A Pastor's Thoughts

Regular visitors to the site will notice a new format for the website.  After a day of toying around, I’ve decided to move the blog onto WordPress.  This will allow me to do updates a good bit faster and also gives visitors the opportunity to respond to articles with comments.  The site can be searched and it is easily navigated to view previous posts.

The other advantages to the new format are mainly behind the scenes.  Hopefully this will allow the site to be picked up by by search engines and other blog sites that will register whenever there is a new post.

Feel free to drop a comment about the new format and let me know what you think.

I’ve been working, I promise.  April has brought about a ton of nice weather and I’ve been left with the choice between working inside or outside and I’ve chosen the latter of the two. 

We had unbelievably warm weather at the beginning of the month with temperatures hitting 90 two days in a row and shattering the record for the date by about ten degrees.  Since then, the weather has consistently been in the 60′s and 70′s and it has been hard to pass up.  I’ve spent the mornings during my necessary church work and the afternoons working outside.

Oh, and I got a new puppy who requires a lot of attention so that has taken up some of my time as well.

Fortunately, despite the nice weather, the website work hasn’t been completely abandoned.  April’s devotions are all up and hopefully next week I’ll be able to get a start on May. 

My major web project that I hoped to have completed in April isn’t quite halfway done.  Some of it has been other projects and some due to unforeseen circumstances.  I had a great opportunity in March to make headway and spent most of that time unable to work much at the computer so that was a big set back. 

I am hoping to do a partial launch of my big website project in May.  I have around 30 articles to finish which is still a fairly daunting task because I usually can’t do more than 5 a day (when I have nothing else to do that day), but I believe that it is achievable alongside doing May’s devotions.  I’ll give all of the details of my new project here as soon as it’s ready for its partial launch so keep an eye out here.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything and as I look at my last entry it was at about the same time that things stopped going as smoothly as I would like for them to go. For starters, I developed a head cold. Just a minor nuisance, not enough to keep me down but enough to make me want to sleep an extra hour a night. That lasted about two weeks. As I got over my head cold, I developed a cough. Once again, this was a minor nuisance but around the same time I developed stomach pains. My personal diagnosis was and still is a muscle pull from the coughing. I went to the doctor yesterday after two weeks of having trouble. I was hoping for a muscle relaxer or even a diagnosis of something to do with my coughing and something to help me stop. Instead I’m going to be checked for gallstones beside the fact that I really don’t think that that is the problem. At the same time I was finishing up an online class. This wouldn’t have been a big deal except that the school was having a lot of technical difficulties. I’m the type of person who understands mistakes happen and that people are prone to error. However I also expect that if I’m paying good money for something, I ought to get what I paid for. When I pay $750 for an online class and there are 19 other students who paid that same money, I expect problems to be solved swiftly with no concern for the cost because this is what we have paid for. Instead of solutions, I only received excuses and apologies. Last week I had a meeting out of state and returned home Saturday night. On the way home I hit a chunk of rubber from a blown tire. It was small and innocuous. But it was enough to cause me to blow my tire on the highway. With my spare, I had to get off the highway and travel backroads the final 80 miles home because I couldn’t go over 50 mph. Within a mile of getting off the highway I got pulled over. The speed limit had dropped from 45 to 25 but I didn’t see any sign. Despite having never been pulled over in my life, I got a ticket instead of a warning – final cost $144. I don’t write any of this to complain or to receive sympathy. Instead it is a reminder that we all go through down seasons in life. Despite my frustrations in the past few weeks, things could be a lot worse. I was able to finish my class despite the fact that things weren’t working properly. Although I haven’t felt great for five weeks now, at no point have I felt terrible. And even though my flat tire ended up costing me a speeding ticket, I was able to safely get my car pulled off of the road. The shoulder was wide enough that I could actually pull over and replace the tire. Before I even had time to pray about it, someone else pulled off and helped me change my tire. And even my tire ended up being under warranty so it only cost me $15 for the wear that I already had on the tire. It’s easy to say that things could have been worse but that’s not even the case. God has been watching out for me even in the midst of my frustrating time. Being a Christian doesn’t always mean smooth sailing. What it does mean is that God will be with us during those rough times and that He won’t abandon us.

