Mark Steyn reports that NASA has revived its previously released data on the hottest years on record. Turns out the 1930s were hotter than the 1990s, and FDR did nothing to stop the climate change!

They’re not issuing any press releases about it, but they have quietly revised their All-Time Hit Parade for U.S. temperatures. The “hottest year on record” is no longer 1998, but 1934. Another alleged swelterer, the year 2001, has now dropped out of the Top 10 altogether, and most of the rest of the 21st century—2000, 2002, 2003, 2004—plummeted even lower down the Hot 100. In fact, every supposedly hot year from the Nineties and this decade has had its temperature rating reduced. For those dealing with scorching summers today, reliable newark ac repair services can help keep things cool, even if the records tell a different story. Homeowners who are looking for an ac repairman portland may contact Efficiency Heating & Cooling.

Four of America’s Top 10 hottest years turn out to be from the 1930s, that notorious decade when we all drove around in huge SUVs with the air-conditioning on full blast—except, of course, we didn’t. If climate change is, as Al Gore says, the most important issue anyone’s ever faced in the history of anything ever, then Franklin Roosevelt didn’t have a word to say about it.

Read the full column here: Warmongers and cheeseburger imperialists

My Dad died on September 14, 2003. He was born on May 12, 1921 and I remember thinking after he died how fitting it was that he was born in the spring, when things are coming to life, and he died in the fall, when things are turning brown and the life is slowly ebbing out of nature.

The easiest thing and the hardest thing I have ever done in my life is speak at my Dad’s funeral, which turned out to be a two and half hour worship service that opened with the congreation singing “When We All Get to Heaven.” We sang it like we believed it. Because we did. And we do.

As I reflect upon my father this Father’s Day, indulge me please.  Posted below is the complete text of the eulogy I delivered at my Dad’s funeral on September 19, 2003.

SEPTEMBER 19, 2003
What My Father Taught His Children 

“Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding.”

Proverbs 4:1
  

Certain places are haunted with the sounds and pictures and the people from the past.   You go to those places and a torrent of memories comes rushing in. God encouraged and even commanded His people to mark the significant places in their lives.  He implored them not to remove the ancient landmarks set by their fathers.  I like to call these God Places.

 

In the book of Genesis Jacob had a God Place that he discovered on the way to Haran.  He fell asleep in that place and had an encounter with God that changed his life.  When he woke up he was frightened to discover that God was in that place and he called the name of that place Beth-El.  He said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.”  And in that moment God promised Jacob that He would not only be with him in that place, but in all the places he would ever go.

 

The word of God makes it clear that God determines our places.  And God determined that David Ronald Edwards, Sr. would be born in a place called Central City, in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.  And God determined that David would meet a pretty girl named Lil (or Tess) from Greenville and together God would move them to a new place called Detroit and they’d eventually end up in Taylor, Michigan.  Dave and Lil would never look back.  They would transplant their roots to this little community and create a God Place for six little kids.  From this place we would be introduced to people who would make an indelible impression on our lives: people like Jim Weir – the milk man, and Oscar Hacker – our barber.  People like Aubrey Henderson, our first pastor at Taylor Center and at Northline, and every pastor after him: Pastor McGinnis, Pastor Barber, Pastor Rice, Pastor Lawrence, and Pastor Jones; and missionaries like Bill Tabor. And neighbors like the Delinkski’s, and Paul and Marie Alshire, and Charles and Pat Warfield from up the street, Conrad and Gail Mesahowski and the Mackowitz’s.

 

23319 Newcastle in Taylor, the house we grew up in, is a God Place for me.  It wasn’t until recently that I realized how significant this place is – when I had a Jacob experience of waking up to the realization that “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.”

One day this week I sat on the backyard swing in that place and the memory of my life and the lives of my brothers and sisters came rushing back to me in a torrent.  Sitting in the quiet of that backyard the day after my dad died, the noises and the images from my childhood – our childhood – were all around me.  And in those moments of reflection, God reminded me that all I ever really needed to know about life, I learned from my Dad.

