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Our Daily Thread 3-1-14

Good Morning!

It’s Saturday!!! 🙂

And it’s March 1st already, but it’s looking just like February on the east coast.

Today’s header photo is from Peter. If I lived there I’d be fishing. 🙂

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On this day in 1692, in Salem Village, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Salem witch trials began. Four women were the first to be charged.

In 1781 the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation. 

In 1803 Ohio became the 17th U.S. state.

In 1845 President Tyler signed the congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas.

In 1867 Nebraska became the 37th U.S. state.

And in 1954 five U.S. congressmen were wounded when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives. 

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Quotes of the Day

“A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.”

“The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.”

Robert Bork

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Today is Glenn Miller’s birthday.

Today is also Jimmy Fortune’s birthday. This is a fun one. 🙂

And it’s Frederic Chopin’s too. Played by Arthur Rubenstein and the London Symphony Orchestra.

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QoD?

What do you like best about March?

115 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 3-1-14”

  3. that’s quite the musical selection, wish I could listen.
    oh, great you have daylight savings time coming. That means that Aj will post at 9pm my time instead of 10pm. I might actually get to be first on a night other than Saturday.
    Let’s see the daffodils must be blooming somewhere in March.
    Here, the end of the month will be the end of Term 3 and that means a 2 week break.
    Easter is coming, though not in March this year.

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  11. Last night I was reading a transcript of a phone call between several people, including Gary Smalley and Earl Radmacher and two of Bill Gothard’s secretaries, about how they must coordinate all that they knew about the man: his grossly bad theology, his pattern of misusing secretaries while publicly presenting himself as the ultimate virgin, and so forth. This was from 1983!! Thirty-one years ago! How many more people have been hurt in those 31 years, how many more lies disseminated, how much false doctrine taught, because it somehow wasn’t stopped in 1983?

    Bill Gothard himself has been put on administrative leave, but as far as I can see the organization is still going strong. This is from the current website, a conference for this coming year, the bio of one of the speakers. Note how this philosophy attempts to keep grown men children:
    “When Chris attended his first Basic Seminar in 1986, he was 21 years old. He sat on the front row. At the end of the Seminar he went to the book tables and said, ‘I want one of everything.’ This came to about $600. He took the resources home and began studying them. In 1992 [in other words, at age 27] he asked his father for permission to work at IBLP Headquarters. His father said ‘Work for me for ten years and then you can do that.’ That fall, Chris was married. [But, presumably, still committed for ten years to the promise he made to his dad while he was still single and, in Gothard’s theology, under his father’s authority.] He has learned valuable lessons about marriage, working with his eleven children, and business principles. He shares these with thousands of couples in many nations.”

    A couple people affiliated with the ministry (at least one on the speaker’s page) says the following: “[he] had just graduated from Bible College and he asked his friend, “How come we have not heard this until now?” Because it isn’t in the Bible!!

    Here’s the link for the current conferences. Surprisingly to me, there’s quite an emphasis on what we’d consider a signs-and-wonders feel (healing, guaranteed wealtth): http://ati.iblp.org/ati/events/regionalconferences/

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  12. And this is an absolutely astounding misunderstanding of the purpose of Scripture: “The ATI curriculum uses the teachings of Jesus Christ, given in the Sermon on the Mount, as the primary source for teaching linguistics, law, history, science, and medicine. This approach makes ATI unique as it builds education on the foundation of faith in Christ and understanding His ways. This equips fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters to view every aspect of life from a Biblical perspective.” from http://ati.iblp.org/ati/about/

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  13. There used to be a joke going around something like this.
    A mountain lion came int the camp and chewed Roy Rogers’ new boots.
    Roy went out and shot the mountain lion.
    Roy loput the lion on Trigger and rode back to camp.
    Dale, when she saw Roy, said,’
    “Pardon me Roy’
    Is that the cat that chewed your newshoe?”

    🙄
    😈
    Booooooooooo

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  15. The Bill Gothard stuff is all over FB. It hurts me that people have been hurt by his teachings. I was probably taught some of his garbage in school without knowing it. In middle and high school a lot of my teachers came from Bob Jones University.

