Marvin Sapp Sings My Testimony

Acclaimed gospel singer/songwriter and pastor Dr. Marvin Sapp sings “Never Would Have Made It”.

What is a Christian? (2)

One who realizes that her longing for God is not construed to be an essential longing for the Almighty in order to maintain a sense of lifestyle maintenance or well-being (functional religion) within society; far from that such longing is found within God’s giving of his Son and his Spirit, an action of His will, to draw all living creatures to Himself to each other , creatures newly transformed, to participate in an eternal, holy communion.

What is a Christian? (1)

One who unapologetically acknowledges Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the One whom God has raised from the dead, is Lord through entering a life-long journey of surrendering her life to His authority over all creation and his people the Church, thereby submitting her will through the enablement of the Holy Spirit to his Father’s will and his kingdom that will one day breakforth as a spring into this present age. All of her life’s aspirations, goals, dreams, and experiences are under Christ’s power. In Him and under Him, these things have new meaning, nay, the are giving true meaning. She is a bondservant to Christ, yet in Him she is completely free from the suprastructure of sin and death which Christ decisely overcame through his sacrifice on the Cross and his Resurrection to be truly human as Christ was and is truly human.

She is apart of a new world order of shalom; quite different than present order of this age of hopelessness and despair. She is joined to the Church, Christ’s Body. This new community is endowed with God’s Spirit to commune with the Father and his Son our Lord Jesus, and to bear witness of the Lord Jesus in the world. Thus, the Christian is not removed from the world, she is in light to bear witness of the Light for she is in the Light. She along with her brothers and sisters, are a light to the world.

Catholic Priest’s Take on Wright

Change

The Book of Genesis gives us the one of the most staggering witnesses to the inevitability of change:

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” 8:22 KJV

God in His manifold wisdom has ordered the cosmos in a manner which all things go through the process-event of change. Change is experiential. All of creation is not exempt. The smallest quasar; to the hottest star; the largest solid object; the smallest child; the oldest woman; they all experience change in their state, condition, context, or even being.

I am experiencing a change as I write. I am graduating from college on the 10th of May. My body experiences the symptoms of this change. My left eye twitches uncontrollably. At times I cannot sleep. I’m excited, anxious, and nervous. Then suddenly I am at peace. I’ve been in Pennsylvania Dutch Country for almost five years. I became a man here. I was seventeen when I started. I’m twenty-two now and in ten days I will be walking down an aisle before thousands of people receiving my diploma case. The diploma will come in the mail two weeks after the commencement celebration.

I will leaving Penn’s Woodlands for the Big Apple in July. The French Culinary Institute is where I will matriculated for six to nine months. Then off to seminary or grad school. My God how time goes by.

I was with a couple of friends this evening celebrating our achievements as University banquet for minorities. Many tears were shed. Many let out shouts of joy and elation. It was also bittersweet.

I cried so many tears. I laughed so many times I can’t count. I prayed. I lamented. I had my good days and bad ones too. I fought people. I fought my flesh. I fought devils. Some wins. Some losses. Yet through it all God has kept me to see to the end. And now I am on the brink of new beginnings. He has so much in store. What a mighty God we serve!

The greatest thing about is that I’m grateful for the peace of God to know that His will is greater than all my fears and aspirations. Too many want God to be a motivational speaker to help us to accomplish our goals in life. He didn’t created us for that. God has created us to serve Him. I think it’s the Westminster Smaller Catechism that says that the duty of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s a place I’ll continually pray to be founded in. Enjoying God forever. Wow.

Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow: Doxology

I was in the Doxology mood today. Especially because we used to sing this in my late grandfather’s church when I was younger. It was usually at the beginning of the service as a part of the invocation. My mother’s church sings it at the end of worship. Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral sings it at the end as well. A lot of Protestant Churches for hundreds of years have made it a part of their worship.

Praise God, from Whom all things flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Evidently the Doxology is the last verse of two hymns written by Thomas Ken, an Anglican priest around 1674. The hymns “Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun” and “Glory to Thee, my God, This Night” was used as morning and evening worship in the Church of England. In Ken’s day, it was considered sin to sing hymns that were not found in the Scriptures. My how times have changed.

In some denominations, the traditional language is revised to be more “gender-neutral” in references to the Godhead. Yuck!

