My Sermons

What is Church?

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 20:45:22 -0500

What is church?
Is it a building with a steeple & a cross on top?
Is it a place that is somehow built on holy ground? Built with something more than a regular building would have?

What is a church?
Is it a place where certain people can gather to worship?
Is it a place where god himself is present to give his guidance to his followers?

Does it need to be ordained with gold? Stained glass? Grand arches?

When we think of church we think of a beautiful building with stained glass & a steeple on top, Ordained with carvings & murals depicting religious events throughout history. At least that is the common perception of a church. Lots of pews with a pulpit up front & a "fire & brimstone" preacher waving a Bible, loudly quoting scriptures while people in the congregation shout out "Hallelujah". That is one type of church, others involve kneeling, bowing, drinking, eating , even waving snakes. But I do not believe in any of that is necessary to be a church.
No, I think a church is a place to learn about God & the afterlife. A place to come together to try & figure out answers to some of our most profound questions. I don't think there needs to be a formal protocol to follow. Do we really need to stand, sit, kneel, confess, cross, eat, drink, testify & say "Amen" a hundred times? Does God really care about those things? Do we need to sing songs & wave our hands in the air for him to hear our voices? Do we even need a special place together to worship God? I have an answer for these questions, as if you didn't think I did. NO.

No we don't need a fancy building, no we don't need special procedures, no we don't need to drink grape juice, we don't even need to dress up. God doesn't care about these things.
Why would he care? I can't believe all of the Dogma that people get caught up in, worrying so much about what they are doing they don't stop to think about why. Which brings me to my point. How would I want church to be?

My church would not be hung up on all of the crazy rules that plague so many others. We would talk to each other, & not just be preached at. We would be open to new ideas & discussions. If someone has a differing view we would listen to it, not denounce it. We would talk about our lives & how things relate to us, no about a bunch of people who have been dead for thousands of years. But most of all, we would love one another. Not just that "love thy neighbor" crap that others talk about but never follow. I mean really love one another, like a family. I want people gathering together & enjoying it. Giving each other hugs (even the men) & truly getting along. if someone is having a problem, People will jump in & help them out. If someone is feeling sad, they will get support & comfort from the others. My church would be a community of friends, that care about one another.

As far as the operation of the church, I take a lesson from the Mormons. I went to a Mormon Church for about 3 years, until I heard the story of how it was founded then I left. But the wacky Mormons do have some good ideas on running a church. One of them is this: Rotate the members through the different positions. A church needs people to run it; a minister, secretary, director, or other people depending on the size. Allowing members to work at a particular position for a determined time & then moving them to another one & moving someone else into theirs is a great idea. This way it let's everyone who wants to take part in the operation of the church do so. It also keeps things open & people get to know about the inner workings better.

Then there is the problem of money. Mormons had this one figured out as well. Don't pay the preacher. That's it. In fact don't pay anyone in the church administration, everyone has a job that makes them money, we don't need to make money from our church. That is done out of love, as a volunteer effort. When the church is large enough to need an actual building to meet in, it will inevitably take money. The bank will want rent, the city will want it utility bills, no one will just give things to you because you are a church. Then there is building upkeep & maintenance, insurance, lots of things that need to be paid for. So you will need to collect some money from the members. I don't want to pass plates around & beg for money. I would prefer anonymous donations from the members that will be used for the bills. That's another Mormon idea, tithing. I wouldn't say you must give 10%, no set amount, just simply give what you feel comfortable with. No one will point you out & say "you don't give enough", no one will compare you to others. After the bills are paid & church business is taken care of we could give any extra money back to the community in some charitable fashion.

The main thing is, I DON'T WANT TO BE THE LEADER. I don't want to have a leader. I may be the person who starts the church & gets things going. I may be the person whom the members look to for guidance, but I want all of the church decisions to be done as a group. A democratic process. History has shown many times before that power corrupts. There is no greater power than the power of religion. It runs almost everything around us, around the world. It should be shared by everyone & not used for personal gain.

IS THERE A GOD?

Tue, 9 Jun 2009 20:27:01 -0500

That is the ultimate question. Is he real? Will I go to heaven? Will there be angels?

Is there a god?

