Ministry Employment

I am so frustrated with people who advertise about church work or whatever. It's really annoying. The only decently paying jobs want 5 years experience and an MA or some seminary degree, but they'll never pay off your loan so they'll never hire anyone. Half the people who put out the advertisements can't even spell their own advertisements. One was looking for a bilingual person who "understand both English and Spanish." These churches ask so much of people looking to go into youth ministry and they want a pastor to be educated, an administrator, set a budget, organize a youth program or just even start one part time with the possibility of it growing into full time. Somehow, getting youth to your church is not going to increase your budget, at least not high school students anyway. How can churches not realize this, it's pretty unlikely that if the church is 50 and you grow the youth group that the rest of the church is going to grow too unless you wait ten years until all the kids are tithing adults who become members... which won't happen if the church is only 50 there's probably a reason for it (ie. the congregation or the pastor). Most churches kill their youth pastor with loads of responsibilites that have nothing to do with ministry and they pay them nothing almost and act like the pastor doesn't have anything to do anyways. I would like some church try and coherce me into becoming their youth pastor, tell me why I would be good for them. It's ridiculous that these little church committees run around looking for the most charismatic personality they can find with no brains just to attract people like church is supposed to be a tele-evangelized program. The most annoying thing in searching for jobs is when they advertise "looking for a Spirit-filled..." what does that even mean? They probably don't even know what that looks like. I think I'm going to learn to drive a bus or something, forget church work, I'd rather just lead a Bible study at home or something, do my own thing. Why don't church's advertise "looking for a youth pastor who will grow the youth and teach them what you've learned in Bible College, do what it takes, just don't be a heretic or mistreat the Bible or our tradition." I think churches and church boards today have a real power trip over youth ministry thinking that Bible College graduates are incompetent or something. And what is up with the age thing too? I have seen so many church advertisements saying that the youth pastor should be between 20-30? Is this just because Robb Bell and what's his name down at the purpose driven church are that age? I hate looking for jobs, I get depressed just looking at the sort of advertisements and what sort of pastors everyone wants. On the plus side I'll be graduating soon with a BA in Theology... now what do I do? I think I'll get a liscense to drive a semi or something.

Tainted Water Scandal

Today my fish died in a tragic water changing/tank cleaning. I went to clean their tank because it was in desperate need of a cleaning and after I had finished I noticed that our smallest fish wasn't doing so well and began to swim sideways. Well eventually the smallest one died in the next couple minutes and then a little while after that our largest fish had begun to do the same thing, (swim sideways). Well I didn't have any time to mess around with them because I had to go to work, by the time I got back home again, the two remaining fish had died. I'm a little annoyed because I'm certian it's the water in our apartments and a little sad too because I hate it when anything dies because I did something wrong, I should have just left it. Davidson Apartment's water has been kind of strange lately, Walter's water was a little yellow earlier and I think something happened recently that we haven't really been told about to change our water. Anyways, unfortunately it killed our fish and now Arius, Pelagius, and "tink-tink" (named after tinkerbell because we got it at the Jr/Sr Banquet) are all gone. Unfortunately my parents will never get to see my fish, they're coming this friday. It will be neat to see them again, I haven't seen them since Natalie and I were just married which was almost nine months ago; I'm excited for them to meet my teachers. Well, back to school work I guess... I think I will get turtles next :o
~Christopher J.

Done a Little, a Lot More to go

So I have a bunch done so far, the presentation's done, I wonder if I'll get a grade for that or if it was just a formality. Right now I don't care if I do get a grade for it because I really don't like doing presentations, I get so nervous doing them and I forget a lot of what I wanted to say as soon as I get up there. It's so ridiculous, I'm always more comfortable at the end of a presentation then I am at the beginning, I hate that. You'd think with all the presentations I do over the school year I'd get better at giving them. It was pretty fun that Clorisa, the Lewis' daughter came, she's only in grade 11 and didn't really have a clue what was being said, but she understood a bit of it at the beginning. Well, I have about half of my world religions homework to complete, a portion of my CMFX and a bit of my Youth Issues class still left to go. As well I still have to go over my big paper probably at least 2 more times. I'm not sure though, I'd like to add a bit more to my conclusion and critique. AHH so much, only a few days left. It's Natalie's birthday on saturday (grad day), I don't know if we'll have time to do anything for her birthday, it's going to be so busy. (I still need to figure out what to do for that, maybe I'll send her to France).
Christopher J.

Situational Eschatology: How Dispensationalism Became Fundamental

 

Well, I'm getting it done, It's not getting done fast, but it's getting done, Here's another exerpt from my paper of doom:
For Darby, the invisible church or body of Christ is distinctively heavenly in nature. The union shared by believers was also an eschatological tension held by Darby. While the invisible church or body is present on earth there is a distinction between the Jew and the Gentile, however, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. Darby writes that this union with Christ is never cited as taking place on earth but in heaven, so that since believers are not truly in Christ until heaven, they are only unified by the Spirit. Since heaven isn't on earth, believers are bound by the dispensations between Christ's first coming and His second.
Well, I think that pretty acurately describes the dispensational system as I have been able to understand it. I hope my little add up above is cool enough, I think it's catchy, I like the background photo.
Christopher J.

Exerpt from my paper

Here's an exerpt from what I've been working on right now.

The foundations of Darby’s Dispensational system lie within his Plymouth Brethren views on the state of the Church. Like all Plymouth Brethren after him, Darby rejected the formal office of clergy and wrote that Christians should and do have the ability and commission to preach and do not require any earthly ordination. “The leadership was then still as the exercise of a gift (Rom. 12.8) without having become a regular charge.”
Perhaps one of the more striking and more important doctrines of Darby concerned the church and individual Christian’s role as being the temple or house of God. The church takes on two forms, one being the visible administrative church, and then the church as a body on the earth. Darby wrote that “when there is an attempt at displaying the position and unity, there will always be mess and failure.” Essentially Darby felt that the church is failing with its position of being the house of God because it tries to display that God it present in the Church; “God will not take such a place with us.” The Church is not something that can by synthesized by membership or ordination. Rather, membership or ordination comes through the spirit and the church is something that the believer is brought into, not something that the believers create as a result of getting together. The nuance is significant because it gives justification for the Brethren ecclesial structure and it rejects a formal high church ecclesial structure. The formal church may function without any believers, but the body of Christ functions through the believers who are unified under the spirit. The body cannot be formally governed.

I did a copy past thing from my paper, unfortunately none of the footnotes carried over. If you want them you better come to my presentation.

A while ago I had a conversation with my old pastor saying that I've been wanting to be involved in the teaching in some way. I remember him telling me that it's not so simple as that and giving me some long winded speech why I couldn't do anything. I think in reality there was no good reason since we were a community church with plymouth brethren roots. If he knew more about the Brethren then what he claimed to be defending I guess he wouldn't have had much of a leg to stand on. Unfortunately I'm only doing this paper just now to find out that he should have said yes if he really wanted to be true to the Brethren roots that our church had.

~Christopher J.

Paper of Doom!

 

I've decided that giving my presentation the title 'situational eschatology' is a bit too cliche, although who knows, maybe it's clever. I think I will call it the Paper of Doom! just kidding. So, as you can see I'm getting this paper done, slowley but surely it will get done. I think over the summer I may just have to quadruple the size of this paper and get it published though, cause this ended up being way more work then I expected and I hate just the fact that the more I get into this the less focused this paper becomes and the more broad my thesis becomes as a result. Well it'll get done eventually. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this....

~Christopher j.