Steve Camp - "Where does it say foolish on me?" The Prosperity Gospel

From Steve Camp's blog:

I was on a famous Christian TV show several years ago before their demise. During a 'commercial' break, the host of the program told me if I would give $100 to his ministry the Lord would give me back $1,000... I asked him politely, "Sir, where does it say foolish written on me?" He was a bit shocked and asked me, "don't you believe that the Lord will bless you by giving your money to our ministry?" I told him, "No I don't." And that furthermore he didn't even believe such a thing. He was again a bit surprised by my response and said, "Yes I do." I answered, "No, you don't." He said, "YES, I do." I said, "NO... you don't." With a puzzled look on his face he frustratingly said, "Why do you keep telling me that I don't believe this?" I said, "Simple. If you really believe this, then why don't you give your $100 to God, He'll give you a $1,000 back, and you'll quite asking me for mine?" He looked at me with that dumbfounded kind of quasi pseudo-theological televangelist deer in the headlights don't bother me with doctrine look, and replied, "I never thought of that before." I quietly muttered, "I think that's the problem."


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The deaf, learning sign language and learning the culture

Our church is amazing in so many ways but one of the ways is our ministry to the deaf.  We do not just have services "interpreted for the deaf" although our 9 am service IS interpreted for the deaf.  We also have a deaf Sunday school, a deaf church, deaf fellowship and we also have run the Northeast Deaf Fellowship for numerous years now.  The NDF is a week long summer program for the deaf with speakers, camp activities and such.  We have deaf on our staff and have deaf small groups.  It's so cool to be able to work with people of all sorts of abilities!

The deaf culture is a very interesting one and one that I had never understood.  Did you know that the deaf do not see themselves as disabled and many if not most would not WANT to hear if they could?  The deaf have their own way of doing things and oftentimes can kind of clash with regular American culture.  But they are lovely, caring people who still need Jesus Christ and that is our purpose for our ministry.  To introduce the deaf of Long Island to their Savior and show them their need of Him.  I thank God for those in our ministry who work so hard with sometimes very little in return yet they continue day after day.  Cindy, Antonio, Roz, Shelly and Kerri are just some of the people who work with the deaf at our church.

Well, Cindy and Roz, who are hearing and Antonio, who is deaf are teaching a sign language class on Saturday mornings.  I love this class and it's so fun to start learning not only how to do a few signs but how to use American Sign Language which is a full language all it's own and to also learn about the deaf culture.  ASL is just like French, Spanish or German with it's own rules, syntax in sentences and such.  Instead of asking "How many books have you read?", you would ask "books you read how many?"  So it's actually quite difficult to interpret because you're trying to figure out the right way to put the sentence together.  But today I was able to tell Antonio that Robby was sick and he wouldn't be coming today and have him understand me!  :D

As I've written before, we will be planting a new church in September about 40 minutes from here and it's turning out that most involved in our deaf ministry actually come from that area!  I was talking with the head of the deaf ministry and it's becoming a possibility that the deaf church might go with the church plant within the next few years!  Maybe that's why God has placed it on my heart to learn ASL - so I can show the deaf how important they are to the new church as well as our home church.  It really shows the deaf how important they are and how much we care about the deaf when we learn their language.  They are so patient with newbies but are touched when we step into their lives and now it's seeming like God is planning something new with them.  I just praise God for all that He's done and all He's going to do in the future.  We serve a most wonderful, amazing, glorious God!

The difference between the unconverted and the converted

William Arnot:

The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.

—Laws from Heaven for Life on Earth: Illustrations of the Book of Proverbs (orig., London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1884), p. 311.

** got from Justin Taylor's blog

Our new church plant

So some of you know about our church plant that my hubby and I are involved in. For those who don't, here's the quick run down:

It's been a vision of our pastor to plant a church further east on Long Island than us but we've never taken the step to do it. We've looked at properties, talked to many people yet it just wasn't time, I guess.

My husband's responsibilities at church as a pastor were three-fold: college ministry, music ministry and all things technical (he was a computer engineer in his former life). At the beginning of the summer, he and our senior pastor spoke and DH felt that it was time to pass the college ministry on and we had a newly graduated college grad coming on staff as a youth pastor so that seemed to be a natural thing to hand off to him. So now hubby had two responsibilities. Just before our vacation last summer, our senior pastor told him that they were going to take away the worship ministry from him for no particular reason but he wanted a bit more of a hand in the planning of it so while he was still going to be a worship leader of one of the teams, he was no longer the worship pastor. So that left him with the computers. He decided that if this is where God wanted him (to be fixing computers), he'd go back to consulting and make triple the amount of money he was making now. He's excellent at computers, had clients who would easily hire him to do work but he hates doing it. He knew something was going on but not what it was. So while on vacation, and being very hurt and discouraged, he took the time to pray - a lot. We both did. He came to me part way through the trip with his calling. He had never considered it before but what about the church plant? We prayed about it and we both felt that this just might be the thing - but what would Pastor say? We'd find out when we got home.

A few days after coming home, hubby went out to lunch with the senior pastor and told him what he felt - that God was leading him to work on the church plant. Well, it turns out the reason nothing had ever been done on it was because pastor was praying for one of the men to come to him feeling the call to do it. He easily could have assigned it to someone but if he did, it wouldn't be their ministry but their job. So he waited years for someone to come and now he saw who was going to take this on. Wow!! Very cool!! So the next Sunday, it was announced to the congregation to shocked gasps and applause. That is where we started.