The verse that begins the fourth chapter of Proverbs perfectly summarizes everything I want to say about my dad:  “Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding.” 

My dad never went beyond the eighth grade in school, and yet as I have reflected on his life over the last few days, he was the best teacher I ever had.  It should be noted that while he taught us these lessons, that doesn’t necessarily mean we actually mastered them.  He, along with my mother, taught us the fundamental lessons of life that have made us what we are, for better or worse.  For better if we paid attention, for worse if we haven’t.

 

My father taught us to honor our parents, not so much by what he said as by how he lived.  He lived quietly and honorably.  If he owed a debt, he honored it.  If he offended you, he sought your forgiveness.  If you did him a favor, he never forgot it, even though you never let him repay it.  It’s difficult not to honor your parents when nearly every day of your life you witnessed so many other people speaking well of them.

 

My father taught us to honor God by living a life that honored God.  I’ll never forget that afternoon when Dad went to Mr. Delinkski’s yard to help him with some minor project.  When it was all finished after an hour or so, Mr. Delinkski said, “I’d offer you a beer but I know you wouldn’t take it because you’re a God-fearing man.”  From that moment I knew what it meant to have “a testimony.”

 

My father taught us that after you get passed five kids you have to take a head count before you leave for church because you might go off and leave the youngest one asleep on the couch.  Thankfully this lesson applies only to Steve and Lisa and Becki and Tim.

 

My father taught us that you can take six little kids shopping at Sears if you sit them in a line against a wall and buy them a bag of Spanish peanuts while mom looks for clothes and shoes (never for herself, always for the six kids lined up against the wall). Of course, keeping the little ones comfortable in Hello Kitty flip flops online made the shopping trip a bit easier.

 

My father taught us that patience comes from being married to a woman who insists on stopping at Robert Hall even though we just spent four hours at Sears.

 

My father taught us that the value of money was not in how much of it you have but in what you spend it on or invest it in, even if you don’t have much of it at all; and the first ten cents of every dollar belonged to Jesus.  My dad chose to invest all of his money in his children. As far as I know he only bought one new car in his entire life, and that was a station wagon built for hauling around six kids.  He never took a vacation except back home to Kentucky, and we always went with him.  We never stayed one time in a hotel or motel the entire time we were growing up.    To this day I do not know how he and my mother managed to put five kids through private Christian school and a few of us through college.  But as I think about it, I have an idea how he might have paid for our education: the basement he always dreamed of finishing is unfinished today.  The garage that all the other neighbors had in their backyards was never built in ours.  And at one time he was working three jobs, and mom went back to work when we got older.

 

My father taught us that you can make a lot of friends and solve a lot of conflict simply by being quiet and letting the other person speak, rather than by being loud and opinionated.  I never mastered that lesson – because my mother taught me to be loud and opinionated, a trait that has served me well on the radio.

 

My father taught us that it’s an honorable thing to serve your country, even if you were only a cook in the Army Air Corps…a cook who happened to provide support to the troops fighting the big battles of WWII in the European theatre like Normandy.

 

My father taught us that you don’t have to go to Disneyland every year to have a wonderful childhood.  An annual trip to Fantasyland in Lincoln Park at Christmas time provides enough mystery and wonder to make any childhood a happy one.

My father taught us never to speak ill of anyone, because he never spoke ill of anyone, although he once told me that he thought Rush Limbaugh was obnoxious.

My father taught us that church wasn’t just for Sunday mornings.  It was for Sunday nights, too, and Tuesday Morning Ladies Missionary meeting, and Wednesday night Prayer Meeting and Thursday night visitation.  And every other day of the week you went to church to clean it.  And if you behaved you might get to ride the buffer.

 

My father taught us all the theology we needed to know, summed up in two words: love church. If you love church, loving Jesus comes naturally.  And if you love Jesus and believe on Him with all your heart you will be saved and when you die you will go to live with Him forever in Heaven.