I live in one of the unfortunate areas that has been pounded by snow in recent weeks.  Strangely I moved two hours south and never experienced a winter up north quite like this one.  Every time the crews get cleaned up from one storm, another one comes.  Schools have been shut for two straight weeks.  The last I heard, they might go today, ironically President’s Day when they were scheduled to have off.

To add more insult to injury, they’re calling for 1-3 more inches of snow today.  It’s not much when compared to the 30 some inches that we’ve already received this month but it’s an annoyance as much as anything now.

As a pastor this is more than a mere annoyance.  I had to close church two weeks in a row.  This is in addition to closing the Sunday before Christmas this year.  We finally had church yesterday.  Attendance wasn’t bad but some of the elderly I don’t expect to see until spring at this point.  I don’t blame them because if there’s anything to slip on, it would be disastrous for them.  Of course offering was up yesterday, but not enough to make up for not having church two weeks in a row.  Almost all of a church’s costs are fixed.  Just because church isn’t open doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any bills for that week.

Of course even in the midst of all of this, God obviously has a purpose.  It is frustrating but every so often we need to be slowed down and to focus on what really matters.  We need to be taught patience and learn that God is in control no matter what.  Even Paul had to learn this lesson.  His heart was in the right place as he wanted to continue on his missionary journeys.  But while Paul was locked in prison, he wrote a large part of the New Testament.  Some of Paul’s most lasting contributions to the Christian church came during a time when he was inconvenienced and had to be slowed down.

So, I don’t really like the snow right now and if you’re a part of the 60% plus country that currently has snow cover, you might not be happy either.  But God is still in control of the entire situation and there is good to come out of it.

Church got cancelled because of snow so I thought I’d chime in here instead. 

We are at the one year anniversary of the stimulus package and there is a lot of talk about it.  Obviously every article that you read on the subject is going to be biased based on whether a person is a democrat or republican.    Democrats claim that the stimulus has created jobs and therefore was a success.  Republicans say that people don’t like it and it increased the deficit significantly so it was a waste of money.  I’d like to offer a different perspective as an independent.

The stimulus package was necessary on account that it gave people hope.  It was passed when the stock market was spiraling downward and many people were scared.  For the time being, people needed to feel as if the government had a handle on things and the stimulus package provided that.  It may have been just as effective with a smaller price tag or could have been more effective if even more money was spent, I don’t know.  The stimulus package gave people hope however and the stock market soon rebounded in March, giving people the impression that things were on the upturn.

People are now turning against the stimulus package because it was not everything that they had hoped for.  It is possible that the stimulus will deliver absolutely everything that President Obama said it would but the American people expected more.  They expected that unemployment would have dropped instead of risen.  And more importantly they expected that the economy would be in better shape overall by this point.

What about actual numbers?  The stimulus passed in 2009 was said to have a hefty price tag of $787 billion.  Recently this price was raised by $75 billion.  To be honest I’m not clear why the price was raised except it seemed as if no one figured in the interest that this would cost us on the deficit. 

The first report that was issued by the government after the third quarter stated that 640,000 jobs had been created or saved as a result of the stimulus.  The reports that were received contained numerous factual errors including many instances where reported congressional districts did not ever exist.  Because of this and other problems, the accuracy of the jobs created was called into question.  The fourth quarter report claims that just under 600,000 jobs were created or saved as a result of the stimulus.  This gives us 1.24 million jobs that have been directly saved or created as a result of the stimulus package.

The Obama administration is touting a number of jobs created between 1.5 and 2 million as a result of indirect jobs created.  The reports only reflect jobs directly created with the money spent.  It is only fair to reason that these additional jobs created causes a need for more supplies, construction equipment, fast food meals, etc.  This indirectly adds to the job total as those companies must have more workers to deal with increased demand.

So far $263.3 billion has been spent of the stimulus money.  Using the most optimistic 2 million jobs number, this means that the cost of each job has been $131,650.  Mind you, this is not salary that has been paid to each worker for a year’s labor but reflects only what has been spent in six months of reports.  When projects are finished and completely paid for, that number will likely rise.  So yes, the stimulus has created jobs as promised.  And yes, the stimulus has come at a tremendous price tag.  One would think that we could create jobs at a much smaller price tag than $131k per job, especially considering that a third of those jobs were indirect jobs with no official government spending.  It also looks like the proposed $5,000 small business incentive to hire workers look like a pittance even at an overall price tag of $33 billion.

