Battle Cry Stuff

This is a post about a topic about which i am entitled to say little. The issue is Aquire the Fire and particularly their Battle Cry events. The reason i'm unqualified is because i've never attended any of them. But i am developing an opinion nonetheless, based on what i'm hearing from others who have attended, and based on what i see in their advertising. Their advertizing turns me off with its near-promises of dramatic revival if you just get your teens to the event, but it is, of course, still possible that if i took my teens there would be dramatic revival. I've never tried it. But a lot of other youth workers have and my doubtful vibes have been reinforced by their comments. Honestly, i'm not sure i've ever heard a completely positive review of Battle Cry or Aquire the Fire from a youth worker.

Anyway, for anyone who's trying to make up their own mind, or who needs to be able to quote a couple of other youth workers when defending their decision not to attend, here are some links to some blog entries that i found on this very topic, all of them (if i remember correctly) by people who have actually attended the events and know more than i do about what they're talking about.

http://doctorheadly.wordpress.com/2007/05/17/fuel-for-the-battle/

http://timschmoyer.com/2007/05/17/battle-cry-is-more-like-battle-screaming/

http://living4jc.livejournal.com/68761.html

http://sandyssayings.typepad.com/sandys_sayings/2007/03/battle_cry.html

A lot of these refer to Planet Wisdom as an alternative, which i've also never attended, and some of the youth workers i talk to personally highly reccommend Dare 2 Share, which i've also never been to. So i can't reccommend either of these either, but they might be worth checking out.

You might be a pastor if . . .

. . . you've discovered that "incarnational" isn't recognized by your spell-checker.

Read "A Generous Orthodoxy"

Last week on my week off i attended my own private theology conference with Brian McLaren by immersing myself in his book and wolfing it down until finished. I wont' write an extended reveiw but it was very thought provoking in a very good way. He pushes the edges of what many conservative Christians (like myself) believe, but he really makes you see things in a new light. If i try to start hitting the highlights i'll write far longer than i have time to because it would be so hard to do justice to . . . well i can't even really describe what he does without taking forever to do it. He makes you think. And i highly reccomend it, especially for pastors.

You might be a true Christian if . . .

Ok, I hope it's not blasphemous or irreverent or immature of me, but i actually find these quite funny! I found them on exchristian.net, a profoundly anti-Christian website, so the author was most likely not "laughing with us," but i think it would do us good to see ourselves for a moment as many non-Christians see us. And i think they're hilarious!

1. You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.


2. You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.


3. You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.


4. Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, animals and trees!


5. You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.


6. You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (a few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is just a few generations old.


7. You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs (excluding of course those in all rival sects) will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."


8. While modern science, history, geology, biology, physics and textual scholarship fail to convince you that the Bible may be less than reliable, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" is all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.


9. You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that small percentage to be evidence enough that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE rate was simply God saying "No."


10. You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history, but still call yourself a Christian.

from http://www.exchristian.net/exchristian/2007/05/you-might-be-true-christian-if.html