Category: Administrative

I am back in town after a week near Niagara Falls, NY. I’ll be returning to posting in a hurry. For an explanation, look here.

Christian Carnival CXLIII has been posted at the Romans 15:4 project. It again looks like some fun stuff and I will try to post some particular gems over on my Threads blog.

Thanks to Mick for an excellent carnival post!

I’ve occasionally posted copies of my wife’s devotionals or links to them, but she will not be a contributor to this blog. It’s still not really a “group blog” but I do have a couple of guests posting, and now my wife.

Jody is the author of Daily Devotions of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God, an RN with a variety of experience including 12 years with hospice, and also a teacher. She will bring some occasional alternate flavor to the blog.

Note: Chris Eyre, who is also a contributor, will be returning at some point. I expect his series discussing Elgin Hushbeck’s Consider Christianity series will probably extend over a period of months.

I’m appending my dad’s obituary to this post in its fully expanded version. Various papers published various portions.

I greatly appreciate the expressions of sympathy and support from the comments here. I’m still in Niagara Falls until Saturday, though a good portion of my business happens on the internet so I’m back to working some. I have considered posting my comments from the funeral, which have started to circulate via e-mail amongst the family, but I’m not comfortable doing so thus far. I spoke from Hebrews 11:32-12:3 about continuing to add to the story of faith through an active life.

The obituary will give you a small glimpse of the kind of life my dad lead. After all was written and the funeral complete, I was told that he asked to pray with the surgical team before he went in for his final surgery, which was his habit when he was in practice, so he still was keeping “with it” even at that point.

Herewith the obituary.

Raymond D. Neufeld, MD, born January 14, 1920, went to sleep in Jesus on October 8, 2006 at 5:30 AM, in the full hope of the resurrection.

He was born in Waldheim, Saskatchewan, Canada to Jacob and Anna Neufeld, the youngest of 10 brothers and sisters. He was predeceased by sisters Mary Neufeld, Anne Feyerabend, Viola Neufeld, Elizabeth Neufeld, Esther Klam, Catherine Blair, Nettie Williams, and brothers Don Neufeld, and Henry Neufeld, son-in-law Robert Schwab, Jr., and grandson James Webb. He is survived by his wife of sixty years Myrtle Blabey Neufeld, daughters Betty Nick and Patricia Schwab, sons Dr. Robert (Aydah) and Henry (Jody), 11 grandchildren, 4 great grandchildren (one more on the way), and many nieces and nephews.

Dr. Ray dedicated his life in service to his Lord, his church, and his community. He served throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Mexico and Guyana. Within his lifetime he saw electrical power, telephone lines, and the automobile introduced to his home town, but in his last years he enjoyed spending time on the internet and continued ministering to others by corresponding with prison inmates.

His legacy in the first generation includes Betty, retired elementary school teacher, Dr. Robert, chief of cardiology at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, Patricia, obstetrical and NICU nurse, and Henry, Bible and Biblical Languages teacher. In the second generation, it includes musicians, worship leaders, pastors, artists, professional baseball players, medical professionals, engineers, and teachers.

Services will be held at 10:30 AM, Tuesday October 10, 2006 at Niagara Falls Memorial Park Cemetery. In lieu of flowers contributions may be made to Adventist Frontier Missions, P. O. Box 346, Berrien Springs, MI 49103-0346 for the project of: Tim and Dawn Holbrook (son John).

Christian Carnival CXLIII has been posted at the Romans 15:4 project. It again looks like some fun stuff and as usual my submission was from my Participatory Bible Study Blog, but I will try to post links to some particular gems here.

Thanks to Mick for an excellent carnival post!

I’m out of town again, this time unplanned. My father passed away early this morning, and I was just able to make it in time to be with him while he still could recognize me. The funeral will be on Tuesday, and I doubt I will be blogging much until then.

I will certainly blog a bit about my dad’s legacy as a doctor and retired missionary after Tuesday. In the meantime I will probably be a bit less active.

Christian Carnival CXLII has been posted at Nerd Family. It looks like a pretty rich source of good posts. As usual, I’ll be posting some of my favorites over on Threads from Henry’s Web.

Thanks to Nerd Family for hosting and for an excellent post.

When writing research papers students are frequently warned against using secondary sources. If one must use a secondary source, one must be certain that it’s reliable, and indicate the actual source. Scholars get in the habit of using primary sources as often as possible.

But in spirituality, I notice that many people tend toward the secondary. Particularly in Christian circles, many people today prefer to read books by modern authors that deal with scriptural concepts. They are not just one step away, such as reading a commentary or other expository work, but several steps away, reading a book about Christian living, for example, that claims to be built on a scriptural foundation.

Now I don’t have a problem with reading books about spirituality and spiritual experiences by modern authors. But what does surprise me is that so many Christians claim to follow the Bible and so few actually read and study it for themselves. Frequently in teaching Sunday School classes or weekend programs I’ll read from a passage, or have someone in the class read, and then ask people for their thoughts on a particular point. Inevitably someone reads a note from their study Bible and presents that as the answer to whatever question I asked.

There are many study Bibles, and they don’t all agree. I want to ask each person this: “What do you believe that means?” Now I’m not suggesting that experts aren’t helpful. They can be. But in the end a person needs to know what he or she thinks, and how that thought relates to the text. I recall a number of times when people have brought me a passage from a commentary or a note from their study Bible and asked me just how it was that the presumably expert commentator got what they said from the text on which they were commenting. In many cases I have to respond that I have no idea. As far as I can tell, the text says one thing, and the commentator says something else.

Even more frightening to me is the tendency of people to catch me in the hallways of the church and ask Biblical questions. I don’t mind being questioned, but I do mind it when people expect a one sentence answer, and I am very concerned when they simply accept what I say without checking further for themselves. I know that at least in some cases the answers are never checked, because I’ve gotten them back several generations removed in other classes.

The point of this rant is to make two major points:

1. If you believe the Bible contains, conveys, or is God’s word, then you need to actually read the Bible and not just books about it, or distantly derived from it.
2. If you are going to read the Bible for yourself, you’re going to have to take the time to actually read it, study it, meditate on it, ask questions about it, share it with others, and get input.

All this is going to take more than five minutes per day, and it will require you to say “I don’t know” from time to time. People don’t like it when I say “I don’t know” because they feel that if I don’t know after the amount of time I’ve studied, not to mention reading Hebrew and Greek to which they attach excessive importance, how will it be possible for them to ever know?

You can consult experts. They are most useful in providing background and connection information, but they are also very valuable in checking your own positions against the work of others. They provide a kind of accountability to your scriptural interpretation. But in the end you need to study for yourself, and move beyond the bounds of what others suggest you study.

(For suggestions see the pamphlet I Want to Study the Bible.)