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Our Daily Thread 5-5-15

Good Morning!

Today’s photos are from Janice. 

put 'em up! janice

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On this day in 1494 Christopher Columbus sighted Jamaica on his second trip to the Western Hemisphere. He named the island Santa Gloria.

In 1814 the British attacked the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, NY.

In 1891 Music Hall was dedicated in New York City. It was later renamed Carnegie Hall.

And in 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American in space when he made a 15 minute suborbital flight.

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Quote of the Day

“You can observe a lot by just watching.”

Yogi Berra

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 Today is Tammy Wynette’s birthday.

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Anyone have a QoD?

45 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-5-15”

  1. I’m glad I’m not a mouse, or a canary.
    I always liked Tammy Wynette, but she wasn’t a favorite. Dolly, Loretta, Carter girls I liked better.
    Good morning everyone.

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  3. I just saw a cartoon in the paper that would be a great idea for 6 Arrows.
    The little girl sitting on the piano bench says, “I bet I’d learn to play the piano better if the keys came in more colors than black and white.”

    🙂

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  5. Good morning all. Left my phone and computer at work last night in my haste to get home and make it to bible study on time. Last night we discussed the church at Sardis. So here is a question:
    How do you know a church is dying or dead?

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  6. Good morning, Chas, and all!

    I did not sleep well last night. That happens when it starts getting warmer and we have not turned on the air conditioning. At least we are finally having a string of sunny days.
    The lawn already needs mowing again. The lawn mower was cranky about being cranked last time since it was the first mowing of the season. God was good after I prayed and the mower finally cranked. At least this time it should crank without giving my arm and shoulder such a workout.

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  7. Kim asked, “How do you know if a church is dying or dead?”
    This answer has to be incomplete because it’s complicated it that there are many reasons and symptoms. But.
    If the church consists of old people and there isn’t a ministry to youth. That is some symptom, but not completely so.
    A church that is centered on more social and economic response to the problems of the world is losing it’s Spirit. When the Spirit is gone, the body dies.
    If there is a solution to the world’s problems that is outside the gospel of Christ, that is an indicator.
    A church can be affected by the surrounding culture. Sometimes it modifies itself to reflect that culture. Currently, a lighthouse is there to warn ships of danger. In ancient times, the lighthouse was there to guide ships into harbor. That’s what the church is about. To guide lost ships home. Not to feed people on lost ships.

    When we first moved to Falls Church, Va.,in 1963, we joined Boulevard BC. Boulevard BC had two morning services and a healthy evening service. When we left in 2001 we had a poorly attended morning service. After we left, they joined FBC Annandale and renamed themselves United BC.
    It isn’t that it didn’t try. It seems to me that Boulevard and Annandale churches were unable to sustain themselves in the midst of a changing culture.
    It’s dark up there.
    That’s another subject. And I haven’t completed this one.

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  8. Good morning !

    AJ, is Hillary’s theme song an endorsement? !?!

    Busy weekend. Trying to catch up. Read the weekend thread after work last niģht. SIL is doing better. Working on a treatment plan.

    Mumsee, from Sundays prayer requests, seems the concensus is a vector borne illness for Mike. I read an article on the BBC that seemed to fit the symptoms perfectly . It was also vector borne by mosquitos in England. The article appeared while yall were gone for knee surgery. When I get home in a couple of days I will try and find it and post the link. I am no good on this new phone.

    Wishing everyone a blessed day.

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  9. A dead church is one that has forgotten what it means to be a church: it doesn’t preach the Bible but prefers to preach its own message; it has more interest in the trendy and new than in proper worship of God. If members can live in sin with no church discipline, then it is not acting in its proper role.

    I agree with Chas’s assessment that a church with only old people is on its way out. We attended such a church Sunday; it was in a community that has hit hard economic times and the young people are leaving. The service was lovely, but the sanctuary was maybe a third full, and other than the pastor’s family and us, there may have only been one couple under seventy, and the pastor is leaving this summer. Well, there may have been another younger couple or two, but I only saw one family with children, and nearly everyone had gray hair. That is a church that won’t be around in ten years, unless something changes.