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  16. What I like about March
    1. It is March
    2. The Time Change—I Love having more daylight at the end of the day after work
    3. The Eastern Shore Art Center’s Outdoor Art Show
    4. I am planning the Ono Island Fish Fry
    5. It means that Spring is coming and I won’t be cold anymore.

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  17. Good Morning…..Peter lives in a very beautiful and charming place…just how close is that river to your property?! I can just imagine sleeping with the windows open in the summer and listening to the river flowing…and I’m trying to imagine this scene with those wonderful trees all fully leaved….just beautiful!
    It’s March and it’s cold. They are reporting that Colorado Springs is in a thick fog with freezing drizzle this morning….at our elevation we have clear skies and no moisture…I think I’ll stay home today and not venture into town 🙂

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  18. Regarding Bill Gothard, putting him on “administrative leave” is same old, same old. This stuff was being investigated in the late 70’s and he was apparently told to resign which he did. He ran the organization from the outside for some months and then was reinstated. When a leader is given absolute power, sin and corruption will not be handled properly. I know of a church where the pastor was very dictatorial and had family members in leadership. He was also know to have a mistress. He didn’t really hide that fact, but no one challenged him on it and forced him out of the church. He had started the church and it was HIS. That being said, every person in that church should have left it and certainly pulled their kids out of the Christian school. He was recently convicted for multiple counts of child molestation. When there is overt and shameless sin, there is more sin than you can even see and Christians should be horrified by it. That’s not judgemental. It’s godly.

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  19. Jo- I live in Missouri and that is the Mississippi River. Illinois is in the background.

    Nancy- My house sits on the bluff about 80 feet above the river and 1/4 mile away. So we can’t really here the river flowing. It’s rather slow here (about 4 knots, I’m told), so even if we stand on the edge we can’t hear anything. But we can hear the tugboats pushing massive barges along the river. And once in a while a passing river boat will play it’s calliope as it passes by town. Maybe someday Mrs L and I will take a river cruise. I think we can get on in St. Louis and either go North to Minneapolis or South to The Big Easy.

    As for the house to the left, it was built in the mid 1800s. There are still several of this style in our town. One is now the funeral home.

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  20. Nice view of Peter’s area in winter with some patches of snow on the ground, the white sky contrasted by the bare tree limbs, and the homes offering shelter from the cold. Do you think of how cold fish must get in winter waters?

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  21. QoD- I like March because of the promise of warmer weather, though Farmer’s Almanac rpedicts 20″ of snow for us this month. According to the forecast, about half of that is supposed to come in the next 36 hours.

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  23. I finally had a chane last night to ask my brother about Gothard. He knew nothing about what all has been revealed. He said he has not done anything with the ministry for a long time. He use to usher at the Atlanta conferences. He remembered psople would pay big bucks to go to the conerences and then be disappointed that Gothard was not there in person. Some were pretty disgruntled about that. He also saw some things over time thst made him not care to be a part of it, but mone of the abuse, just a few questionable things. He did say a deceased lawyer from his present chuch was one who picked up Gothsrd from the airport. My brother did not attend this church back then. He use to sttend Charles Syanley’s church. So I told my brother he’d probably be hearing about this.

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  24. I like that March brings blooms on the Birthday Tree.♡♡♡♡

    March is also good for looking at seed catalogs and making plans for gardens.

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  27. I have ordered my seeds and plan to start them as soon as they arrive, under grow lights. Hope to get them out in the ground but under cover in April. Some of them, not all.

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  28. He who is faithful in little is also faithful in much.

    God looks at the attitude of the heart.

    He has told you oh man, what is good and what The Lord requires of you: to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with you God.

    You will know them by their fruit.

    I’d say that sums up how to evaluate the God-ordained ministries, wouldn’t you?

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  30. Mumsee, I have another book to review on foster care that you may want to read.

