Singer/Songwriter Andrew Peterson will be at Five Points Community Church at 7:00 pm On Wednesday, October 20th. Tickets are $5/person or $20/family and can be purchased ahead of time through the office or at the door the evening of the event. Call the church office at 248-373-1381 for more information.

From PBS/FRONTLINE:

Boston, MA [August 26, 2010] Since the days when the Puritan “city on a hill” beckoned on the horizon of the New World, religious faith and belief have forged America’s ideals, molded its identity and shaped its sense of mission at home and abroad.

For the first time on television, God in America explores the tumultuous 400-year history of the intersection of religion and public life in America, from the first European settlements to the 2008 presidential election. A co-production of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, this six-hour series examines how religious dissidents helped shape the American concept of religious liberty and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation’s courts and political arena; how religious freedom and waves of new immigrants and religious revivals fueled competition in the religious marketplace; how movements for social reform–from abolition to civil rights–galvanized men and women to put their faith into political action; and how religious faith influenced conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War.

Interweaving documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews with religious historians, the six-part series will air over three consecutive nights beginning on October 11, 2010. Narrated by actor Campbell Scott, the series includes appearances by actors Michael Emerson (as John Winthrop), Chris Sarandon (as Abraham Lincoln) and Keith David (as Frederick Douglass), among others.

“The American story cannot be fully understood without understanding the country’s religious history,” says series executive producer Michael Sullivan. “By examining that history, God in America will offer viewers a fresh, revealing and challenging portrait of the country.”

As God in America unfolds, it reveals the deep roots of American religious identity in the universal quest for liberty and individualism–ideas that played out in the unlikely political union between Thomas Jefferson and defiant Baptists to oppose the established church in Virginia and that were later embraced by free-wheeling Methodists and maverick Presbyterians. Catholic and Jewish immigrants battled for religious liberty and expanded its meaning. In their quest for social reform, movements as different as civil rights and the religious right found authority and energy in their religious faith. The fight to define religious liberty fueled struggles between America’s secular and religious cultures on issues from evolution to school prayer, and American individualism and the country’s experiment in religious liberty were the engine that made America the most religiously diverse nation on earth.

Come Together includes a not so veiled reference to shooting Cocaine, among its other jumbled lyrics that reference God knows what.

Is this why you go to church?

“George: That’s not your grandfather.
Paul: It is, you know.
George: But I’ve seen your grandfather. He lives in your house.
Paul: Oh, that’s my other grandfather, but he’s my grandfather, as well.
John: How do you reckon that one out?
Paul: Well, everyone’s entitled to two, aren’t they?”

~ The Beatles, “A Hard Day’s Night”

My friends will sometimes talk about their grandfathers as if they are gods. They’ll share stories of love and fun and good times. And I am always jealous.

I can barely remember either of my grandfathers. They both died when I was young and they both were sick for most of my life. I had Grandpa Ball (my mother’s father), simply called Grandpa, and Grandpa Edwards (my father’s father), always known as Gramps in our household. Whenever I hear stories told of these two men, I always feel a pride in the fact that I am related to them by blood. But I can barely remember them. And this breaks my heart.

As I’ve said, both men were sick for most of my life. I don’t think I ever saw Grandpa walk. The only time I ever saw Gramps walk was when he would walk from his chair to the kitchen every night to pour himself a bowl of cereal.

I remember my Gramps chair. I remember thinking it was a sin for anyone other than him to be sitting in it. I sat in it after he died, and immediately got up. I vaguely remember sitting on his lap when I was young, the smell of medicine and the touch of calloused hands.

I remember when I first heard Gramps life story. It was the life sung by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams. It was the life of a working class hero. I remember hearing stories of a strong faith in God. I remember a quiet old man with a raspy voice. I remember a man who loved his family. The nativity story on Christmas morning. Grocery shopping on a hot summer’s day.

I remember the day Gramps died. And that’s the most vivid memory of all. Leaving school early. Arriving too late. Leaning on my father’s chest. Lifeless body on the bed. The bed I used to sleep in. Children crying in the backyard. Emotionless. Confused.

I cried at his funeral. All I have left are stories and vague memories.

Memories of Grandpa are even fewer. I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t sick. I remember a stupid knock knock joke I would tell him, and he would laugh every time. “Knock knock. Who’s there? Tommy. Tommy who? Tommy ache.” And he would laugh and laugh. I know that he loved me. I know I loved him. I remember my grandparents’ home up north in Roscommon. It was like a second home to me. He was sick every time we went.

I cried at his funeral. All I have left are stupid jokes and sickness.

I never said goodbye to either of them. I can barely even remember their voices.

It’s 4:30 in the morning right now and I am crying. I couldn’t sleep because the memory of these two men wouldn’t leave my mind. I barely knew them, yet I love them more than anybody that ever lived.

Sometimes I wonder why God would choose to taunt me with friends who tell me stories of their loving grandfathers. Sometimes I think God is the cruelest person in existence.

But then memories of these men come and haunt me. And I know that, though they are gone, they have made me a better person just by being there. And I know God wants me to celebrate what I had… what I have.