Not that a 10% unemployment rate isn’t a big problem for those who are out of work, but 90% of Americans are getting little to nothing for their tax dollars.  I believe that we can provide stimulus and provide lasting value for Americans.  Our infrastructure is crumbling.  Bridges and roadways are in bad repair.  The engineers who inspect these things give our infrastructure a grade of D.  They estimate that it will take $100 billion to repair our infrastructure to where it should be.  I say write the check.  $100 billion to repair our roads will provide real, tangible benefits to everyone as well as lasting value.  It will provide more jobs, even if they are mainly construction and manufacturing ones.  And the price tag seems like a drop in the bucket compared to what has been spent in the last six months and even smaller compared to the overall price that hasn’t even been paid yet.

One final note on all of this government money.  Not that anyone is a fan of big banks these days but they’ve mostly held up their end of the bargain.  Of the $700 billion provided by the Bush administration in TARP funds, only $99 billion is still outstanding.  Granted this is a huge chunk of change and would almost fully fund by proposed infrastructure improvements, it is much better off than the stimulus.  As mentioned earlier, the price of the stimulus package was just raised another $75 billion for a total of $862 billion.  The Obama administration keeps blaming the Bush administration for the current problems.  What is never mentioned is that it was a democratic congress that passed the bills and Bush just signed them into law.  Just comparing the two bills, it appears that Bush was far more financially smart.  That doesn’t account for anything else passed during his watch, just that TARP looks like the better of the two bills right now.

As I had planned, my new website production has slowed down since the spring and summer of 2009. I really hadn’t planned on launching a new website any time soon and was going to focus more on my devotions. But the best laid plans get distracted when I’m behind them. First of all, I’m finally caught up on my devotions and have everything posted for January. This is the first time since Thanksgiving that I’ve been caught up I think. I’m actually launching a couple of new web projects but there’s no telling when I will make them live. My best guess is that it will take a couple of weeks at least. There is one new address to offer, but it’s not a new site. I registered the name www.theonlinebibledictionary.com for the Bible dictionary. The dictionary has been around for some time and even my new, updated site has been up since the fall. However this domain will take anyone directly to the dictionary instead of having to navigate around the spreadinglight site. In all, not a big deal but I thought it was worth the investment. My current website project is something that has come out of a sermon series. I’ve been preaching from the gospel of John and have been using the details in the other gospels to fill in the holes of some of the stories. I suddenly had an idea – wouldn’t it be nice to have every story put together in order to read all of the gospel accounts of the story in one place? So that is my project. There are 233 separate stories recorded in the four gospels. I am not only posting all of the relevant verses to each story but will be adding some commentary about why the story is significant and how the gospel accounts differ. In other words, 233 webpages written by me. It will definitely take a while to get the site finished but I’ll be sure to add the link here when I’m done. I already have plans for another future project. I purchased the domain name for it already so there’s a good chance that I’ll get it done as well. It will be my attempt to consolidate the business/affiliate side of Spreading Light Ministries. Ultimately there are some Christian business sites that I’d like to launch but I don’t want to clutter up the ministry site with links so this will be a new launching platform. Once again, this will be a long term project but I will likely put up a smaller scale site to get things started.

 
In a new year I like to focus on God’s newness.  The old has passed, the new has come.  January first marks a time to put the old behind us.  No matter how bad the previous year was, we can say that it was last year and we are in a new year with endless possibilities.

It’s for this reason that I am focusing January’s devotions on newness and things that God declares to make new in the Bible.  Despite my liking of newness, I was very surprised at something new today.

I live on the east coast and got two feet of snow a week before Christmas.  Currently the temperature has been dropping into the teens and single digits overnight and the high hasn’t made it out of the 20′s in several days.

All of this left me absolutely shocked to look out my office window in my basement and see four irises popping up out of the ground by about an inch.  Even in the middle of winter (actually only two weeks into it!) I’m reminded that spring is coming.  Soon blossoms will be out in full force and all of the oldness will be replaced by something new and beautiful.

Of course all of this serves as a reminder of how God makes us new as well.  He takes something that it is cold and dead and not that pretty and makes something wonderful out of it.  Praise God for His newness!