Anyway, I found this wonderful clip of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. signing the Doxology for it’s deaf congregants. The coolest thing is everybody is doing it.

Hallelujah!

This is a clip of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) Centennial Holy Convocation in Memphis, TN. Dorinda Clark-Cole and Karen Clark-Sheard of the acclaimed gospel quartet The Clark Sisters are singing “Hallelujah,” a song written by their mother the late Dr. Mattie Moss Clark. This anthem has been a staple song of the Church of God in Christ within the past 40 years.

The Church of God in Christ turned 100 years old last year. It’s the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Founded by Charles Harrison Mason in 1907, COGIC is rapidly growing and is becoming one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States. If you haven’t seen how the “Sanctified Church” gets down to praising God, just take a clip and see!

Did Jesus Really Say That?

Did Jesus really say, “Go and sin no more.” found in the passage John 7:53-8:11? Well according to Dallas Theological Seminary New Testament scholar Daniel B. Wallace the answer is a simple “no.” A recent Christianity Today article reports that Wallace says that Christians should be cautious about reading this passage as inspired and authoritative because the whole story of the woman caught in adultery not found in the earliest manuscripts. In a related article Wallace says, “it’s my favorite passage not found in the Bible.”

Mainstream evangelicalism subscribes to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, meaning that the Scripture as orignally given in the earliest manuscripts are inspired and without error. Wallace’s rationale is that since this passage did not appear in them they are not (or should not) be authoritative for Christians’ faith and practice. Wheaton College NT scholar Douglas share Wallace’s concern.

Wallace believes this passage should be taken out of the Bible or have a note published in our translations saying that it doesn’t appear in the originals/earliest manuscripts. He doesn’t say they are inauthentic, but again Christians should be mindful of them. Wallace says that we should be biblical as we possibility can be.

I have a problem with this. I do not get what Wallace means by the term “biblical”. Does he mean that Christians are to adhere to what appears in the original manuscripts? If he does, that’s a problem. We don’t have them. Sure, we have copies but copies are not inspired if you are an inerrantist. Also, the “Bible” they early Christians had was the Hebrew Scripture. I’m being a bit facetious, but my point is that modern evangelicalism’s doctrine of the Bible needs to focus more on the preservation of Scripture and redefine, yet, free the evangelical doctrine of inspiration from Enlightenment epistemological presuppositions.

The passage of the woman caught within adultery conveys a powerful truth about Christ. Christ has reserved judgment until the Day of Judgment. The Son of Man did not come to condemn but to save. In the passage, Christ exposes the hypocrisy of the woman’s accusers and then admonishes (commands) the woman to live a life without sin. “Go and and sin no more” is not to be a legalistic command but of one that liberates the woman and us from the bondage of sin. To go and sin no more is to walk in the newness of life given to us by Christ in his work on the Cross and his victory over the grave in his resurrection.

To remove this passage would be a sad thing for believers.

Forever My Praise!

I just came back from a truly awesome trip to NY. Bible Campus Ministries, the campus ministry where I serve as president, sponsored a trip to NY. Sixteen people worshiped at the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral of NY. Then we stopped over at Duke’s New York for dinner.

It took us close to 4 hours to get to Jamaica, Queens from Millersville. We thought we would miss the 11:00a.m. worship service.

We arrived just right on time, well sort of, because the 8:30a.m service let out late. So we arrived in front the church in our 47 seat executive coach bus and went into an awesome worship service.

Lady Judith Christie McAllister lead the worship this morning with the help of Greater Allen’s choir and worship leader Melonie Daniels. The Holy Spirit moved in that place!

Then Co-Pastor Elaine M. Flake, D.Min. entered the sanctuary with guest preacher the Rev. Dr. Claudette A. Copeland. The two women recently came off from leading a weekend of praise at the 25th annual Greater Allen’s Women’s Ministry Conference in Philadelphia. The theme this year was entitled Forever My Praise.

Dr. Copeland preached from Jeremiah 38:6-13 with a sermon titled “At the End of Your Rope.” The message was truly powerful.

Today was truly the icing on the cake. The batter started to churn last night when I started to read A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine before sleep. This book was truly the answer to my prayers. I was in a spiritual drought for the past couple of days. I need to ween myself from reading so many theoblogs. It can become a bit depressing.

