Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Untragic Death of Linda Lipscomb!
Posted by mi familia at 8:36 AM 1 comments
Labels: Cries of the Heart, Mission Mondays, Missions
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Preach to the World
As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.'
“God has called me to preach His word and if I knew that all the elect had a yellow stripe painted down their backs, then I would give up preaching the gospel and go lift up shirt tails!”
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
And this Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Lord Jesus come!
Posted by mi familia at 11:07 AM 0 comments
Monday, February 11, 2008
Brother, the Gospel is free!
I am not one to listen to hip hop. In fact the closest thing to hip hop that I am familiar with is the Fat Boys, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys; a far cry from my Wille Nelson and Jeryy Jeff Walker that are entrenched in my ipod.
I can say that I have both of Q's C.D.s and they are incredibly rich. There is nothing like listening to the Truth no matter what the worship style. Great stuff!
HERE is Christcentric.
_______________________________________________________
Student mixes hermeneutical hip-hop with seminary experience
by Keith Collier
To view a special online video feature about the interview with Quincy Jones, visit www.swbts.edu/Qjonesvideo.
FORT WORTH, Texas (SWBTS) – Staring at the cocaine in his hand while his mother prayed over him was a defining moment in Quincy Jones’ life. Only a few days prior, the 21-year-old was confronted with his need for a savior and put his faith in Jesus Christ. Now, he faced a dilemma: sell the last bit of his cocaine in order to pay his bills or flush it down the toilet and trust God to provide.
After her prayer, his mother said, “Quincy, you need to throw that away for all that the Lord has done for you and how He has protected you.” In that decisive moment, he surrendered everything to God and completely rejected his former life of dealing and using drugs. A friend began to disciple him and helped him get involved in ministering to young people in the Washington, D.C. area.
He soon discovered that his heart for ministry and passion for hip-hop music could be used in tandem to champion the God who had rescued him from his waywardness. When a young hip-hop artist started coming to his church, Jones felt impressed to pray for his salvation. A month later, he became a Christian. After another friend came to Christ several months later, the three formed the Christian hip-hop group Christcentric and began to write songs that echoed the heartbeat of the Reformers.
When Martin Luther penned the words to what many call the “Battle Hymn of the Reformation,” he sought to create music for worship with strong theological underpinnings. Departing from the religious musical form of the day, hymns like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” became tools for strengthening Christians, correcting doctrine and sharing the Gospel with the lost.
With these same goals in mind, Jones, aka Q-D.O.G., sees Christcentric’s music as the convergence of church history, theology and hip-hop. With songs like “Mighty Fortress,” an incredible adaptation of Luther’s classic, and “Sufficiency of Scripture,” their unique blend of theological truths and driving beats into contextualized catechisms was birthed in response to the poor theology they encountered as they traveled to perform.
Jones sees history as an integral part of their music. “Within every context, all history is God’s history. My history as an African-American in the United States and how Christian faith was birthed in our people through slavery is everyone’s history. The history of the Reformation is all of our history. You can’t really do theology if you’re not talking about history.”
Seeing individuals trapped in Word of Faith theology and the prosperity gospel, Christcentric wants to call people back to Scripture and the biblical Gospel. Jones says these individuals are “moving away from the centrality of the Word of God” and seeking to be entertained.
“Their lives are now more temporal. They’re focused on things and their own happiness versus finding their satisfaction in God, which means we have to go back to the Gospel, where our hope is in Christ and His coming. Within the African-American context, many of our churches are dominated, unfortunately, by this type of [prosperity] theology, and we need to come back to biblical faith.”
“The challenge with that,” he admitted, “is that not everybody wants theology in their music. We are a very entertainment-driven society… we don’t necessarily want to think; we’re not a thinking culture.” Christcentric’s music seeks to challenge Christians with theological depth that points them to the mind of Christ.
As one can imagine, Christcentric’s brand of hip-hop has faced many misconceptions throughout the past decade: “Is hip-hop an appropriate medium for worship and the church? Isn’t the hip-hop culture one of thugs and worldly living? Why incorporate deep theology in your lyrics? Won’t that lose your audience?”