    But I would also say that a church that caters to young people, a church with no one above 40, is probably also not functioning as a proper church. (And I don’t think that a church needs a specific ministry to youth; youth can receive ministry as members of the body without being singled out with a focus specifically on them. But they need to be loved and welcomed.)

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  10. Oh, no! Another is suffering from New Phone Syndrone! Just when you think you’ve been cured, a new symptom appears.

    6 Arrows, that is great to hear of your daughters decision to go with the desires God has placed in her heart!

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  11. Some churches that appear to be thriving are probably dead. You can’t always judge by numbers. God knows the heart of the pastor and the reasons people attend. If it is not about Him, the church is dead.

    This question may be more associated with the church building and whete it is located rather than the body of Christ that meets there, IMO.

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  12. Morning all….it’s been raining around here. As I approached our neck of the forest yesterday I noticed a lot of white stuff on the ground…and all the ditches were filled with water…hail hail and more hail. It is a misty, rainy morning here and the air is so fresh…I get to stay home today! 🙂

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  13. Bosley!

    We’re getting May Gray here, lots of gray skies and cool temperatures. We usually also get June Gloom, but seldom May Gray and June Gloom back-to-back, together in one year, one of the months usually turns sunny and warm.

    Dying churches … good topic, really. Many of the old liberal mainline churches here are made up of a handful of older folk, no young families. Many can no longer even justify paying a full time pastor anymore. We’ve been looking to buy a church property for years and have encountered some of these congregations when they’ve considered selling — the last one decided to try one more time by bringing in a young seminary student with upbeat music to try to bring in some young people. Not sure how that worked. 😉

    Doctrinally, churches can be slowly sliding into the abyss for decades, incrementally, which makes it tricky and so important to always be watchful. Our pastor said last week that denominations don’t fall off cliffs so much as they begin walking along a particular path. It often takes many years before members may realize they’ve strayed so far and now are standing atop a cliff … But it started long ago, usually, at its heart, with scuttling the authority of Scripture. But it all is quite well-meaning and sounds good to the people at the time.

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  14. And I agree with Cheryl’s point that the best & healthiest congregations have a wide mix of ages. We have a lot of young — lots of babies being born — and middle-aged families, but also quite a few young singles (college age, seminary students, 20s & 30s) and a good number of older saints. Refreshing.

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  15. I agree with Cheryl on her assessment of “youth ministry”. Any youth minister who is treating the young people as children or trying to be a teenager himself, instead of preparing them for maturity, is doing them a disservice. But I disagree that a church with no one over 40 is “functioning as a proper church.” The church we were in when we got married for several years had no one over 40, but it started as a house church and had growing families. Now, 40 years later, it has four generations of families and a lot of college students.

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  16. I might add that the “young” church went to the nursing home every other Sunday and was the only one that treated the seniors as people rather than as old children.

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  17. Peter, I tried to be careful with my language: I said “a church that caters to young people, a church with no one above 40, is probably also not functioning as a proper church.” I’m thinking of a church specifically geared to those who have outgrown youth groups but still want to be in one.

    When I was in my late twenties, I once shared a house with two young women who attended such a church. I went with them once and only once. The auditorium held several hundred people, and I looked around it in amazement, because nowhere did I see anyone younger than about 20 and if I recall correctly, no one looked older than 35 or 40. (It’s possible there were two or three who did, I don’t remember for sure.) Not one family, not one person old enough to be a father figure or mother figure. I have no idea whether anyone was married, but if they were, the temptation in that crowd would have been to put off having children and continue having fun with the other young singles. I was right smack in their target audience, age-wise, but I never went back, and I felt extremely out of place being there. It wasn’t a church, it was a youth group.

    One of my housemates once came home and told me about how they celebrated the Lord’s supper–or, rather, how they turned what should have been the Lord’s supper into a “me” event. They took it in small groups (not the gathered church) and they had a table set up with the elements and various cards. Cards had emotions on them: happy, sad, grumpy, confused, whatever. (I wasn’t there, so I don’t know how many cards there were.) The idea was you looked for how you were feeling and chose a card and sat down. Someone else would look at your card and go get communion for you, and bring it to you and tell you “Jesus died so you wouldn’t have to feel confused.” Um, yeah, whatever.