    I am reading it on Kindle, and I am not sure you can find a hard copy but you might

    So far it is about younger children who go into the system after being shaken. Pretty heartbreaking, especially how some children get shuffled around by social workers sometimes just for their convenience in going to appointments. Pretty eye-opening as to flaws in the system. I know Georgia has been in major trouble over deaths of children who do not have proper oversight by the DFACs workers..

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  31. ajisuun, I agree with you that administrative leave by Gothard is probably “same old, same old,” or at least that is what the board intends. I’ve been looking around his organizations’ websites, and even under “news” there isn’t a hint of his being on leave. In fact, you can still follow links from their sites to his own website, where he is listed as founder and president. In other words (I gathered) tell those outside the organization that he is “on leave” and hope that is enough to get the dogs off the scent, and also hope that those inside never hear of this. They’re probably being extra cautious about their employees’ access to the internet and the like, hoping it just blows over like it has in the past.

    And apparently his board members are chosen for their loyalty to him personally. Obviously his speakers are chosen from the extreme of the extreme of his followers (most fertile couples aren’t able to have 19 children, so how can he come up with more than one conference speaker who does?!)

    This is a cult. I don’t see any other way of looking at it. He’s a cult leader, and he has followers who are devotedly following him no matter what and other followers who are only 95% there and other followers who are 50%. But the followers who would willingly follow him to hell if that was the way he was leading, those followers are trying to keep it to business as usual, even if that means another administrative leave.

    I do think it’s different now, though. The internet makes it harder to hide. Too many people know now, and the numbers are growing. I don’t think they can sweep it under the rug anymore. I hope they can come up with a criminal case on which the statute of limitations hasn’t run out, honestly, because that would take it out of the board’s hands.

    But as I read this stuff, a lot of the garbage in his teaching is stuff I’ve heard from other people and wondered, “Where on earth did they come up with that one?” And these aren’t people who ever sat under his “ministry,” either. But his reach is pervasive, and poisonous.

    May God allow this time to help us purge the church. This man is an antichrist. He is evil. His teaching his evil, his ability to sweet-talk people into total loyalty is evil, what he has done to many thousands of families is evil, and what he did to young girls under his care is evil. He is a wolf, and the Bible is very clear about shepherds’ responsibility to the flock where wolves are concerned.

    Chas, one of the key points of his teaching has always been that those who attend his seminars aren’t allowed to show others their notebooks. Apparently homeschooling parents aren’t allowed to show other parents the curriculum, either. Somehow he got away with it.

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  32. Nice photo — but it reminded me most of the landscape (and architecture) I’ve seen on visits to NY, PA and NJ during late winter.

    We had a good amount of rain yesterday and are supposed to get some more, off and on, through today and maybe a little into Sunday. We’ll see. But like anonymous-michelle, gardens are dicey out here with our strict water situation.

    In LA we’ve been given designated days we can water (based on odd/even address numbers). I don’t know what happens if a neighbor turns you in for watering on the wrong day. 😦

    As I’ve said before, Gothard’s name sounds familiar to me but I really knew nothing about who he was or what the ministry was about. Sounds like quite a mess.

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  33. If I am not mistaken, my brother said a young lady from his church currently works there. His church is big on homeschooling so that would make sense. So sad. Back in the day when my brother worked as an ursher at the seminars I was always amazed at how he dedicated a full week of bacstion every year to them. I see now the cult like grasp they had on people. And it is helping me better understand some of the ways of my brother.

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  35. Janice, there is no way the child protective services can keep up with their load. They have to pick and choose when to remove children based on availability of foster homes. Then they are in trouble for not removing soon enough. Or they get so many in homes, the workers cannot keep up with who they have placed. Once again, government control is not the solution. It needs to be in the hands of the local community. But people are not into minding other folks’ business and the children are hurt.

    Raising self centered adults is only going to lead to more shaken babies. Babies are not convenient. They don’t cry when it is convenient, they don’t sleep when it is convenient. I will probably get the book as I am addicted to children.