 

My father taught us that a home is not defined by the size of the house or the fanciness of its furnishings, but by the people who live there and the memories they share, like the memory of…

 

          …Dad coming home on summer afternoons dog tired from the day shift at Great Lakes Steel; and yet not so tired that he couldn’t join all his kids (and half the neighborhood kids) across the street for an impromptu game of baseball;

          …being afraid to fall asleep until you knew Dad was home after working the afternoon shift or midnight shift at Great Lakes Steel;

          …your oldest brother building a fort with his friends in the backyard with “donated” lumber from the lumber yard behind the house;

          …your oldest brother coming home to find out that his hyper-active little brother had torn down the fort he and his friends had built with “donated” lumber from the lumber yard behind the house;

…daily milk deliveries from Mr. Weir and his Sealtest truck;

…Mr. Weir giving us a block of ice from his milk truck on hot summer afternoons;

…spending summer afternoons chipping away at Mr. Weir’s ice block on the backyard picnic table;

          …sitting around the backyard picnic table on those same hot summer afternoons with fresh cut watermelon that mom brought out to us after the ice was gone;

…trips to the fruit market to get more watermelon…and mushmelon and grapes, and fresh corn on the cob and string beans;

          …trips to Southgate Shopping Center and Montgomery Wards and Howard’s Christian Bookstore. (They didn’t have a “Mars” back then);

          …Saturday morning pancakes;

          …the smell of a cake in the oven and a roast on the stove all day Saturday;

          …Saturday night baths while mom prepared her Sunday School lesson;

…the best Sunday dinners in any home in Taylor where people came from as far away as Costa Rica to enjoy; and weekday meals made up of leftovers from Sunday dinner, or pinto beans and corn bread; or beef stew with homemade biscuits, or better yet, Fried Chicken; or

 

…homemade molasses with a pat of butter and a broken up homemade biscuit; and

          …hot oatmeal steaming from bowls in the kitchen window on cold school mornings; and

…homemade ice cream on hot summer nights; and

          …falling asleep on breezy summer nights to the voice of Ernie Harwell coming from the radio on dad’s bedroom dresser; and

…waking up on Sunday mornings to the sound of Gospel music and preaching coming from mom’s radio in the kitchen window; and

…homemade fudge at Christmas time; and

          …six wide-eyed kids all in the same bed on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa Claus; and

          …six wide-eyed kids on Christmas morning who every year got most, if not all, of what was on their Christmas wish list, now knowing there was no way our parents could afford to do that.

 

Home is not a house; it’s people and the memories they create.

 

My father taught us that you can endure incredible suffering gracefully because God’s grace is sufficient and His strength is made perfect in our weakness.

 

My father taught us that to live is Christ and to die is gain.

 

My father taught us that we are wealthy beyond calculation because of the life he lived and poured into his children. 

 

These are just some of the lessons I learned in the God Place we called home.  Today we all get a new God Place.  It’s the little plot of ground where they’ll lower the hull of our Dad in a little while.  We’ll go there often until Jesus comes and remember the blessing of having a great man for a Dad.  And one day God Himself will return to that place, open that grave, and raise the hull of our Dad back to life and together we will meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

For the last four years I have paid a lawn https://ziehlerlawncare.com service to mow my yard to free me up to work the three jobs I have.  After paying more than $600 per summer for the last four years I decided to forego the lawn service and do it myself.  I discovered that the time I didn’t think I had to waste on yard work has turned into a valuable investment with great returns. Mowing my own yard had some unexpected benefits.

For one, I never anticipated actually enjoying the work.  My yard is large; it takes about two hours to mow with a standard push mower.  Starting my Saturday’s early with physical work has had emotional, spiritual and physical benefits.  It feels good to be outside, under the sun, accomplishing something of value.

But the real benefit comes from something I have until now never had much use for: a portable CD player.  For several years I’ve subscribed to Mars Hill Audio Journal on CD.  Normally I will listen to the two CDs I receive every other month while commuting to work.  For the last two Saturday’s I’ve listened to them while mowing my yard, making the labor not only productive physically, but allowing me to exercise my mind, as well. Ken Myers, the host and producer of Mars Hill Audio Journal, is an excellent interviewer on wide ranging subjects. I consider his work the antidote to the scandal of the evangelical mind.

