Tony

Twins on February 9th, 2005 

Pastoral Search Committee Report

Funny Stuff from a friend of mine.

Pastor Search Committee Report
In our search for a suitable pastor, the following scratch sheet was developed for your perusal. Of the candidates investigated by the committee, only one was found to have the necessary qualities. The list contains the names of the candidates and comments on each, should you be interested in investigating them further for future pastoral placements.

NOAH
He has 120 years of preaching experience, but no converts.

MOSES
He stutters and his former congregation says he loses his temper over trivial things.

ABRAHAM
He took off to Egypt during hard times. We heard that he got into trouble with the authorities and then tried to lie his way out.

... and on it goes. Click here to read the rest.

Jesus and the Calendar

Looking for some Christmas-related reading to satisfy this morning's intellectual curiousity?

Calendars and their History

The ecclesiastical calendars of Christian churches are based on cycles of movable and immovable feasts. Christmas is the principal immovable feast, with its date set at December 25. Easter is the principal movable feast, and dates of most other movable feasts are determined with respect to Easter. However, the movable feasts of the Advent and Epiphany seasons are Sundays reckoned from Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany, respectively.

Jesus Birth Date Riddle

Pinpointing Christ's Birth Date

Most of the information needed to establish when our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ was born in the flesh is contained in the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke the Evangelist. Additional critical information is found in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and in a Roman inscription discovered in 1794, as well as the other sources earlier alluded to. According to St. Luke, the Holy Virgin and Theotokos Mary conceived in the sixth month of the pregnancy of her well-aged cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:24-26). St. Elizabeth conceived (miraculously, considering her advanced years), immediately after "those days" (Luke 1:22-24), which were climaxed by a vision experienced by the priest Zacharias as he was offering incense before God in the Temple of Solomon while "the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of the incense" (Luke 1:10, AV; NEB reads: "The whole congregation was at prayer outside," and this was during the reign of "Herod, King of udæa" and prior to when Tiberius became Cæsar Augustus [Emperor] of Rome [Luke 1:5; 3:1], and when Quirinius [Cyrenius] was governor of Syria [Luke 2:2]). St. Matthew confirms that the Birth of our Savior took place while Herod the Great was King of Judæa. If St. Vincent of Lerins is correct, that information, together with ecclesiastical tradition, should certainly suffice to determine exactly when Jesus Christ was born.

And of course, there are many many more sites on this topic out there.

PoetTree.com's Scripture Songs

Remember those songs you sang as a kid that you can never forget? Here is a site with 300 royalty free "Scripture Songs" which are straight up Bible text set to music.

PoetTree.com

- Here to Heaven "Best Verses on Evangelism"
- Flip B.O.P. Joy "Best of Phillipians
- Surviving Temptation Island "Total Bible Workout on Purity"
- Mix Route 66 "One Song from Each book of the Bible"
- Stangers, Elders & Aliens "Best Verses - 1 & 2 Peter, Philemon"

"Celebrating a 10-year grassroots history, indie PoetTree.com has faithfully recorded over 300 verbatim scripture songs in 14 albums. By challenging Internet surfers to first learn the verses then to share and pass on the blessing, the PoetTree.com ministry combination garnishes a unique opportunity to distribute their royalty free songs worldwide."

And this isn't your grandma's Sunday School Music. Check it out.

//aside: My friend Robert Rottet, who died several years ago, was singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band that founded this project.

UPDATE: Just did a search on Google that turns up interesting results, if you want to read about music, memory and the brain.

Henry Waxman's Report

In case you haven't researched the Waxman report that made such exciting headlines a last week, Dawn Eden does some good analysis and has some links worth reading.

Teaser:

As Michelle Malkin, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and others reported yesterday, the report from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on abstinence education reads as though it were written by the staff of Planned Parenthood and SIECUS—and it probably was. Waxman's pro-Culture of Death bias is obvious in his inaccuracies—most glaringly in his cover-ups and fabrications about the connections between abortion, depression, and suicide.

Good news, Bad news.

Fewer Teens Engaging in Sex, Study Finds

Sex surveys of 15 - 17 year olds show decline of about a third from 1995 to 2002.

However, still roughly a third of teens in that age group have had sex.

Weekly Calendar - 12-13-2004

Well, since I didn't pick up a bulletin this week, I can't fill this out, but wanted to create a placeholder post to remind one of the posters to do this.