I love bulletin bloopers. They’re humorous and a safe topic to joke about in church. I actually have a collection of bulletin bloopers on another website. Yesterday my wife pointed out that I had made a pretty bulletin blooper myself. I’m so proud and hope that it means everyone will go Christmas caroling now: CHRISTMAS CAROLING: We will plan on going Christmas caroling on Monday December 21st. All those who are interesting should meet at the church at 6:30. I hope that gets everyone in the Christmas spirit with a good laugh.

Climate change is in the news again and not just because of an upcoming conference in Copenhagen or continued discussion by Congress to pass “cap and trade” laws.  Files from the University of East Anglia were hacked and uploaded onto the internet.  These files include numerous emails and internal documents on the discussion over climate change.

It’s no surprise that scientists disagree on the issue and it is no real revelation that there is even childish namecalling among dissenting views.  What is cause for concern is the accusation that scientists manipulated data to support their view rather than deriving their view from an objective evaluation of the information.

Among the more interesting bits leaked was a statement implying that scientists can’t account for a lack of global warming going on currently. “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”  Another alarm comes from the fact that examination of tree growth rings stopped when they did not support their thermometer readings.  The New York Times writes here:

“Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present.”

There may be a good reason for abandoning the tree rings but no explanation is offered as to why the tree rings show different data and why that data is not attempted to be reconciled rather than disregarding it.

Scientists point out that the timing of this information leak is suspicious at best given the climate change conference coming up.  But that seems beside the point.  The information was obtained illegally and obviously was meant to damage backers of the climate change position.  The point is that these conversations happened and the public has been told that climate change is universally accepted and all scientific data backs this up.  Instead there are dissenting opinions and apparently data that contradicts what the climate change supporters want us to believe.

Before this seems like an isolated event with a few bad apples, in my search for actual information about these climate change emails, (I first read about this on CNN yesterday, almost two weeks after the emails were first reported about elsewhere on the web – and CNN offered no information about the actual contents of the emails) I uncovered that this is not the first set of damaging leaks.  This site discusses leaked emails from the EPA and a demand for more information to be released to the public. 

In the EPA emails, a scientists was told not to speak about climate change outside of the National Center for Environmental Economics.  Another email forbid him from researching the topic any further.  A third email gives the impression that the organization’s position was set and releasing data to the contrary would only cause trouble.

We should be good stewards of God’s creation.  We certainly have an impact on our environment and there are things that we can do to cut down on pollution that should be done.  Clouds of smog over Mexico City and Los Angeles are not naturally occurring and it doesn’t take scientific data to prove this.  Perhaps we need to be a bit less trusting when science tells us that something is a proven fact and that everyone agrees with it.  It sounds very similar to the story of evolution that we’ve been told as well.

With Black Friday just a few days away, this seemed particularly current.  Many people with credit cards probably have received a letter in recent weeks or months about their interest rates going up.  I have received two such letters, both from Citibank, concerning my credit cards from Zales and a furniture store.

For those who don’t know what is going on, Congress passed a law in the spring that places much greater restrictions on what credit card companies can do to consumers and how they can raise interest rates.  This law goes into effect in February and credit card companies and raising rates ahead of the law.  The House of Representatives caught on to this and passed a bill to move up the effective date to December 1st.  Unfortunately the Senate has been unable to pass a similar bill and consumers will continue to find their rates increased from now until February.

The banking industry is responding by saying that the increase in interest rates is due to an increased risk in lending.  This sounds like a good excuse until it’s compared to reality.  Both accounts that I had were never late and both have been active this year.  I have excellent credit.  And still my rate for both accounts was raised to 27.99%.  This is beyond ridiculous and is even more insulting when I think that Citibank was one of the biggest banks bailed out by your taxes and mine.

On top of cancelling my credit card with Zales, I sent them a letter telling them that I would no longer be purchasing from their store because of how I was treated by their financier, Citibank.  Big banks aren’t going to care if they lose a few customers like you or I over increased interest rates.  But if the companies that they provide credit for realize they are losing business because of absurd interest rates and do their banking elsewhere, maybe these banks will finally get the idea.

If you find your interest rate increased on your credit card between now and February, I encourage you to not only cancel the credit card, but contact the company who issued it and let them know that you intend to take your business elsewhere because of they way you were treated by their financier.