wanted to kill the Anabaptists, so how on earth can you carry his name?
– Internet shot/ quote: “I don’t understand how professing believers can get on the internet and run down every good ministry that stands for soul-winning and holiness. I thank God that if they are saved they are going to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ and find that every word of their blog was kept, and they will give an answer to it.” (A shot at SFL?? Preachers would do well to remember everthing they said in the pulpit is also being preserved and the will give and answer as well. )
– more should surrender to full time service
– William Booth
(a mere two verses produced all of this)
Close the service with an altar Call
/end day one