Mowing my lawn with Mars Hill has caused me to reconsider the value of the iPod. I’ve never owned one, though I’ve purchased one for each of my kids.  Maybe I’ll take half my savings from mowing the yard myself this summer  and invest it in one of those ubiquitous devices so that I, too, can be hip and cool.  Maybe my church’s attendance will begin to increase when people find out just how hip and cool I am.

Brad Powell, Senior Pastor of North Ridge Church in Plymouth, Michigan has written a new book about how to take your tired, old church and make it new again.  Change Your Church for Good: The Art of Sacred Cow Tipping (W Publishing Group, February 2007) is 316 pages of church transition strategy illustrated by Brad’s own success at transitioning the historic Temple Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan into North Ridge Church of Plymouth, Michigan.

The principles Brad articulates for team building, vision casting, and making progress toward change are positive and valuable.  They aren’t necessarily biblical, however. But that isn’t to say they are necessarily unbiblical either.  Except maybe for the rather bizzare story of God almost speaking audibly to Brad and telling him to transition the church to fit himself and then to relocate the church from Redford to Plymouth, “a community that will then be a perfect fit for both of you [Brad and Temple].” I haven’t been able to locate a verse for that one.

Then for a gripping and slightly scary activity that’s refreshingly different from the usual weekend fare, you can’t go wrong with Hell in a Cellar. The attention to detail and ingenious puzzle design kept our group completely engrossed, creating memorable moments of tension and triumph. If you’re keen on testing your brainpower in an intense yet hugely enjoyable environment, it’s an unbeatable option that’s perfect for shaking up your routine.

The formative years of my spiritual life were spent at the Temple Baptist Church of Detroit.  In his book Brad variously characterizes the church that formed my spiritual life as “irrelevant,” “bound by tradition,” “declining,” “unhealthy,” “dying,” “Southern-cultured,” “defensive,” and possessed of “a lot of anger and conflict.”

From 1976 when I first began riding the bus to Temple, to 1989 when I left to take my first pastorate in northern Michigan, this irrelevant, bound by tradition, declining, unhealthy, dying, Southern-cultured, defensive church with a lot of pent up anger and conflict faithfully proclaimed the word of God from its pulpit and in its Sunday School classes, faithfully trained teenagers and young adults in soul-winning visitation, and remained committed to the timeless truth of God’s word in the midst of a changing culture and declining city.  I owe my spiritual life to a church Brad Powell dismisses as “irrelevant.” Temple Baptist Church was certainly relevant to me.  And history bears out that prior to 1991 Temple was significantly relevant to many who owe their spiritual lives to its ministry.

Brad has always dismissed the history of Temple Baptist Church as irrelevant, which is surprising since his own success at North Ridge is due in large measure to the foundation laid by others throughout Temple’s long history.  For 40 years Dr. G. B. Vick labored as the faithful pastor of Temple, yet Brad can only say of this great leader and pastor that “he managed the ministry with consistent excellence and relative success,” (italics mine) even though, as Brad characterizes Dr. Vick, he was not the communicator or innovator the previous pastor was.   Brad has spent his entire ministry at North Ridge building on the foundation other men laid, especially those of this mediocre leader, Dr. G. B. Vick.

There is no question that Temple was in decline and dying when Brad arrived in the early 90s.  Brad and I fundamentally disagree as to why.  He points to “banjos playing in the basement” to illustrate the church’s cultural irrelevance. I would point to the failure of the church’s leadership to biblically deal with sin, both among themselves and the members of the congregation.  Temple died because the Spirit abandoned it, not because the culture found it irrelevant.