Maybe someday I’ll have children. I will tell them the memories I have of my grandfathers. I will tell my children they come from the two greatest men who ever lived.

Maybe someday I’ll have grandchildren and I will be a grandfather myself. And maybe my grandchildren will look up to me as a great man. Maybe someday they will want to be like me. That would be the greatest honor. And that is all I want.

His most recent foray into this effort is The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond (2010: Baylor University Press) in which he asserts that what has come to be known as the “Religious Right” did not have its beginnings as a response to the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion on demand in 1973 (Roe v. Wade). Rather Dr. Balmer forwards a radically different motivation for the formation of conservative evangelical political engagement in the mid to late 1970s: the Green v Connally decision by the District Court of the District of Columbia on June 30, 1971 which threatened the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policy denying admission to students of color.

Balmer’s conclusion that the Roe v. Wade decision was not a precipitating factor in the formation of conservative evangelical political engagement serves as a classic example of historic revisionism. Of the response of evangelicals in 1973 to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion on demand Balmer writes:

While a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly questioned the ruling, the overwhelming response on the part of evangelicals was silence, even approval.

Indeed, Balmer’s thesis is that the abortion issue was only “cobbled into the agenda of the Religious Right” as a political maneuver by Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of evangelical political activism, who knew (according to Balmer’s characterization) that the sterile subject of tax exemption would not rally evangelicals to political action, engendering the kind of emotional response that “protecting those poor, defenseless babies” would create. Randall seems to be asserting that the abortion issue was only a front for the real cause of standing against the IRS for threatening the tax exempt status of evangelical schools. Money. not morals, was the precipitating cause of the Religious Right.

To support his revisionism, Balmer quotes Dr. Edward Dobson who was “formerly Falwell’s assistant at Moral Majority,”:

“The Religious New Right did not start because of a concern about abortion. I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with the Moral Majority, and I frankly do not remember abortion being mentioned as a reason why we ought to do something.”

Balmer offers no footnote to cite the source of the above quote, only stating that the comment was made in 1999, and offering no details about the context. So I picked up the phone and called Dr. Dobson, who is now living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

When I asked Dr. Dobson if he recalled making such a statement he replied that while he has no doubt that he may have made such a statement, the way in which Dr. Balmer was using it seemed to be out of context. Dr. Dobson told me, “I have always argued that while abortion was not the major issue in the formation of the Moral Majority, it was certainly one of the issues.”

When I asked Dr. Dobson if he agreed with Randall’s assertion that the Religious Right was formed more as a response to Bob Jones University losing its tax exempt status rather than as a reaction to the Roe v. Wade decision, Dr. Dobson told me that such an assertion was “absolutely false. The subject of Bob Jones University never came up in any conversations as a reason for forming the Moral Majority. In fact, Bob Jones, Jr. once called Jerry Falwell ‘the most dangerous man in America,’ so the notion that these men would be concerned with defending Bob Jones University lacks merit.”

What kind of history is this? On what basis does Balmer reach the conclusion that money and racism were the motivating factors that precipitated conservative political activism and not the moral issues of abortion, marriage, and homosexuality?

Dr. Balmer is firmly in the camp of those who see the purpose of the gospel to be primarily about reforming the ills of society through social action. He’s part of the new “Religious Left,” a category of evangelicals he denied exists during a recent radio interview with me. While his bias is implicit in his conclusions, it’s also explicitly stated. Not until you get to the end of Balmer’s 84 page revisionism does he show his hand:

“For too many years I offered an exasperated defense, arguing that the Bible I read enjoins me to act with justice and points me toward the left of the political spectrum.”

The Making of Evangelicalism is a distortion of facts in support of biased characterizations of conservative evangelicals. In addition to the absurd notion that a defense of the sanctity of life was not the precipitating cause of the formation of the Religious Right, Balmer asserts that conservative Christians opposed women’s rights, supported torture, care more about abortion than divorce, support the destruction of the environment, and favor the affluent more than poor, without once offering a shred of objective balance from those he accuses. This sounds more like Keith Olbermann than a respected historian.

What kind of historian produces a history that presents facts in evidence supporting only half the history?  Balmer has not written a history of the making of evangelicalism. The reality is Balmer is “making up” evangelicalism by reading into history a conclusion influenced by his own progressive bias against conservative evangelical political engagement. History as he would like it to be, not as it was.

4:00 pm – A True American Hero
My guest at the beginning of today’s program is Admiral Jeremiah Denton. Admiral Denton is also the former Senator from Alabama (1981 – 1987). He spent nearly eight years as a POW in Vietnam and is best known as the naval aviator who used his eyes to blink the word “TORTURE” in Morse code during a televised interrogation.

Admiral Denton is a Christian and the author of the book, When Hell Was in Session, made into a motion picture starring Hal Holbrooke.

4:20 pm – Shaping How We Lead by Who We Are
How does our internal relationship with God affect or influence our external relationships with others, especially in the realm of leadership? Robert Fryling is publisher of InterVarsity Press. He brings his years of leadership experience to bear on the issue how we think about our leadership goals and values.

