BLOGGING - demonstrating why nobody listens.

Mowing your lawn in Sun City

GM announced today that it's shutting four plants that make trucks and SUV's.
I did that roof repair this morning and I think the tenant was home. It was early enough in the morning, and what I'm assuming is his vehicle was in the driveway. A brand new (doesn't have his plates yet) Dodge 3/4 ton, four door, four wheel drive, diesel truck! This guy rents!

BTW, what kind of a doofus wears short jeans to work on a flat roof in the Arizona sun?

IMHO what we have here is the free market system working at its best. Gas prices go up and sales of gas guzzlers go down. As people look for alternatives to rapidly rising petroleum prices the market will reward innovation, and the risk/reward ratio will shift in favor of those who invest in the development of other forms of energy. The best thing Congress can do is stay out of the way!

Imagine a cheerleader taking out an ad in the H.S. newspaper announcing that she'd go to the prom if the captain of the football team asked her. Unless she's the ideal date, somebody's going down in flames!
Oh yeah, her obnoxious brother will be coming along.

Eschew obfuscation.
We're working on our doctrinal statement during the Foundations hour at Pathway Bible Church. We typically take one item each week, although we just took a three or four week detour to establish some basic principles we need to write the bottom half of the statement.
I'm a big believer in not reinventing the wheel. It would be foolish and arrogant for me to draft from scratch each item of what will be Pathway's doctrinal statement, so I've gathered three statements from sources I respect to serve as as a basis for what we'll use. They usually vary a little in wording but are typically very similar.
The first rule in writing is determining your audience. And I've decided that the committees who write doctrinal statements often skipped that step.
"...resurrected bodies like unto Christ's own glorious body."
"The ministry gifts for the Body of Christ are enumerated in Eph...."

Or maybe we just have very different ideas about the intended readers. I see the doctrinal statement as intended primarily (not exclusively) for inquirers, somebody who wants to know what XYZ Church believes so they can decide whether or not to visit, or perhaps join. This individual is not antagonistic to XYZ Church, so there's no need to achieve the kind of precision that produces legalese. They don't read theology; they may not read much at all. Phraseology taken from the KJV isn't going to communicate effectively. Five syllable words are counterproductive when a two syllable word will do the job just as well.

I don't mean to make too big a deal out of this, but one of my core commitments as a teacher and as a pastor is that the deepest biblical truth can and should be presented in the simplest terms. I had a faculty colleague criticize me as being "too populous." I took it as a compliment. He maintained that my plainspeak betrayed a failure to do serious thinking, and an anti-intellectual bias. I think he erred by equating verbiage with thinkiage.

Precision and understandable are not mutually exclusive. They may take a little more work, but it can, and should be done. If it takes a degree in theology to understand a doctrinal statement, what message are we sending to those who just want to know if Pathway Bible Church teaches the truth? If they fit there?

As always, IMHO.