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  36. We had designated watering days here in Atlanta, and I once heard patrol cars would go through the neighborhoods to see if anyone was breaking the law. I really cut down on water I used when we were in the severe drought. It was pretty scary. So glad y’all finally got some rain in CA. We’ve had brown years and green years. Green is preferred.:-)

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  37. Gothard: I have not been paying much attention to the discussion on that. I seem to recall hearing of him when I was a new believer back in the seventies but had no interest in his stuff as it sounded like a money making proposition for somebody. Probably not the best reasoning, but God does seem to have protected me in many ways. I, like Michelle, was not raised by believers so when I became one at about fourteen, I had no guidance. Very little of that until I got married actually. But God was there and He carried me through. He did not throw me out when I did things wrong, He loved me and worked on me as the caring Potter He is. I am forever grateful.

    By the way, I never heard of him through home schooling at all and have been doing that since the mid to late 80’s.

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  38. We’ve had El Nino years where the rains never seem to stop and neighborhoods have flooded. I live in a hilly town and I still remember the story about a woman trying to get in or out of her parked car on a steep hill and being knocked off her feet by the rushing water which carried her to the bottom (I recall that she was OK but terribly shaken).

    Those years can be hard, too. But this has been an unusually long stretch with little or no rain for us in the past few years.

    The rain has stopped for now and there are birds singing everywhere outside (though it’s still cloudy).

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  39. Aji suun, I remember you mentioning that pastor before. It wouldn’t be Jack Hyles, would it? The reason I ask is because a member of that church, John Stancil is on the board of IBLP, Gothard’s organization – and Stancil is as bad as Hyles in his moral record. I agree with you, the administrative leave is just a PR move to get the Christian media groups like World off their backs.

    Chas, what Cheryl says is correct. Gothard’s organization was very cult-like in the recruitment process. Only those who had potential were approached. My father had to shave off his beard in order for our family to be considered for the homeschooling program. Yes, you read that correctly – beards were considered a sign of ungodliness. The only exception was Mennonite families who joined. My father wrote a letter using Scripture to prove beards were perfectly acceptable; but it didn’t change anything. That should have been a warning to my parents, but they were so dazzled in the conferences by the hundreds of young people, dressed in white blouses and navy skirts or pants, who were apparently committed to following God, that they overlooked the seemingly small errors in the teaching.

    It seems the powerful conservative fundamentalist organizations are crashing down all at once – Vision Forum, IBLP/ATI, the investigation going on at Bob Jones now – I know of some fundamentalist churches in Ontario who are being ripped apart by scandal. I was discussing this with my mother yesterday. My thought is that these organization grew powerful in the reaction to the Free Love/Hippie culture in the 60’s and 70’s. Christian parents moved to try to keep their children from being drawn into the culture by becoming ultra-conservative. It backfired horribly. I mentioned a while ago that the church was making things worse by the way it was reacting to the culture rot. This is an example of what I was talking about.

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  40. I was at Sam’s Club close to 7:00 a.m. when they open for business owners. I got supplies for the office. When I talked to a co-worker she said three rolls of toilet paper were gone in the bathroom the clients don’t use in one week. She couldn’t figure ouf what happened to it and suggested we may have a toilet paper bandit. 🙂

    Tax season has many interesting happenings. Even so, I don’t think the toilet paper rolled out the door on its on. 🙂

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  43. It probably is. The storm that is to bring our big snow is the same one giving California its rain.

    Do you think of how cold fish must get in winter waters? I think because they are cold blooded the temperature doesn’t bother them. As long as they can move around, they are fine.

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  45. KBells, yes, ATI has strong ties with the Quiverful movement. The Duggars, of ’19 Kids and Counting’ fame, are members of ATI and use its materials to homeschool. Gothard discourages any form of birth control and encouraged members who had vasectomies or tubal ligations to get them reversed. I remember being in the audience at the annual ATI conference in Knoxville (I always get Nashville and Knoxville mixed up). The Thompson-Boling arena would be packed, and they brought up all the Reversal Children, as they were called, who had been born to parents who had reversal operations, onto the stage and the audience of thousands stood upon their feet and clapped and cheered. [They would do that whenever Gothard came onto the stage as well and he would stand there and let them go on and on. Oh, we should have seen the signs.]

