It’s time for round two in my joint venture with Mike Todd. The question: “Heaven and Hell. What are they and who goes there?” A straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer.I don’t like to be descriptive about heaven beyond what the Bible says. It mentions a throne room and throne, and multitudes surrounding…that’s all I can think of right now. But all that isn’t really important to me. What’s important to me is this: Heaven is the unmitigated presence of God, from whom all blessings flow. I don’t care if the sky is clear, the weather balmy, and streets paved with gold, because God is there and that’s all that matters.

Conversely, Hell is the unbroken absence of God. No life, no joy, no hope, no peace…just pain. There may be fires and there may be physical torment, but that’s superfluous in comparison to the spiritual torment of being totally separated from God. (continue reading…)

I finally got the new box set up and gave Linux a try. As I type this I’m using Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, The latest distribution from the Ubuntu community. I’ve been told that it’s the most popular Linux distribution, and I can see why. It’s fast, easy to use and completely customizable. It’s just similar enough to Windows that you can easily figure out what’s going on, but different enough that you know you’re using something better. Not only that, but it’s constantly updated and very secure. In the future I may give other Linux distributions a try, like Fedora, LinuxMint, and PCLinuxOS, but for now I’m pretty happy with Ubuntu. You should give it a try. Just download the CD image from the site, burn it, and you can test it out on your computer without installing it, to see what you think (make sure you have a wired ‘net connection). It’s completely worth it.

On Sunday morning Wade turned over a communion table. Fortunately (or unfortunately, from my perspective) it wasn’t a real one, just a plant on the stage. Can you call it a stage if it’s at the front of the worship area? Anyway, it was pretty powerful stuff.

He was talking about Jesus’ final week, which we’ll be doing at Garnett until Easter. He talked about the clearing of the temple, and Jesus’ unkind words for the Pharisees. All of that was pretty standard. Then he asked what Jesus would think of our lifestyles, of our spiritual lives, of our church life. Still standard. Then he asked what we would do if he weren’t happy. “What would we do if Jesus came in and started throwing over communion tables?!”

The congregation was arrested…I was at least. I kind of froze - first trying to figure out if there was really any communion on the table - then truly thinking about the question. What would Jesus think of all the junk we do on Sunday morning as though it’s divine law? About the expectations we heap on newcomers, expecting them to fit into the social mold of our congregations? About the amount of money churches (like ours, in its history) have spent on enormous buildings, rather than on service or missions? I think it’s pretty obvious that the train’s off the tracks, but in how many places and how do we get it back on? (continue reading…)

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