5:05 pm – Christianity and the Culture of Sports
With the Superbowl coming up on Sunday, what better time to examine critically the relationship between sports and faith. Shirl James Hoffman has written an excellent critical analysis of how faith – especially evangelicalism – has acquiesed to a sports culture: Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports.

5:25 pm – The Controversy over Scripture References on Rifle Sights
In the last month it was revealed that a Wixom, MI manufacturer of rifle sights for the US military has customarily inscribed Bible references as part of the serial number on each sight. This has raised concerns about a “Christian Crusade” against Muslims since most of those sights are being used by our military in predominantly Muslim countries. Tom Munsosn from Trijicon – the manufacturer of the sights – gives us his perspective.

So when President Obama held a press conference to update the country on his administration’s response to this near “man made disaster” in the skies over Detroit, you can bet I was hanging on every word. He made his nine minute statement having just emerged from a high level meeting with his cabinet to formulate a response to the Flight 253 attack.

The president called his cabinet together “because we face a challenge of the utmost urgency,” but evidently not so urgent that his aides didn’t inform him about the terror attack over Detroit until three hours after the plane landed. He didn’t make a public statement about it until three days after it had happened. He continued his Hawaiian vacation for ten days after it happened. Remember that President Bush was roundly criticized for continuing to read to kindergartners for five minutes after the attack on 9/11.

The president’s non-pulsed response to a critical breach of airline security not seen since 9/11 is inexplicable unless one concludes that the president does not view his actions or those of his administration as in any way responsible for the breach. In his response to the terror over Detroit he spoke of the “systemic failures” of the  ”intelligence community” and “the U.S. Government,” as if these were entities without a face totally disconnected from his presidency. In fact, in his statement President Obama took no responsibility at all for the failures leading up to the attack over Detroit. Rather he informed us that 

 ”…the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way. And it’s my responsibility to find out why and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future.”

So the president calls a press conference to inform us that he isn’t responsible for the system failing. He’s only responsible for finding out why the system failed. He sounded more like a high school football coach whose team is down by 12 at half time:

“Time and again we’ve learned that quickly piecing together information and taking swift action is critical to staying one step ahead of a nimble adversary. So we have to do better, and we will do better. And we have to do it quickly.”

While the president takes no responsibility for “the systemic failures” which allowed a terrorist with a bomb in his pants to board a U. S. aircraft, it seems individual members of his cabinet do take some limited responsibility:

“I appreciate that each of [the members of my team] took responsibility for the shortfalls within their own agencies.”

The president has obviously surrounded himself with imbeciles. He admits that his closest advisers are responsible for “shortfalls within their own agencies” which led to an attack (not a potential attack) on United States citizens on an aircraft bearing United States markings and nobody gets fired?

Nobody gets fired because this president doesn’t view his administration as in any way responsible for what happened over Detroit on Christmas Day. As a matter of fact, I’m not so certain the president even holds the terrorists responsible. The way the president sees it, it’s we – the American people – who make the terrorists want to hate us, maim us, kill us, and disrupt our way of life because of how we have mistreated Al Qaeda enemy combatants at Gitmo! And he’s serious:

“Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interest and become a tremendous recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”

Enough of this blaming America. It’s time to lead, Mr. President. It’s your “system.” It’s your “intelligence community.” It’s your “U. S. Government.” You’re no longer the Senator from Illinois throwing partisan bricks at the occupant of the White House from the safety of your perch on Capitol Hill. You’re the president. Not of the world, but of the United States. You have been for nearly a year. It’s time to stop blaming “the last eight years.” It’s time for you, Mr. President, to take responsibility for allowing an attack on the United States, thwarted though it was by heroes who were able to accomplish with mere brute force what billions of tax dollars and government bureaucracy was charged with doing but failed to do.

Your first priority as Commander in Chief is to protect the citizens of the United States, not our image in the eyes of the world or the sensibilities of those who hate us. Lead, Mr. President, or get out of the way.

David P. Murray’s Head, Heart and Hand and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/davidpmurray

The Church Report and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thechurchreport

 “…administrative structures grow to prepare for numerical growth…”

Most churches wait for the growth before adding ministry programs and never see it because the structure isn’t in place for growth to happen. This structure must include the right programs with the right people leading those programs. 

What are we waiting for? In what areas do our “administrative structures” need to grow in order to see numerical growth? What are these “adminstrative structures”? Should there be a programming priority (children’s ministry before youth ministry before worship ministry before…)?

The study also shows that many kids are using search engines to find ways to disable or get around website blockers installed by parents.

What are the implications for youth and children’s ministry in your church? Kent Shaffer at ChurchRelevance.com offers this:

From a children’s ministry perspective, it is important to realize that statistically quite a few 7-year-olds in your class are searching for porn and exposing themselves to things much more serious than what traditional lessons cover. Obviously, children’s ministries cannot be straightforward about sex, but being too vague doesn’t work either.

Perhaps there are subtle ways to layer lessons with mature spiritual principles. Ideally, children’s ministry lessons should clearly yet subtly word things in a way that trains, helps, and ministers to the kids who are hurting and/or have picked up bad habits while simultaneously “going over the heads” and still teaching the kids who still have their innocence. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.