The devout will tell you ; YES! There most certainly is a god. Don't need proof, don't need evidence; they have faith.

Science will tell you ; NO! Can't see it, can't touch it, can't prove it. Therefore god does not exist.

They can't both be right, can they?

There is a god & we know it, without a doubt. There is not a god & we can explain everything in the bible with science.

Who's right? Someone has to be right.

Or do they?

On the one hand we have the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists, Mormons, Catholics, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism; there are many different religions, too many to even list. Then you have different groups inside those; Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran even non denominational.

Everyone has their own views on God & the history of man. Everyone has their own story of what happens when we die, & how to get to a good place after that. We all want something better. We all dream of something better.

Then there is the other hand. The dis-believers, the non-believers, the sinners. No not necessarily sinners, not all of them anyway.

They have facts on their side. Like: almost nothing in the bible or other religious texts can be proven. I mean "courtroom" type of proven, you know with solid factual evidence. Truth be told, most of the things in the bible have a rational explanation. All you need to do is look at the facts.

What do these facts tell us?

Fact 1: You can't prove the existence of god. You might believe, but you can't prove it. Not with facts, not with evidence. Can't be done.

Fact 2: You can not prove the existence of heaven or an afterlife, unless you die & then you probably won't be able to tell anyone.

Fact 3: You can't prove most of the stories in the bible. We have some clues & possible evidence, but it all happened so long ago we're relying on basic word of mouth.

Fact 4: You will never, ever, get the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Mormons or any of the others to agree on any of this stuff.

And finally, Fact 5: You can believe in god, & still trust the science as well.

You don't have to believe in the bible, or the Talmud, or the Koran. Those are just books written by men, they are just stories. If you choose to believe them then what is the harm? Some of those stories can give you valuable lessons on how to live your life. Some of them are downright NASTY! The point is this, God really has nothing to do with the stories that we have written down. Think about it for a minute. No one in this time has any first hand knowledge of God or the afterlife, no one. Why would anyone think that for some strange reason people that lived 2000 years ago had. We know a lot more now than we did 2000 years ago. So, were basing our lives on stories that people told 2 centuries ago. I don't know about you, but I am not basing anything on that information. I want new information. I want my own information.

This is a radical departure from mainstream religion, this is new & bold. People are scared of new & bold. But this it's not scary, & I'll tell you why.

We need to focus on what is real & not what is just a story. We need to form our own views with what we know today. We need a fresh start.

So what do we know? What is real? We'll that is a hard thing to come up with.

Science tells us that we have evolved from some type of primate. OK, we'll go with that for a while. We know evolution works, man has witnessed is different species. So we'll go with that too. We also know that some pretty weird things are going on all around us, just watch an episode of Ghost Hunters & you'll know what I mean. Ghosts, Angels, Spirits; whatever you want to call them it's pretty hard to ignore the first hand accounts that people are having all around us. Not wacko people; real, normal, decent people are seeing & hearing things that can't be explained. If this is going on now, it's safe to assume that it would have also been going on 2000 years from now. If someone from Noah's time saw a ghost, what would he have thought? Angel? More than likely.

So what exactly does all of this tell us, who knows for sure so we will have to inject a little bit of informed speculation into the mix.

First off, the monkey thing. It's feasible to believe that we evolved from some sort of primate. But what puzzles me is the introduction of high level cognitive thought. That just doesn't seem to be a very evolutionary type of adjustment. There are a lot of smart animals on the planet, for sure. But none of them has the brainpower of man. Why would we develop that & the other primates who continued along a similar path as us didn't. Interesting question.

Then we'll go to the scary ghost thing. Something is here with us. Too many people have experienced it, including me. I don't know whether it is the souls of our departed, a parallel dimension, or something else all together. We can speculate on the origin of these ethereal sightings all day long & never figure out what they are. What we need to focus on is that they do exist. People do see these things. They are not all hallucinating.

Now is where the informed speculation comes in. At some point in the development of man something radical happened, probably not on its own, something intervened. We also know that there is something here with us, existing along side of us. That tells us that there is an outside force acting upon us. Something greater than we are. Something like GOD.

Does god exist?

I say Yes, yes he does. But he is not who you think.