Thanksgiving Dinner at Set Free

Thursday, November 28th, 2013

2:00 PM 

Set Free Ministries 

2225E Platte Avenue

 Free and Open to Everyone!!!!

Just want to remind all of our friends and family that we will be having our Set Free Thanksgiving meal again this year. The meal is free and open to anyone, so if you or someone you know needs a place to spend thanksgiving, please come join us. Of course, you are also welcome to come help Serve the dinner to the disciples of set free and our community as well.


Pastor FedEx

A Journey From Church to Faith (November Synchroblog)

Church has always been a part of my life. Nearly all of my earliest memories are of going to church, of missionaries visiting from Africa, of hearing Bible stories and making crafts and singing silly songs in vacation bible school. When I try to identify the point in my life when I began my own personal faith journey, I find it somewhat difficult. Usually, I point to the time in kindergarten when I made a profession of faith, more like I repeated a prayer after my Sunday school teacher. This was after a particularly scary story about what Hell was like, and while I did not know much about God or Jesus, I knew I didn't want to go there, so I said the prayer my teacher said would keep me out of Hell.

No matter where we lived, and my family moved around a lot, we always found a church to attend on Sunday morning. My life has always been centered around church. When I was ten years old my family started attending a Baptist church and naturally, I got baptized. I liked being at church, and looked for any excuse to be there. I joined the choir, I attended every Bible study that they offered, I was the picture of a good church boy.

Driving the Prototype

 

Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated with concept cars and prototypes. Imagine that you have the ability to design whatever your ability and talent will allow, without the restrictions of practicality. No need to worry about fuel economy or saleability, no need to worry about whether or not the vehicle is street legal or safe. We're talking about unrestricted freedom to design and build, how could anything be better.

Then it comes time to road test the prototype, this is where all the fun comes to an end and reality comes crashing back down upon us. In fact, this is where the expression "the wheels came off" comes from, and it is a genuine possibility that the wheels will actually come off during the testing. You see, design is limited by certain physical laws, and no matter how the prototype looks in the shop, until it performs on the track, you can never know if the prototype will ever be more than a just an idea or concept.

Each time you drive the prototype, you identify new problems and issues and go "back to the drawing board" to tweak the design just a little to correct for the problems. Each time, the final product is a little more refined and a little more practical. Each new variant on the original design, at least in theory, has fewer and smaller problems until the final product is arrived at. Often, the end result looks little like the original concept, and in many cases, the original design is abandoned altogether in favor of more practical ideas.

Theology is Like a Concept Car

The development of Theology is a lot like the process for taking a car from prototype to showroom, or at least it should be. You see, we spend years sitting in classrooms developing theological constructs and ideas. We research them, study the bible, find scholars who agree with us, write papers and defend them. We sometimes forget that the classroom, the cloister, the seminary, is a theoretical setting. In many cases, it seems, that the development of the ultimate prototype, the most theoretically perfect theology is the end goal, and we forget that Theology was never intended to end in the classroom, or even at the pulpit.

Second Hand Suffering

30 years ago, many people did not believe that it would be possible for a person to get cancer or emphysema or COPD from cigarette smoke when they had never actually smoked a cigarette in their life. But then came the big tobacco trials and medical experts testified that cigarette smoking is hazardous not only to the smoker, but to the people around them who are exposed indirectly to the toxins. Now, we are so keenly sensitive to the dangers posed by second hand exposure that we there is now a movement to ban public smoking altogether.

Just like cigarette smoking causes physical damage to people through exposure to toxic chemicals, traumatic life events cause emotional damage to people exposing them to toxic emotional situations. In the case of emotional trauma, just like cigarette smoking, these toxic emotions not only cause damage to those who experience them first hand, but also can be damaging to those who are exposed to them second hand. My wife and I were talking with a friend of ours, who ministers to people who have been victims of abuse, and it is amazing how few people actually realize the dangers associated with second hand emotional trauma.