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  46. Sadly people will use this to bash Christians, homeschoolers, pro-lifers,conservatives and anyone else they disagree with who has the slightest thing in common with them.

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  49. That is why the organization should have been dealt with much sooner, and not been given a pass for its ‘minor’ errors. II Peter warns about how the false prophets that come into the church will bring discredit onto the name of Christ:
    “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.” (II Peter 2:1-2)

    By being slow to respond to the heresies and hypocrisies of such organizations, the Church has put itself into the position of looking like it supports them. We accuse the liberal church of being lazy in its interpretation of scripture, but the conservative church has been just as careless. The very worst thing we could do now is to try and sweep it under the carpet in order to protect ourselves.

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  51. Donna, you are correct. In fact, I thought that World, and many of the commenters must have at least attended the Seminars, because I had heard so much rhetoric about the ‘war on families’ from ATI. The idea was that if Christian families produced the most children, while the world aborted and controlled away their children, then the Christians could win the culture war. They forgot one important point, every child is born a sinner and must come to Christ to be saved. The verse, “Raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it” was quoted as proof that it was simply a matter of upbringing to guarantee that your children would be Christians. I have reason to think that many of my peers in the program never actually were confronted with their need of a Saviour.

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  52. KBells, sadly no, Gothard has never allowed himself to be under the authority of a local church and encouraged his followers to be wary of churches. We were to attend churches in order to ‘minister’ to the members, not to fellowship with them. Thankfully, my parents didn’t look at the church in that light, but I know families who left churches whom they felt were hostile to ATI. Some of them formed their own house churches to avoid being influenced by outsiders.

    That is why the internet has really come to the aid of concerned Christians. Before, even though various pastors did condemn the program, the information couldn’t be widespread. Now it can be. Recovering Grace, the website which has been exposing all of this, was started by former ATI students who were concerned about the doctrinal errors they saw. They are Christians who wanted to stop others from being deceived. So, although in one way, this does look bad for Christians, in another sense, every news article written on this subject will have to acknowledge that it was Christians who blew the whistle.

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  53. And knells brings up a point I’d thought of before — accountability. The danger of so many of these para-church ministries is that they exist in and of themselves and are not under any church/denomination oversight.

    I realize that independent churches are very popular with some (though I think the trend is waning, thankfully). But I’m grateful for a church that belongs to a higher body that requires accountability and offers a church governmental system where members can take their grievances and they will be heard — with several levels of appeal available. And it starts with a good board of elders in which a pastor does not have more control than the others in leadership.

    I think ministries like Focus on the Family served a valuable purpose as marriage and family were taking such a beating in the secular culture. But there’s a danger I’ve seen in some churches of elevating marriage and family so much that there’s an imbalance. 😦

    Ministries like the one Gothard led, from the sounds of it, took that to idol-worship status.

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  54. roscuro — He “encouraged his followers to be wary of churches” — wow, major red flag if ever there was one.

    I was involved for many years in Bible Study Fellowship and have a very high regard for what they do. They always encouraged church membership. But among the things that bothered me about the program was the admonition not to share the study notes with anyone outside BSF, including our pastors. ???? That really always nagged at me and I hope they’ve changed that “rule” — I’ve been out of it for some 10 years now.

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  55. I cleaned the kitchen floor. And now it’s raining again. (But smartly I found some long carpet scraps to lay down so hopefully it’ll protect the floor now.)

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  56. House churches also can be a slippery slope. We should always welcome surrounding ourselves with well-grounded and trained elders who are also accountable to those above them.

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  62. Outside. And see? Now they are getting washed and she does not need to do the work! And their hair will be so soft after all of that rain water…

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  65. Very interesting discussion. I appreciate the wisdom of so many of you on accountability and checking everything against Scripture. We’ve spent time in independent churches as well and now, of course are in Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. What I like about the LCMS (I don’t know why the initials are backwards), is the long history of theology and doctrine. If you have any questions, you can just go to the LCMS website and it spells out what the denomination believes and why.