I do plan to visit the church again when I move to New York over the summer. The power of God is in that church and the Flakes are some real community leaders. Thank God for His servants who are really effecting their communities for the glory of His Name. Hallelujah!

Whose Side Are You On? A Journey into Theological Confession

Fridays I try to make it a ritual to end my blogging week with a lighter note. This time I will exempt myself from doing so. I have been thinking about the future. I’ve been thinking hard about Christianity. I’m a bit in a theological bind. I don’t know what denomination which I will find myself in a couple of years.

I was raised in Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church. My grandfather, who recently left this earth for glory last December, was my first pastor. He was unapologetically Baptist by confession. Yet he sowed a seed within me that seems to reap a bit of a dilemma. He taught me to be “pro-Christian”. He exemplified this by leading choirs in A.M.E. circles and preaching in their pulpits. When I was a child my mother would take us boys to visit Trinity Lutheran Church which was across from where we used to live in Philly. It was pastored by a black woman, Pastor Keyes. When we moved to New Jersey, we volunteered at a Presbyterian Church across the street from our house in Blackwood.

We moved back to Philly after three years in the Garden State. We went back to Pilgrim’s Rest. When Pop Pop retired from the pastorate in 2000, I haven’t been an official member of a Baptist Church since then. I started to go to my cousin’s church after it moved to its mega-church facility in 2000. I even walked down the aisle to become the member. I haven’t completed all the new member’s classes. I left because it felt it was too big and I got lost in it and it was too far from my house. Then I attended an A.M.E. church around the corner from my house in Upper Darby, PA. It was a good church, until it disbanded after the pastor’s impropriety was brought out in the public. Although I attend my mother’s Baptist Church when I return home from college often, I am not a member.

I am currently a member of a non-denominational evangelical church housed at Millersville. It was in college I was exposed to evangelicalism. I started doing research, buying books, reading Christianity Today magazine. I identified myself as a conservative evangelical not realizing what connotations I would invoke when I said it. I later started to do research on Pentecostalism. I started to watch TBN, pop-Pentecostalism du jour like an addict. Later I started to look into mature and sound Pentecostal theology through Internet research databases at school. It’s truly like night and day after watching TBN and reading critical and informed thought from Pentecostal scholars like Frank Macchia, Terry L. Cross, Amos Yong, and Cheryl Bridges Johns. Unlike like many of the Charismatic celeb preachers on TBN, these folks actually earned their doctorates at accredited institutions. I stopped watching TBN regularly without withdraw.

After being “baptized in the Holy Spirit” at a church leadership conference at school in 2006, I identified myself as Pentecostal. That same year I was called to preach. When I told my grandfather he wanted to know what was my theological convictions. I told him Pentecostal. He asked me which denomination would I seek ordination. I told him either Church of God in Christ (COGIC) or Assemblies of God. He told me he’d prefer COGIC.

Currently I am at theological crossroads. I have researched many Protestant denominations theological confessions, but I really don’t know what it really means to be a Protestant Christian. Funny thing is my grandfather never viewed himself as a Protestant. He told me “Baptists are not Protestants because we have nothing to protest against.” (I take it he meant that Baptists were not protesting against Roman Catholicism. Yet Baptists came out or alongside the Anabaptist movement and both find infant baptism unbiblical which was practiced in the Reformed Churches in Europe at the genesis of these movements.)

I don’t see myself ever becoming a Roman Catholic. Eastern Orthodoxy, hmm, tempting, but no. Both really do seem attractive to many a disillusioned Protestant fed up with Protestantism. I may be wrong, but I would really miss African American preaching from both men and women. Yes, I’m an egalitarian so that would really take me out of communion with the two older churches. I wonder if they really think we non-Catholics and non-Orthodox Christians are saved. That’s another post for another day.

That’s why I’m interested in the study of Christian theology. There are so many things to understand about the Christian faith. I want to understand what I believe in order that I may serve the God I confess as Lord and Savior. I just want to be a faithful to Him. He’s been faithful me. So I pray the Lord leads me to the place of conviction to serve within a context He’s foreordained to be.  The thing is that maybe a place that I least expect it and that’s a hard prayer to swallow. Let His will be done.