Jones responds, “The incorporation of theology starts with the idea that, as believers, we ask, ‘What should music be like in the church?’ When you become a Christian, everything about you is redeemed, even your own personal expression.” Pointing to the need for sound theological music, he says, “You can’t praise who you don’t know. You can’t give thanks for things you don’t know to be true.”
Acknowledging the egocentric nature of secular hip-hop, where artists brag on themselves and their skills, Jones notes that Christcentric, even in its name, wants to center their music on Christ and use this genre to spread the Gospel.
With a heart for preaching, Jones is now pursuing a theological education. The Silver Spring, Md. native and father of five attends the College at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, earning a bachelor’s of humanity with a concentration in the history of ideas.
“A strong foundation of philosophy and history under the theological training, which equips you for apologetics and cultural engagement, made the program very attractive,” Jones says. “As I studied the Scriptures more, I realized that studying the Word was necessary. It took me a couple of years to be convinced that I needed to be in Bible college and seminary, but the Lord kept showing me why that training was necessary.” Following undergraduate work, he plans to pursue graduate and possibly doctoral studies in preparation for future ministry.
Jones is also a member of the Fellowship of Black Seminarians, a student organization on campus committed to enriching their student experience and promoting the common union in Christ of all people. “Anyone who is concerned about the African-American community or just wants to come along for fellowship [is invited],” Jones said, adding, “We feel like it’s for everybody. We want to be a blessing for the whole Southwestern community in helping others to catch not only a vision but have a love for all peoples.” The Fellowship of Black Seminarians has co-sponsored posters that will be displayed across the campus during the next month highlighting several African-American religious leaders.
Although Jones has had to scale back his involvement with Christcentric in recent years, a future project is underway and will continue the theme of didactic music. Ultimately, whether dropping a rhyme or teaching within the church, Quincy Jones’ life reverberates with a commitment to teaching sound doctrine and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His story is a testament to the life-changing power of the Gospel, and his ministry reflects the diverse nature with which that Gospel is presented.
To view a special online video feature about the interview with Quincy Jones, visit www.swbts.edu/Qjonesvideo.
About Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Southwestern Seminary celebrates its centennial in 2008. Since its founding, the seminary has trained and sent out over 40,000 graduates to serve in local churches and mission fields around the world. In 1908, B.H. Carroll established the seminary on the campus of Baylor University. It was moved to its current location on Seminary Hill in Fort Worth in 1910 and was placed under the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1925. Paige Patterson was elected as the eighth president of the seminary in 2003.
For more information, contact:Dr. Thomas White, Vice President for Student Services and CommunicationsSouthwestern Baptist Theological Seminary817.923.1921 ext. 7300Email: twhite@swbts.eduWeb: http://www.swbts.edu/
Posted by mi familia at 8:19 AM 0 comments
Labels: Missions Song, Reformed, Worship Song
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Wolves
Course statements:
1) " There is no sin "
2) " The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey ".
3) " Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross ".
4) " The name of 'Jesus' is just symbolic of all gods to which to pray.
5) " The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself ".
6) " The atonement is the final lesson man needs to learn, for it teaches him that never having sinned, he has no need for salvation ".
GURU OPRAH said the following on her TV show when an audience member questioned her about her promoting her new age theory. The audience member asked her "what about Jesus?" GURU OPRAH said, " What do you mean? What about Jesus?" The audience member quoted John 14:6 and GURU OPRAH replied that it couldn't be because there has to be many ways to god.....Guru Oprah then said she can't degate religion and went right back promoting the new age religion.
John 14:6 says: "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, NO MAN COMETH TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME".
2 John 1:7- For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and antichrist.
GURU OPRAH denies Jesus Christ as Lord of Lord and King of Kings......so why would a child of God listen to her? The good she thinks she is doing is assisting the devil in his work. Because we are children of God does not mean we check our brains at the door!