    It seems to me a lot of the rise of the independent churches came about 40 years ago, when so much rebellion was going on and when the Jesus movement was encouraging people to become Christians.

    Many of the people I know who became Christians in that way were discipled and grew in wisdom and I’m thankful for their influence on my life.

    But Roscuro raises and interesting point about those who, fearful of their past, brought their fear into their child rearing. We wanted to believe that if we trained up our children according to what we perceived as God’s plan, that we would have a guarantee of perfect Christian children.

    Bummer about that free will and rebellious nature, no matter how perfect we were as parents (ha!). Many substituted law for grace and here we are . . .

    Pharisees.

    Shocking.

    Roscuro, did you grow up studying Scripture on your own, or were you part of a program to learn whatever was spelled out?

    I came from a tradition of studying Scripture on my own–line by line, book by book. I don’t know if that made me look at “programs” differently or not. I admired my pastors, but always saw them as sinners like me. Perhaps they encouraged me to do that? 🙂

    Our Episcopal priest in CT used to tell us all the time, “don’t take my word for what I’m preaching. You need to examine the scriptures yourself and call me on something that doesn’t make sense.”

    I appreciated that, and have used it as a guideline ever since. The Bible is the ultimate authority.

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  67. Search the Scriptures, interesting concept. I learned that somewhere. Probably from many of the church leaders in the varying churches I have attended, for sure from Scripture. No doubt from my agnostic/atheist/cynical family. God uses those things in our lives to make us more like Him.

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  68. Our pastor frequently says the same thing, michelle. He also cautions us from time to time before the sermon that the reading from the Scripture that went beforehand is infallible; what he says is not.

    We also are part of an old church tradition that has a confession of faith and a catechism which I appreciate and see as doctrinally sound. But those are only secondary sources, the Scriptures are the only infallible word of God.

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  69. Donna, I have found that washing your floor is what causes rain. Washing your car can also cause it. Someone in California should have thought of that months ago.

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  70. I am also wary of independent and non-denominational churches. I am also suspicious of people who jump from church to church. Once when I worked for the Catholic church I was given a book written by a woman who was not only interested in converting but in working with us. The book was mostly criticism of every church and ministry she had ever been involved with, and there were a lot of them. I recommend we not work with her. I said that if we did, we would be in the next book.

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  71. Michelle, on your question about how I grew up. I don’t know how to put all this, but I’ll try. My father came from a very nominal Christian home, was part of the 60’s rebellion and then came to personal saving faith. My mother came from a solid Christian home. The first church I remember attending was associated with a Baptist hierarchy; however, it was mediocre in its commitment to the Scriptures. I don’t mean that the people weren’t Christians, just that they were caught up with the cares of this world. I remember by the time I reached the third/fourth grade Sunday School class, I thought I knew everything about the Bible, because I had heard the same sanitized Bible stories over and over again and rememorized the same memory verses.

    When the church started using a certain style of music, my father found it reminded him of his past and quietly found a more conservative church. It was around that time we were introduced to ATI (not by any fellow church members), which also repudiated the contemporary church music. The feature of the program Cheryl found disturbing, my parents found attractive. The Wisdom Booklets, of which there were about 52, each took a verse or two of the Sermon on the Mount and proceeded to apply of those verses to language, history, social studies and science.

    Sounds good doesn’t it? Except the applications were far fetched (like how to prune fruit trees as the science topic for “A good tree brings forth good fruit”), and there were no grade levels (I studied logarithms around age 12, because it somehow was related to a particular verse). We were encouraged to do Bible studies and memorize scripture, but we were given so much material to filter what we studied through that we couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I remember that I admired Abigail for her courage, until I read in IBLP’s Character Sketches that Abigail had been rebellious for taking action without Nabal’s permission:http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2011/10/a-tale-of-two-abigails-part-two/; I felt deflated and started to stop thinking about the Bible for myself.

    It was a pastor who came to our new church who helped make the difference. Like Michelle’s and Donna’s pastors, his first sermons were about the huge responsibility a teacher of the Bible had, how he must be held to account by the congregation and the dire consequences to him if he perverted the Bible to his own ends. Then, he proceeded to talk about the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification. This was completely opposed to ATI’s emphasis on you, you making vows to read your Bible and pray, you obeying dress codes and behavioural standards, you following those Basic Principles for success.

