I’m fighting a cold and will not try to talk for an hour on the hangout on air. I’ll announce one for next week when we’ll continue the study of Daniel.
Also, Dr. Herold Weiss has agreed to join me again for an interview on Paul’s eschatology. We will shortly be releasing his new book Meditations on the Letters of Paul.
On the Energion Hangout tonight I’ll be hosting Dr. Bruce Epperly and Dr. Allan Bevere to discuss salvation in Christian theology and the terms I’ve listed. Doubtless many others will come up.
The Energion Discussion Network resource page for this discussion is Soteriology. Click here for the Google+ Event Page.
I’ll be joining Chris Eyre and Elgin Hushbeck on Today’s Global Christian Perspectives:
https://www.facebook.com/Energion/posts/1275159415833282
EDN = Energion Discussion Network.
Today’s post is by yours truly and titled In the Embrace of Change.
As owner of Energion Publications, I’m putting a great deal of the company marketing efforts and dollars into building up that site, it’s sister site Nurturing Creativity, and our social media this year. We’re working hard to post high quality content there and we’re inviting discussion. Watch for the Giveaway emblem there, as every comment earns you a chance to win a free book.
Salvation: Who and How? You can get more details by following the link.
I’ve posted the event for my study on eschatology tonight. I’ll be looking at Isaiah for at least two sessions, the first focused on the servant passages as an exercise in interpretation, and the second on the language of the latter chapters and how it is incorporated into apocalyptic and in turn into our eschatology.
YouTube:
My post is very late, so I expect I won’t have a live audience tonight at all (they’re always very small), but still I need to provide the link for those who watch later. There will be some interesting connections tonight with my discussion with Steve Kindle (and his book I’m Right and You’re Wrong) on the video below:
You can grow old, die, and become a legend in the time it takes me to watch a movie following its release. So don’t wait for me! Dave Black has seen the movie Woodlawn and has dutifully commented on his blog, and had his remarks posted on Alvin Reid’s blog. Since Dave was (actually) an (actual) Jesus freak, whereas I can make no such claim, it’s likely that he knows something about the subject.
Well, the church isn’t new, except to us. We’re changing our church membership from First United Methodist Church of Pensacola to Chumuckla Community Church (a United Methodst congregation). I want to make sure you know that this is a move to, not a move from. First UMC is doing many things to be a witness to Jesus in their community and to serve others. I have enjoyed my many opportunities to teach while I was there.
Recently I was invited to teach a Sunday School series at Chumuckla Community Church. The first day I was there I started to feel that there was something there that I should try to be a part of. Over the course of the five weeks I taught (and I preached once), this feeling got stronger. I also found that Jody was feeling the same thing.
The problem for me was that there are some things happening in the education department at First UMC that I have hoped to see for a long time. Was this the time to be moving on? Then in succession I found that my very small regular Sunday School class (I’m absent guest teaching frequently, and they don’t meet when I’m gone) would very quickly find roles in the new programs. I also received a fall schedule which showed the abundance of resources at First UMC and how well they were being deployed by the new education chair (Joe Taylor) and the new Director of Christian Education, Lisa Bond.
I hadn’t imagined that I was essential to the new programs, but I had felt that I should support things that I had talked about and prayed for over the years I’ve been there.
So Jody and I are now attending a new church, and we’re hoping to be very active participants in ministry there. This church is about the same distance from us north as First UMC was south, so we still have a bit over a half hour drive.
I had thought that I was unlikely to transfer to another United Methodist congregation. This is not due to the various doctrinal controversies that are occupying everyone’s attention right now. Rather, it is due to polity. If I had my own way, I’d probably join or start a house church and meet with a smaller number of people. But unless I discern very poorly (always a possibility), God has other plans right now.
There are enormous opportunities to be the Body of Christ in the community of Chumuckla and the surrounding area. Pray for Jody and for me that we will find and answer God’s call for us in this church.
I met Dr. Agatha Thrash back in 1974 when I went to stay with my brother-in-law Ted Nick and my sister Betty Rae. I managed the Country Life Natural Food Store (it was not then a restaurant) for nearly a year. Well, I was manager and sole worker. I didn’t really get to know Dr. Agatha very well, but I’d have lunch with Dr. Calvin Thrash on a regular basis.
I note that I never really connected, and indeed my life has gone very far from the sort of life style upheld at Uchee Pines Institute (then Yuchi Pines). I’m no longer Seventh-day Adventist which puts me multiple steps for self-supporting SDA programs and institutions.
But I do want to highlight a paragraph from the article on Dr. Agatha Thrash in Adventist Today:
As a pathologist, Thrash had a goal to establish a large lab to process tests for doctors throughout the region. But when she became an Adventist, “Jesus got a hold of her and said ‘I have a different way I want you to go, not just making a lot of money. I want you to change lives.’ And she did.”
I would note that my father also worked in self-supporting Adventist institutions, as medical director of Wildwood Sanitarium and Hospital. By the time I was working at Uchee Pines, he was a missionary in Guyana, South America.
It was an interesting year I spent at Uchee Pines (still can’t get used to the new spelling/pronunciation!). I was very young, but also a member of staff, so I spent a year as neither fish nor fowl. Yet the Drs. Thrash still had a significant impact on my life. I know those who survive her will find peace in the certain hope of the resurrection.
