Tag: Church

TBT^2: Go to Church

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Church can be a beautiful thing.  Indeed, it should be—it’s the Body of Christ!  But many Christians are quitting church for various reasons.  The Age of The Virus gave everyone a taste of how the heathens live; unfortunately, too many Christians enjoyed it and dropped out of church almost entirely.

Perhaps the worst thing churches—and schools, and governments, and hospitals, and businesses, etc., etc., etc.—did during The Age of The Virus was to shutter their doors.  Churches should have been the last places to close down; during a pandemic, people needed access to their churches more than ever before, but the churches followed the world.  They’re suffering as a result now.

Granted, church attendance was on the decline In the Before Times, in The Long, Long Ago, before The Age of The Virus brought its authoritarian terrors.  The Plandemic was just the excuse to stop attending—“for safety!”—and it seems that many folks were not eager to return.  That’s a shame.  A church community provides so much, and while we can and should study Scripture on our own, we are part of a body.  An ear that hears but has no brain to process it or arms to react to the hearing is pretty useless.

So—go to church!

With that, here is 27 April 2023’s “TBT: Go to Church“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Baccalaureate Service 2023

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The following is the written version of the speech/sermon I’ll be giving at my school’s baccalaureate service tomorrow, Sunday, 20 May 2023.  It pulls from the Scripture readings that students will make prior to my little sermonette, which are Proverbs 3:1-6, James 1:2-5, Psalm 20:1-5, Jeremiah 29:11, and Psalm 113.  I also include Matthew 11:28-30 and Psalm 20:6 (and probably allude to several other verses that I do not reference directly).

Good evening families, faculty, staff, and graduates of the Class of 2023. You have worked hard to be sitting here today, and in six days you will get to sit again for another ceremony, during which your mother will probably cry and you will hear a dozen or so senior videos with the Trace Adkin’s song “You’re Gonna Miss This” (and probably Bill Joel’s “Vienna”).

But to get where you are today took a great deal of effort and struggle. Sometimes it was your parents doing the struggling, or your teachers, but ultimately, you had to get the work done. Your reward for your efforts is to build upon the foundation you have laid, and while I encourage you all to get some much-deserved rest, your work is only beginning.

While you have learned a plethora of facts, and learned how to perform elaborate titrations in Chemistry, and learned how to dissect a work of literature or a piece of poetry, you have also learned how to live. In learning all of these other skills and facts and figures, you have, in the process, learned what matters in life. And here is the big hint: it isn’t how to perform elaborate titrations in a chemistry lab.

Our purpose in this life is to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors. Psalm 113 is a model for us: “From the rising of the sun to its going down; The Lord’s name is to be praised.”

“From the rising of the sun to its going down.” That’s a lot! Not exactly an easy task, is it? We are to praise and glorify God in all of our endeavors? Well, yes. Fortunately, we have God to Help us.

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TBT: Go to Church

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Easter has come and gone, so ’tis the season the stop attending church until Christmas.  At least, that’s the attitude of some folks.  Here at TPP, we endorse frequent church attendance.

Last year I lamented the way our attitude about church attendance demonstrates our skewed priorities.  We’ll bend over backwards (for some people, perhaps literally) to appease our increasingly unreasonable bosses, but come Sunday morning, we’ll lounge about in bed rather than fellowship with other Christians.

To be clear, I don’t think church attendance is a necessary precursor to salvation.  At the same time, a Christian should want to spend that time learning about God’s Word and worshipping Him with other believers.

I certainly don’t feel like it every Sunday.  Because of my extremely busy work schedule, I sometimes catch myself begrudging the long drive to church on Sunday mornings, and the way that it cuts into the day.  But I almost always am glad I went.

Funny how even the tiniest sacrifices and the slightest hardships, once endured, help us improve.  Attending church once a week is not a major imposition.  Now churches just need to make sure they’re teaching the Truth, not watered-down inspirational speeches that I could find on a mommy blog.