    So, yes, a church can happen to have only members under 40, especially as it is just getting started. But if it caters to single somethings under 40, then it probably is not a biblical church, and it definitely is a church that’s missing something very important.

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  18. We just had a meadowlark on our back fence for ten minutes or so, singing and preening himself. Now, the back fence is too great a distance for a really sharp photo, but I’ve never managed to photograph that species, and I got some pretty decent shots. (Until I moved here, I hadn’t seen a meadowlark since I was ten or twelve. I see them fairly often in a patch of grass a mile or so away, but I’m “driving by” without a chance to photograph, and fairly often means three or four times a season, hardly with any predictability. This is only the second one I’ve seen in our yard, and the other was the top of a tree at an angle that can’t be photographed from any window, and he was there only briefly.) The fact that he was singing probably indicates he has chosen this as part of his territory, so hopefully we’ll see him again, and maybe see him a bit closer. But it was a great sighting, of a bird I’ve long wanted to photograph.

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  19. So I worked into the night yesterday to cover a meeting where a city engineer was scheduled to give a report on groundwater levels on our cliffs (which can be a predictor of landslides). Except when his report came up on the agenda, he said he had no report yet. Maybe in a month or more. Argh.

    That means today I have to either make some kind of a story out of that — or something else. 🙂 The editor is always hungry, there’s always another paper to fill …

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  23. Chas (8:08), cute quote. And here’s something interesting: I copied and pasted the quote into Google to see if the cartoon would come up, and do you know what is at the top of the first page of hits?

    A link to Our Daily Thread 5-5-15 | Wandering Views !!! 😀

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  24. Janice (9:55), thank you. 🙂

    Bird watch: our beloved rose-breasted grosbeaks are finally here. Well, only a male so far. Usually the females arrive a day or so later.

    Last night when I was standing in the kitchen, with my window open (it’s on the side of the house nearest to our woods), it was getting dark, but I could hear what sounded like a grosbeak singing. They sound a lot like robins, though, so I listened very carefully, and looked for a grosbeak in the trees, but didn’t see one. I wondered if maybe it was a robin I was hearing, but it sounded more finch-like, so I was leaning toward thinking it was a grosbeak versus a robin.

    Then this morning, I saw Mr. Grosbeak. Yes! Ah, I love those birds!

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  27. In the early morning hours I heard a pretty loud owl near our house. It was a hoot owl of some type. I did not venture out to see if I could find it with a flashlight. 🙂

    I gave a nice donation on Sunday to help Nepal. I also may give to Samaritan’s Purse.

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  28. As of yesterday, our bird feeders are back in business. We had to take them down for a month when I saw at least one sick bird. (I saw one that was definitely sick, and had already noted that two other birds had done something unusual.) We left them down a few extra days since we were going to be in Michigan, but they’re back up now.

    What started out as one or two feeders with sunflower seed, one with thistle, and one suet feeder in winter only is now: three feeders with sunflower seed, one feeder with thistle, two suet feeders (and my husband decided to go ahead and refill them rather than taking them down for the warm months, as we usually do by now), one hummingbird feeder, two oriole feeders, and one hummingbird swing. Nothing offering mealworms, though; they’re too expensive.

    So far we have no evidence the oriole has found the oriole feeders, but he (or a different male) did find it last year, and the feeders are right under the cottonwood where we most often see him. (But it’s a very tall tree.) Our first male hummingbird has already found us, and the goldfinches, a house finch, a nuthatch, cardinals, and red-bellied woodpeckers have already showed up. We’re hoping for an indigo bunting or two this year–and I’d be thrilled to get rose-breasted grosbeak; my husband says they used to come here, and we did see an immature male last fall. I’ve never seen towhees or evening grosbeak, both of which are supposed to be around here (though the evening grosbeak, unlike the rose-breasted, is a winter resident). But seed-eaters and nectar eaters can find food aplenty here, and insect eaters find lots to eat in our yard and in the apple orchard next door, and raptors find plenty to eat as well. So we have quite a few species that come daily or weekly, and others that come periodically but less frequently.