Fast forward to now. We've found a location to meet (a hotel) and have the full support of the church. It's now time to start getting more and more things together and one of those things was finances. The Christmas offering went to the church and we had more than $20,000 come in to begin the plant. Two weeks ago, Pastor challenged the congregation to pray and think about donating a week of the church plant apart from their regular offering. Last week, he asked everyone who was planning to take that on to come forward and we had about 90 people/families do so! We've already gotten about 70+ weeks already donated or pledged and our goal was just one year! Wowza! He said to everyone that this week would be the week to pledge ourselves to the new church plant. This meant that these people would become one year missionaries in the new church and be there to help with the infrastructure - nursery workers, children's ministry, worship, technical stuff, greeters, ushers, hospitality, etc. Well, today we had about 50 people pledge to do so!

This is such an amazing time for us! My husband will be the senior pastor but not always the pastor who will be doing all the preaching. Since we have so many pastors, we'd like to get them in to preach series at the new place. Of course we're also looking for a more permanent location but that will have to wait for a bit until we're a bit more self-supporting, most likely. But it's still so exciting!

It's so humbling to see God working ahead of us meeting our needs even greater than we could ever think. I just wanted to share what's up with us!

Home goings-on...

I know I've been bad about posting.  Sorry about that!  I've got a couple of posts that I want to do but just haven't done it yet so instead, I'll just chat.  :)

On Monday, my 17 year old got her wisdom teeth out. We always knew she was a wise-guy but now we know why!  She had 6 wisdom teeth!  Weird!  She's still in a bit of pain but hopefully today will be a better day than yesterday.

I'm sure most of you know that my poor oven has been dying on me.  It's an electronic one and the computer has been going crazy.  It's been telling me it's at temperature when it's not even close, suddenly locking the door and telling me the temperature is too hot, "coding" (shutting off and displaying an error code) and that sort of thing.  I can not even use the oven and it will lock on it's own!  We had the appliance place come in and replace the temperature sensor and it didn't fix it so it was time for a new oven.  Well, DH decided to take the computer out of the oven since he couldn't make it any worse because by this time, it wouldn't even start.  He checked the board completely to see if anything was wrong, cleaned all of the connections and put it back together again. Well, I've now used the oven twice and I've not had a problem!!  I'm amazed!  I'm tempted to try to do a self-clean cycle but I think that just might be pushing my luck.  :)

Finally, I think we're set on where we will be holding the new church in September.  We found a great building that would be perfect and the landlord was willing to renovate it for us but we needed to sign a 3 year contract and we weren't comfortable with that.  So for now, we'll be meeting at the local Crowne Plaza Hotel.  We're still working out the details on that but we'll have 2 rooms and we'll hold services at 10:30, I think.  :)  The whole church plant is slowly coming together!  Oh!  Our pastor also challenged the congregation to help with the church plant and take a week to fund it (it's $450 a week but he's asking for $500 to help cover some other costs), hoping to get funding for it for a full year.  So that would be 52 people who would pay for the rental of the hotel.  At this point, I think we have 20-something people committed already!  How awesome!!  That means we've got the first 1/2 year already covered!  Praise God!

Once again, Menu ... Tuesday

I'm such a slacker but yesterday I was not feeling that great so I didn't post my menu then.  HOWEVER, I actually planned out TWO full weeks' worth of food.  I did that because our pastors are going away next Monday and Tuesday nights, so those nights I planned "kid food" that my hubby wouldn't necessarily want.  Once I got there, it wasn't too much more to make it through the rest of the week, so two weeks are DONE.  :)

31 - Was supposed to be appetizers but we had a sudden death in the church so it ended up being just canned soup and brown bread
1 - taco soup
2 - Italian beef stew, noodles, salad
3 - chicken enchiladas, salad (this is, IF my oven works)
4 - leftovers (funeral)
5 - burgers, fried potatoes, corn
6 - spaghetti with Italian sausages, salad
7 - steak, baked potatoes, green beans
8 - "slops" (elbow macaroni, ground beef, tomato soup)
9 - grilled chicken cutlets, broccoli, orzo with feta cheese
10 - macaroni and cheese, salad
11 - ham and bean soup, salad, rolls
12 - appetizer dinner
13 - chicken pot pie, salad


Like my "Menu Planning Mania" button? Get yours here.

My dear departing oven

So my oven is dying.  Poor thing.  It's in it's death throws but I won't let it go just yet since I don't have enough money for its replacement.  So instead, I'll coddle it along.  It's reading the temperature all wrong and will tell me the oven is too hot and will lock the door - when it's at 200 degrees.  Here's an example from tonight.

5:35 - start oven at 325 degrees on convection
5:36 - "at" temperature (forget the oven thermometer inside reads just 125 degrees)
5:40 - put meatloaf in oven
We get a good long stretch in here - enough that I ask my daughter if the oven is still even running
5:54 - oven "codes".  It's saying that the temperature is too high
5:55 - oven door locks
5:55:30 - oven door unlocks
5:57 - restart the oven to 325 degrees on convection
5:58 - reaches temperature
6:03 - door locks
6:03:05 - door unlocks
6:04 - door locks
6:04:03 - oven stops running then starts again
6:04:25 - oven door unlocks
6:12 - oven "codes" again - temp too high
6:14 - restart oven
6:26 - still running well!  Hmmmm
6:55 - a very yummy meatloaf is ready to eat.  It's weird that it gives me a lot of time an hour into it.

(oops - posted too soon - will update when meatloaf is done or it goes crazy again)