With that, here is 13 April 2022’s “Go to Church“:

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Open Mic Adventures XXIV: “Softly and Tenderly”

The Portly Politico8 Comments

I’m back in the hymnbook for this edition of Open Mic Adventures, which at this point is pretty much “anything I play anywhere, in any context, that I happen to record.”  But that makes for an unwieldy title.

Inaccurate labels aside, I played “Softly and Tenderly” for my church’s Sunday morning service on Sunday, 12 March 2023.  It was the invitational (the “altar call” piece, for the rest of you Pentecostals out there), but this recording was made before service.  You can hear some chit-chat in the background, but not as much as the recording in “Open Mic Adventures XXII: ‘Blessed Assurance’.”

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Open Mic Adventures XIV: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”

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The title of this week’s piece is a bit of a misnomer:  it’s not from an open mic night, but from a morning church service.  There’s also no singing—at least, not from me!  I’m just tickling the ivories.  *Tickle, tickle!*

The piece here is one of my favorite Christmas carols, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  We did sing it for morning service this past Sunday, 27 November 2022 at my little country church, but I was warming up and having a bit of cheeky fun beforehand.

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Chapel Lesson: Listening

The Portly Politico10 Comments

Now that The Age of The Virus is pretty much over, my school has resumed its normal schedule of weekly events, most of which were shuttered during those two, long, pointlessly fearful years.  Part of that schedule is Chapel on Thursday mornings.

Years ago, we had a regular chaplain, a crusty ex-Marine and Episcopal reverend whom I loved dearly (his widow gave me several of his shirts and a leather bag, which I still carry to this day).  After his passing, we went through a parade of youth pastors of various stripes and backgrounds, and briefly brought in a charismatic black man who shouted inspirationally at the students (and frequently showed up late, or not at all).

We now have a young Spanish teacher—a very sweet, unassuming fellow, who is probably six-and-a-half-feet tall—who will serve as our chaplain.  However, he’s a shy man—a gentle giant—and wasn’t quite ready to dive into Chapel this year.  As such, the administration asked me to deliver the first little lesson of the year.

It’s a responsibility I took seriously, but also willingly.  I prayed about what I should cover, and while flipping through a devotional from The Daily Encouraging Word, I found a good lesson from James 1:19 about listening.

It was a good, broad message that is applicable even for non-believers, and I thought it’d make a good, quick lesson for students, who often need to be reminded to listen closely and not to jump to conclusions (many adults—myself included!—need to be reminded of this lesson, too!).  The five tips are directly from the DEW devotional, but I added in some verses I’d been mulling over from Proverbs.

It was remarkable to me how the Holy Spirit placed these related verses in front of me as I was putting this little talk together.  I’ve been reading and rereading Proverbs, reading one chapter a day for each day of the month, and it’s really deepened my understanding of the wisdom contained therein.  It just so happened that there was a great passage from Proverbs 25 the morning I was to give the chapel lesson, so it fit in nicely.

To God Be the Glory!

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Lazy Sunday CXLVII: Friends, Part X

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It’s the tenth edition of Lazy Sunday posts dedicated to looking back at Supporting Friends Friday features.  I think after this Sunday I’m going to give the SFF retrospectives a break for a bit, as I’ve nearly caught up to the present day with them.

This weekend’s mix is of a more literary and theological bent:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Supporting Friends Friday: Local Churches

The Portly Politico9 Comments

It’s Good Friday in the Western Church, so I thought I’d spotlight the friends that need our support the most:  our local churches.

Your local churches will obviously be quite different than mine, but I would encourage every Christian reader to give to your local church this weekend.  If you are not tithing to a church already, start doing so!  Only 5% of churchgoers tithe, but American Christians earn $5.2 trillion annually.  Imagine the transformative impact if every Christian gave ten percent.  That could feed, clothe, and shelter a lot of people.  It would also be an incredible witness to Christians’ commitment to their faith.

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