    I saw both the male and female oriole a few minutes ago, and the female was on the branch where my husband says they have built nests in the past. Hopefully they will decide it’s a good place for a nursery.

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  30. Not too long ago, I saw an article that advised that leaders of today’s churches should be under the age of 40. I wasn’t sure if the author meant leaders in general, or worship leaders (part of the article was about leading worship), but either way, I thought that was very bad advice.

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  31. Janice – Miss Bosley is adorable! I love reading your stories about her. 🙂 I’ve told my family about how she showed up on your doorstep one day, & how she adopted you.

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  33. Not a great day for me, made a factual error in a story that was really stupid (and the photographer made another factual error in the caption he wrote for a photo that ran with the same story package). Argh.

    There are too few of us trying to do too much with essentially no copy editors left anymore.

    Grumble.

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  34. Karen, kinda like the advice “never to trust anyone under 30” and then “oh yeah, now I’m over 30 myself!” what do they expect these church leaders to do after they hit 40? Not to mention, though Paul tells Timothy not to let anyone show disrespect for his youth (he is still supposed to be a godly example, not a silly kid), Scripture teaches respect for the aged, and specifically tells the older ones to teach the younger ones. That does not mean “if you’re 25, teach 18 year olds, but if you’re 35, it’s time to retire since you’re a has-been.”

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  35. Mumsee, I found an article in the Daily Mirror, 3/20/15, with essentially the same info. It is called chikungunya. The vector is mosquitos. Symptoms are fever and severe joint pain affecting hands, wrists, ankles and feet.

    Cdc.gov confirmed it is in US. It had some fairly ambiguous information. PubMed.government had some really good info on rheumatic disorders.

    Hope this helps in some way.

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  36. Hi all you blog people. I’m still riding the roller coaster of life and currently feeling a bit of mental vertigo and emotion sickness. Also, I hate paperwork.

    Signs of a dying church? An attitude that “we, and we alone, are left.” Insularity strangles the church. It also leads to cover-ups of sin in order to maintain the illusion that “we are the people and wisdom will die with us.”

    You remember how I said that ultra-conservative fundamentalist churches and former ATI families tended to self-destruct? Well, we’re watching it happen yet again. Seemingly happily married and professing son of such a family abandons wife and children for another woman. I cannot say it often enough – do not assume that if you remove all possible evil influences from your child’s life that he or she will turn out a good Christian. Legalistic standards will not save your child.

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  37. Mumsee & RKessler. chikungunya is, according to my nursing dictionary, a viral disease carried by the Aedes mosquito. It’s symptoms are a high fever that begins abruptly, myalgia (muscle aches), a rash, and joint pain. It is a virus and thus is self-limiting, although apparently the joint pain may last longer.

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  38. Phos and RKessler, I don’t think that is it. He gets a low fever periodically, at least, early on. But not high at all. And it has been hanging on for a year and a half now. Thanks.

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  39. I remember that illness because I called it the chick disease and I believe there were cases in my area so I was on alert for it. I had forgotten it until you mentioned it.

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  41. Speaking of mysterious joint pain and inflammation, my mother went to the doctor recently. When she was told years ago, that she had acute arthritis, she was not tested. Perhaps the test hadn’t been developed. So she was tested this time. Apparently, she was negative for rheumatoid arthritis, although the blood test showed definite inflammation (as do her swollen joints and painful gait). She doesn’t even have osteoarthritis. So she is going to a specialist, but the doctor told her bluntly that there may be nothing anyone can do. She has had her symptoms for about twenty years, so it certainly isn’t chikungunya, and I doubt it could be Lyme’s disease for the same reason.

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  43. From my reading,Roscuro, it could be Lyme. Although disputed by some in the medical community, I believe that there is such a thing as chronic Lyme.

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