Bulletin Bloopers

I love strangely worded things with distorted meanings. The Christian Century website presents the following bulletin bloopers:

• The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict.

• Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

• Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa, will be speaking tonight at Calvary Methodist. Come hear Bertha Belch all the way from Africa.

Quote for the Day

"If the Lord Jesus Christ has washed you in his own blood and forgiven you all your sins, how dare you refuse to forgive yourself?"

-- Francis MacNutt quoted by Brennan Manning in
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

". . . it is neither wealth nor poverty that keeps men out of the kingdom -- it is pride."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"Above the din the Father cries out: 'You go to church every Sunday and read your Bible, but the body of my Son is broken. You memorize chapter and verse and honor all your traditions, but the body of my Son is broken. You recite the creed and defend orthodoxy, but the body of my Son is broken. You hark back to tradition and press forward toward renewal, but the body of my Son is broken.'"

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

". . . to be a nominal Christian is more dangerous than to be no Christian."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Change We Can Believe In

Barak Obama's speech at Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church in Alabama.

A Man for THIS Season

Thanks to Letters from Bagdad for bringing this video to my attention.

Compare the experience of Obama to that of Clinton as you view this and decide who has virtual experience and who has real experience -- and what kind of experience our country needs.

Quote for the Day

"A Russian starets once said, 'If you pray for humility, be careful. Humility is learned through humiliations.'"

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"One wonders why Christians today get off so easily. Is it because unchristian Americans are that much better than unchristian Romans, or is our light so dim that the tormentor can't see it? What are the things we do that are worth persecuting?"

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"Today we need small bands of people who take the gospel at face value, who realize what God is doing in our time, and who are living proof of being in the world but not of the world. These 'base' communities or neighborhood churches should be small enough for intimacy, kindred enough for acceptance, and gentle enough for criticism. gathered in the name of Jesus, the community empowers us to incarnate in our lives what we believe in our hearts and proclaim with our lips."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"I will allow no man to drag me so low as to make me hate him."

-- Booker T. Washington quoted by Clarence Jordan in
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"The surest sign of union with the crucified Christ is our forgiveness of those who have perpetuated injustices against us."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"It won't work, either, to hire out to Mammon and give a tenth of your wages to God. Not even if you raise his cut to a fifth, or a half."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"What if I should discover that the least of the brothers of Jesus, the one crying out most desperately for reconciliation forgiveness, and acceptance, is myself? That I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved, what then? Will I do for myself what I do for others?"

-- Carl Jung quoted by Brennan Manning in
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"People who are right are usually in the greatest danger of being a nuisance."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

". . . the fundamental secret of Jesus was his sovereign respect for human liberty. He never tried to make people virtuous against their will."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"But Jesus didn't tell his followers to love their enemies because love would or would not work. The idea probably never occurred to him to raise the question of whether or not it was practical. He told them that they should do it 'that they might be sons of their spiritual Father.'"

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"If our vocabulary dwindles to a few shopworn words, we are setting ourselves up for takeover by a dictator. When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles -- we cannot think; we do not recognize danger; injustice strikes us as no more than 'the way things are.'"

-- Madeleine L'Engle
Walking on Water

Obama Must Confess

The time has come for Barak Obama to confess. He must confess that he does not have the experience of Hillary Clinton. He has NEVER been First Lady of the United States. He has NEVER been First Lady of Arkansas. In fact, he has never held any position based upon his spouse's office.

While Clinton was observing in the White House and the Arkansas State House, Obama was serving as an ELECTED member of the Illinois legislature and working the streets with the people as a community organizer.

Clinton claims great international experience because she has wined and dined with highly placed international government figures. Obama, on the other hand, has only lived among the common people in diverse cultural situations.

Obviously, the outsider looking in has much greater experience and understanding than the one who only participates in the daily life of average people. The unelected observer has more "real" experience than the elected participant in government. Clinton has told us this based upon her vast experience.

Which kind of experience does this country need? Earned hands-on experience or spectator experience bestowed by marital status?

Quote for the Day

"One meets the Father on one's way back from being reconciled with his brother."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"We cushion the risk and remove the danger of discipleship by drawing up a list of moral rules that give us security instead of holy insecurity."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"Jesus said that the foremost sign of discipleship would be our love for one another. 'A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another: (John 13:34-35). His teaching is unequivocal here. we would be known as his followers not because we are chaste, celibate, honest, sober, or respectable; not because we are church-going, Bible-toting, or Psalm-singing: We would be recognized as disciples primarily by our deep and delicate respect for one another, our cordial love impregnated with reverence for the sacred dimension of the human personality. However, in an arrogant gesture of one-upmanship, many preachers today have decided that Jesus' standard for discipleship is inadequate for modern times. The new criterion is orthodoxy of doctrine coupled with the way we interpret the Bible. 'Right thinking' is the new norm for determining what a Christian is worth. In these parlous times we do not shrink from splitting up fellowship, local churches, and even denominations over the form of worship, the songs we sing, or the method of interpreting a Bible passage."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"Absolute loyalty to Jesus and his kingdom is the Christian's fast."

-- Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If he wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is his concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that."

-- Dominipue Voillaume, quoted by Brennan Manning in
The Signature of Jesus

Quote for the Day

"No one has a right, however, to call on men to change their ways unless he has a more excellent way to offer. Forsaking the wrong way is only half of repentance; accepting the right way is the other half."

--Clarence Jordan
Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"They [the scribes and Pharisees] would try to make the tree good by making its fruit good; he [Jesus] would make the tree good and let the fruit take care of itself."

-- Clarence Jordan Sermon on the Mount

Quote for the Day

"A Christian living in the world but not of the world is a sign of contradiction to the compromises that many within the Church have settled for. The disciple of Jesus will be made to look and feel like a fool. Yet, fools for Christ formed the early Church. And as that tiny band of believers grew, the world witnessed the power in such foolishness."

-- Brennan Manning
The Signature of Jesus