Ken Becht
Posted by mi familia at 5:31 PM 0 comments
Friday, February 08, 2008
I Tend To Love My Theology More Than God.
Posted by mi familia at 1:45 PM 0 comments
Labels: Reformed
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Spurgeon
Posted by mi familia at 11:47 AM 0 comments
Labels: Reformed
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The Mercy Of Our Great God And King
Posted by mi familia at 8:07 AM 3 comments
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
A people group has vanished
A woman and a tribe's world pass into the beyond
Marie Smith Jones died Jan. 21 at the good age of 89, the last full-blooded member of Alaska's Eyak Indians. For almost everything on earth there will come a last day, a last remnant, a final goodbye, but Jones' death brought an entire culture to an end. Jones was not only the last full-blooded member of the tribe - she was also the last person who spoke its language.
The Eyak began as a prehistoric tribe, breaking off from a larger tribe as long ago as 1,500 years before the birth of Christ. Never a large group, some believe the Eyak never numbered more than a thousand. As recently as the early 1800s, they commanded quite a bit of territory around Prince William Sound, but by the time Jones was born in 1918, only five Eyak families remained, all in a small town called Cordova.
As a young girl, Jones saw the final disintegration of the Eyak culture, brought on by disease, alcoholism and educators who forbade children to speak Eyak. In other words, the modern world did them in.
One of her daughters explained that she'd never learned her mother's language because in the mid-20th century, students were expected to speak only English. A long time ago, I learned of such nonsense from my mother, born of German parents who taught her not a word of their language, to protect her at school. Some call this assimilation.
The language of the Eyak is the first of 20 languages native to Alaska to disappear. Jones' sister also spoke Eyak, but she died in the early 1990s, leaving her sister as the last of her kind, like an endangered species no longer in a position to carry on the line.
It ended with her, an old lady picking salmonberries on a nearby mountain, speaking a lost language out loud to herself, doing her best to keep the memory of it. It's the kind of thing many of us do when working out a language other than our own. We try the words out loud, pushing them past our twisted tongues into the air.
In 1993, the Smithsonian Institution returned the bones of an Eyak Indian to Cordova, bones that had been at the institution since the 1930s. Jones played an integral part in the repatriation ceremony.
On the day of the burial, she told an Anchorage Daily News reporter that the low-hanging clouds and gray sky were absolutely perfect for the ceremony, as orthodox Eyaks believed that on such days God often lowered clouds so the ancestors could return and be near the living without frightening them.
Marie Smith Jones. Try it again: Marie Smith Jones.
Nope, doesn't work. The weight of her passing doesn't feel right sitting on a name like that - Cleopatra, maybe, or Nefertari. Marie Smith Jones is a mere mortal's name, and in the end that's all she was: mortal, just like the rest of us. But in her case, the dying flesh was a vessel holding a world soon lost.
And the sound of shattering glass you heard on Jan. 21? Just the sound of an old Alaskan woman dying in her sleep, dreaming of the past, knowing the future.
I hope that on the day of her burial in Alaska, the sky was gray and the clouds low, as there were probably many on both sides of that great divide between the living and the dead who wanted to be near.
The next time I hear glass breaking in a restaurant, I'll try not to think the loss is someone else's problem.
Kurt Ullrich is a free-lance writer who lives near Maquoketa, Iowa. Jones
Posted by mi familia at 2:13 PM 0 comments
Labels: Evangelism, Missions
Monday, February 04, 2008
Are We Telling People To Go To Hell?
Posted by mi familia at 4:04 PM 1 comments
Labels: Evangelism, Missions
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Denny Burk, C.J. Mahaney, and Joel Osteen
I love your blog. You normally have some really great posts. However after reading the previous post, and seeing you bask in the glory of another national championship almost cost you a reader. You see, I was afraid that you might be a heretic (Hook em' Horns!)...That is, until I just read todays post, and saw that you are a Cowboys fan. Of course that led me to the following question...
Posted by mi familia at 10:46 PM 2 comments