    We did give our pastor ATI materials to consider – he, wise man, quietly proceeded to throw doubt on the teaching without seeming to attack our convictions. Galatians was the book that finally broke my own legalistic outlook, but my entire family grew almost imperceptible away from ATI, until we finally withdrew. However, there are teachings which have lingered longer, just because their error wasn’t so obvious. The recent revelations are serving to clear the air for us.

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  72. Wow, I am looking at radar for the states and that is quite a line of snow stretching across lots of states.
    My home church where I have attended for 41 years is an independent. It is about 160 years old. We were a Congregational church, but when they no longer held to the inerrancy of Scripture, we split off and became independent.

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  73. Jo, the church that my family moved to is an independent church. The wise pastor recently retired and the church had to call a new pastor. It was slightly scary to have to deal with such a transition with no outside input. We did pray and are praying; but I am also watching this new man like a hawk – I feel very ill at ease but I’m not sure if that is just because ‘once burned, twice shy’.

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  76. On Independent/house churches- The only ones you need to be wry of are those that refuse to acknowledge that there are true Christians in other groups, that they are accountable to other Christians outside of their assembly, and/or are not open to scrutiny by others. I attend a house church, but we are in fellowship with other like minded churches, both denominational and independent. We all realize that we need other believers for accountability. Just as no man is an island, neither is any one assembly of believers.

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  78. I am extremely suspicious of independent churches. Having grown up in an Independent Methodist Church School, and all the legalism and such. I prefer a church I can research and know for certain what their standard beliefs are. I have 4 friends who came through that church school with me and two are now gay men and the other woman claims to be a Buddhist. I am the only one that still is Christian.

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  82. One thing I like about my church is that in the many years I have been going there, (about 30) we have had four pastors. All of them were wonderful, Godly and beloved by the congregation to the point that people worried about the future of the church when they left. However, with each new pastor we have only grown. To me this shows that the church is all about Christ and not the pastor. It is a bad sign for any church or ministry when it is all about one person. That seems to be a problem with this Gothard dude.

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  83. Phos, the pastor I spoke of is just a small, independent Baptist Church pastor in Virginia. I had friends in the church and it was a supporting church until they realized what was going on and left.
    I have been in many independent churches and most of them are fine. The danger comes when everything is left to the pastor. People turn off their minds and follow blindly thinking the pastor is somehow above them. Any pastor seeking complete authority is a huge red flag.

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  84. ~Sigh~ Another Sunday at home due to the weather. Oh, well. God knows. Tie to find a good sermon online. Enjoy your day. BTW- We didn’t get as much snow as predicted, but there is about 6″ out there.

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  85. Any pastor seeking complete authority is a huge red flag.

    Amen to that! Speaking of that, I heard a good reason to avoid the “Son of God” movie- Joel Olsteen recommends it. ‘Nuff said?

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  86. Some of the big children and husband went to that movie yesterday. One said it was the best movie he had ever seen and then proceeded to ask about a number of things that did not quite ring with Scripture. I have not seen it or read about it. But I have read Scripture so was able to help him in a few areas.

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  87. I’m often in a general state of confusion, Peter. 😉 But you knew that.

    Looks like the storm has finally passed for us, though it remains cloudy and the streets are wet. Supposed to get possible showers only today, but knowing Southern California, the sun will probably be shining by the time we leave church.

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  88. We had church cancelled too, third time this year (and third time in the seven years or whatever it is my husband has attended there!). We keep getting weekend storms–every weekend this year so far we have had at least some snow, and several times we’ve had snowstorms.

    But minutes before they made the decision to cancel, I’d made the decision that I had to stay home. I simply couldn’t find a shoe that was going to work on the injured foot. Sandals are a bad choice with several new inches of snow!