I would argue that Temple’s problem wasn’t its inability to connect with the culture. It had succeeded in connecting with the culture for 70 years before Brad arrived.  The gospel has always been and always will be foolish to the culture, but that doesn’t make the message irrelevant. It’s not preaching, or hymns, or traditional Sunday School, or soulwinning visitation, that kill a church.  It’s sin left unconfronted that kills a church.  The pastor who immediately preceded Brad resigned because of a “moral failure.” God knows, plenty of others should have hit the altar that day with confessions of failures, moral and otherwise, of their own.  But rather than point to spiritual decadence as the source of Temple’s decline, Brad blew past that and focused on “banjos in the basement” as the culprit.  And, of course, if indeed the decline were due to “banjos playing in the basement” and stern looking “arms crossed ushers,” it would be easier to convince the people that the problem was “relevance” rather than sin.

But if the problem is spiritual, well the answer to that problem is a different one altogether. Dealing with a spiritual crisis doesn’t require abandoning the historic biblical principles that got you where you are by throwing them into the same pile with banjos playing in the basement. A spiritual crisis requires repentance and confession and a recommitment to those historic principles. But if your goal is to tip sacred cows (like banjos, organs, and arms-crossed ushers) into a Golden Calf, some things that really aren’t sacred cows (like expository, evangelistic preaching and worship music with a solid theological foundation) get labled sacred cows so as to faciliate your goal of Golden Calf forming.

Brad diagnosed cultural irrelevance as the disease that killed Temple and he presecribed a heavy dose of cultural capitulation as the remedy. It worked. And in a culture that values quantity more than quality, relevance more than spiritual depth, the fact that it worked is all that matters.  For Jesus’ attitude toward quantity over quality see Matthew 7:21-23 (note the words ‘many’ and ‘knew’ and you tell me what Jesus values more: what you produce or who you know – numbers or relationship?).

I’m almost certain I’ll be getting an email or a certified letter any moment now from the NFL’s attorneys. Seems I may have just violated a copyright law. How, you say? Read the headline at the top of this post. Do you see those two words “Super Bowl”? Turns out after 41 years the NFL has decided to crack down on the use of those two words.

But only if you are a Christian or an evangelical church. Your local sports bar can use those two words to help them sell a controlled-substance to already over-intoxicated patrons, but according the NFL assistant counsel Rachel L. Margolies, if you are an evangelical church planning to use those words in conjunction with “a message,” you’ve violated their copyright.

Ms. Margolies actually sent a letter to the Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianpolis demanding that they “cease and desist” from using the words “Super Bowl” in their advertising for a church fellowship! And, oh, by the way, you can’t ask people to contribute toward the purchase of snacks, because that is the equivalent of charging an admission fee. Oh, and one more thing: you can’t show the game on any screen larger than 55 inches! While you’re planning your own gatherings, consider these golf simulator packages that offer great value for fun entertainment options.

It gets better. She also told the church that their plans to show an evangelistic video featuring Indianapolis Coach Tony Dungy and some of his players talking about their faith in Jesus was also a violation of the NFLs new found rules! Says Margolies: “While this may be a noble message, we are consistent in refusing the use of our game broadcasts in connection with events that promote a message, no matter the content.” So when the marquee on the front of every local sports bar in the Detroit area invites people to come in and watch the “Super Bowl” (copyright violation!) on “Five Big Screens” (55 inches or less!) in order to consume as much of a legally controlled-substance as their metabolism can handle (or not handle), I suppose that is a message the NFL doesn’t mind having associated with their copyright?

This is already backfiring big time on the NFL. Google the words NFL letter churches and read the outrage. The Family Research Council is involved, and I suspect that soon enough we’ll be hearing from the American Family Association and Focus on the Family. This is clearly a case of the big bad corporation harassing churches. It is religious discrimination on display for even non-churched people to clearly see. Alexandra Pelosi estimates there are 80 million of us evangelicals in America. What if we sat out next year’s Super Bowl? What if we kept our television sets – no matter what the size – tuned to any channel other than the one on which “Super Bowl XLII” was airing? Do you think 80 million evangelicals boycotting one sporting event could adversely affect ratings enough to have a negative impact on ad rates?

Don’t think the NFL Commissioner didn’t think of that before I did. Big time backtracking from the NFL from someone higher up than an overzealous attorney is on its way.