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Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

Wondering What to Think of Mel Gibson

It seems that celebrities can fall in and out of favor with Christians. Or rather with Christian media or culture, I haven’t figured out who decides the correct opinion on people.

In general, a celebrity is embraced by Christians once news gets out of his conversion. “Hey, we got So-and-so now!” But since he’s human, and in the spotlight, he will mess up somehow and then will no longer be the trendy poster-boy for American Christianity. We shouldn’t be so fickle, and I hope that in general any new Christian can find a local church that will support and encourage new believers through whatever problems they have.

In this particular case of Mel Gibson though, it seems his popularity within Christianity has had more ups and downs than anyone else.

It starts out with his background: a movie actor who was raised Catholic. Okay, we’ll take that.
Wait, he makes R-rated movies? Never mind, that’s bad.
But he’s making a movie about Jesus. And it’s faithful to the source material? Ok, that’s good.
Did you see he got a DUI? That’s not good.
And he made disparaging remarks about Jews? That’s not good either, what’s wrong with this guy?
He apologized for that though. Well, apologizing is a Christian trait, so that’s good.

Mr. Gibson may have been in and out of the news in the decade or so since I wrote the first draft, but I haven’t kept up. If he has, it’s certainly not been to the level it was back then.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

Other religions have official pilgrimages, and the Jews in the time of the Bible had to go to Jerusalem for certain annual festivals, but Christianity is a little more decentralized, so it has multiple unofficial pilgrimages. I’ve been on a couple of them, keep track and see how high a score you get (one point per destination).

• Israel – tying into the Biblical pilgramages to Jerusalem, this is the most spiritual of the Christian pilgrimage options. Most people opt for a Bible tour – seeing the places mentioned in the Bible, and hopefully learning something in the process. I’ve experienced this only vicariously, by watching videos. That method is worth half a point, by the way.
• Colorado Springs – this is a close second because of all the ministries there. You can visit headquarters for Compassion International, Focus on the Family, and the Navigators.
• Northern Kentucky – this is a close third because only an hour apart from each other are both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. Get your fill of Genesis in this part of the country.
• Vatican City – this is a controversial one, because hard-core Catholics are probably considering this an official pilgrimage and hard-core Protestants are probably considering it heresy to give any attention to the Vatican. There’s a lot of church history there, and in surrounding Rome as well, so you can get something out of it no matter your affiliation.
• Up North – I used to think “going up north” was a Michigan thing, but people in southern Minnesota go north to relax/escape/vacation also, so I’m just going to apply the term to everyone. Since the location of the temple changed from Jerusalem to each believer’s body, you are holy no matter where you go. And thus anywhere you go could be a pilgrimage. You could push it and say anywhere anywhere, but I prefer anywhere that’s not work.

That last one may have been a stretch, but lists are required to have either 3, 5, 7, or 10 items. I had only 4 and that was not going to cut it. Any places I forgot?

No, I didn’t misspell the name of the guy from South Africa. I’m just providing a mandala of the name “Nelson”.

But, so that those of you who were hoping to see a picture of Nelson Mandela are not disappointed, here is a Nelson Mandela Mandala

And I expect that some others of you are hoping to see a picture of the other famous Nelson.

That’s right – it’s a Willie Nelson Mandala. Not to be confused with a Willie Nelson Mandela mandala, that’s below. And Willie Nelson Mandela has to have been the answer to Wheel of Fortune for the category Before and After. If not, I will be disappointed.

That’s all the combinations of Nelsons I could think of for now. Real Nelsons, not cartoons.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a church that fills out pew-by-pew attendance forms, but a decade or two ago it was not uncommon for certain churches to keep an attedance registry in each pew.

In part of the service (usually during the announcements), the congregation would be instructed to have the person on the end of the pew take the attendance sheet, fill out their info, and pass it to the next person. Then the ushers would collect them all and in theory someone would look at them later. Usually that person would be the church secretary.

On some occasions, I would visit my brother’s church. No, he didn’t own it, it was the church he attended. I had to make sure I sat upstream of him so I got the attendance form first. Because if he got it first, he would fill out his information correctly but then also fill out my information.

Now if you can’t picture the church attendance registry form in your head, you need to picture that there is a line for name and address and phone number, and then there are checkboxes for things like “I am a visitor” and “I would like more information about the church” and “Please contact me about church membership” and various other options. All of which my brother would mark for me.

In this case, we both knew the church secretary (one of my other brothers), so I knew it would go nowhere. But he would also do the same thing in other churches, so I had to be on my guard – check the pew for an attendance book, grab it first or sit between him and the book.

Other times, if relatives weren’t visiting the church, my brother would make up names for the people in his pew. He’d get the number right, so the church attendance figures would not be off, but instead of his name he’d put Clark Kent, or Ronald Reagan, or Barry Sanders, or whatever. Just to provide some amusement to the church secretary during a probably otherwise dreary task.

What was fun was when my one brother forgot to tell my other brother that he wouldn’t be working in the church office that week. Then the backup secretary would have to sort through the attendance records and have to figure out why they didn’t notice Clint Eastwood was in the congregation that week.

I just watched Encanto last weekend, so I have that going through my head. And one thing that popped into my head during the movie was something like this:

Not that I ever saw that other movie, but I heard enough references and saw enough memes to figure it out.

This is a quiz to test your knowledge of both the Bible and the maternity ward.

What do those two things have in common? A lot of Greek/Latin/Roman names.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the maternity ward section of a hospital, but having been there a few times I picked up on some common terms.

This quiz is in a simple multiple choice format. I’ll present 4 choices – A through D – and you pick the term that is not from the Bible but rather is from the maternity ward.

On your marks.

Get set.

Go.

Set 1:
A. Galatians
B. Ephesians
C. Philippians
D. Colustrum

Set 2:
A. Macedonia
B. Pergamum
C. Lycaonia
D. Meconium

Set 3:
A. plains of Shinar
B. isle of Patmos
C. medium of Endor
D. score of Apgar

Set 4:
A. 1st and 2nd Corinthians
B. 1st and 2nd Thessalonians
C. 1st and 2nd Chronicles
D. 1st and 2nd Episiotomies

And… pencils down. That’s it for the quiz. Please exchange papers with the classmate next to you and we’ll grade them now.

The answers are: 1 D, 2 D, 3 D, and 4 D.

I hope you all did well. A passing score of at least 60% can qualify for Continuing Education Credits, please grab a form for that on the way out if you need it.

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

The number one biggest fear that people have is public speaking. That’s not mine though.

Mine is that I’ll e called up to the front of the church to demonstrate the motions to a song, mainly because I don’t like doing the motions but also because I probably don’t know them very well.

This is not so much of a problem now, as grown-up hymns don’t have motions like the kids’ songs do. But you never know when they might break out “Deep and Wide” on a Sunday morning.

And if they did, anyone up front will be immortalized, as the services are streamed and recorded, so the whole world can watch your motions on the internet for as long as the internet exists, in theory.

It’s not a comforting thought.

In case you’re wondering, “Deep and Wide” is a perennial favorite of the leaders of the kids’ program. Because then, the third time around, after people have started to develop muscle memory, they change the words to “Wide and Deep” and try to catch people off guard.

And I haven’t sung this song in decades, but it stuck with me: “Father Abraham”. Even as a kid, this seemed a rather worthless song as far as lyrics went. It was obvious the point of this song was to make kids exercise.

Anyway, I did my time. Now I’m old enough I think I don’t need to worry about it – I get to take my kids to the kids’ program and watch them have fun with the motions. Carry on the tradition.