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  89. I missed church, too, this morning. I overslept so husband went without me (not sure why he didn’t wake me earlier) But I finished my Daniel homework for tomorrow’s Bible study and my brain is now exploding 🙂

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  91. I missed church last week and the week before (sick kids the first time, and I was sick the second time), but we all made it today. We took two separate vehicles — some of us go earlier to Bible Study, and then hubby brings the youngest two to church an hour later.

    After the service, all the children went home in one vehicle, and hubby and I were on our way to get groceries in the town where we attend church when we had vehicle trouble. We pulled into a parking lot, called 1st Arrow, and after he dropped the younger kids off at home, he came to get us, as it would have been unsafe for us to drive home (about 20 minutes away).

    So now hubby is spending his afternoon trying to fix the Suburban in a cold (the temperature just now reached zero degrees after having been below zero all morning) and windy parking lot.

    I’m thankful that if this had to happen, it happened after church, when it was just my husband and me, and not before church, when hubby was alone with the two youngest children.

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  92. Last week was the second time in weeks that I was able to go to church. But I ended up sitting out in the parking lot with two uncooperative twelve year olds while the other children went in. One of the sixteen year olds had to bring me a screaming little six year old at almost the end of the service but I was able to allow one of the twelve year olds to go in to the service after Sunday School. The other twelve year old stayed in the van with me having a mild temper tantrum for two hours. I read a book. The one we are looking at in church and Sunday school.

    This week I am home with my running eyes and nose and one twelve year old. The others went to church and then off on a community excursion of tubing on one of the ski hills. One older child is off with friends to help in a remedial square dance lesson.

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  93. I was wrong, sun was not shining here when church let out and we’re still getting showers and heavy mist. The sky remains a leaden gray. I love it, of course. 🙂

    Cheryl, is your toe getting better at all?

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  94. I may get to Saturday before you all, but I also have Monday earlier. A gray day here, but we haven’t had rain for a week and all the rocks are coming out of the roads. Almost fell yesterday as a rock slipped under my foot.

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  95. For those who have been posting links about Bill Gothard lately, thank you. I’ve bookmarked them and intend to read up on this more, as time permits. I appreciate your own insightful commentary many of you have provided on the subject, as well.

    And for those who are interested, I didn’t play the piano at all yesterday, and don’t plan to today, either. I might take off more time than that, too. I’ll have to see.

    Off the computer now…

    I’ll check back later and see who got 100. 😉

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  97. Donna, yes, the toe is quite a bit better. Last night without thinking I slipped my feet into slippers–I’d been avoiding doing so for two days, since it really hurt to put them on Thursday, and I “felt” it when I put them on, but it didn’t hurt. It still looks just as ugly, though, and I’m still being careful.

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  108. Mumsee 🙂

    So thankful my daughter has good preceptors and is enjoying her practicum with the local ambulance in her city. She even managed to pick up a few shifts at her old job to help pay for her groceries and gas. I’m very proud of her.

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  109. Mumsee, I think you’re one of the best peacemakers I know.

    Good job to Kare’s daughter. 🙂

    Suburban is fixed and safely back home. I’ve got one smart, hardworking husband!

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  110. Thanks for the Rubenstein video, AJ. I find it fascinating to watch the faces of the great pianists as they perform. There’s so much focus there, and it’s amazing to see how calm they look despite the intensity of the music they may be playing. Very instructive.

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  112. Well, after the happiness of Forrest coming back home on Thursday, today we had some of the fall-out from the stress. Emily & I have both been a little irritable, I’ve felt very tired & worn out, & little Forrest had a meltdown. Although, Emily thinks he may be coming down with something. He was asleep by 5:30 this evening.

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  114. Here’s a good article that may be of interest to those of you who have weighed in on the Bill Gothard/ATI discussion here. It’s entitled “Homeschooling and the Fear of Man”, but is a good warning for all of us to avoid making “gurus” out of people.

    The article was published soon after the Doug Phillips/Vision Forum scandal was brought to light, but also makes brief mention of the author’s knowledge of (and experience with) the ATI movement.

    The comment section is interesting too.

    http://www.ordo-amoris.com/2013/11/homeschooling-and-fear-of-man.html

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