Visitors at Communion

Should we Deny Communion to Visitors?

In Clarion, Dr. Bill de Jong recently touched a sensitive spot in the Canadian Reformed psyche. In his collegial discussion with Dr. Jason van Vliet, he mentions the Apostle Paul “upbraiding Peter in Antioch to his face” for withdrawing from table-fellowship with Gentile believers. Dr. De Jong points out that Paul warns Peter that this strikes at the very heart of the Gospel: ultimately, it is a denial of the doctrine of justification by faith (Gal 2:16.)[i] Dr. van Vliet demurs. He contends that when a consistory denies table-fellowship to non-Reformed Christians, they are “not adding, in any way, the requirements of ‘works of the law’ to faith. Instead, it is simply and rightly ascertaining that the content of someone’s faith is in line with God’s revealed Word.”[ii] For many years, in our ecumenical conversations, how visitors are welcomed to communion has dominated much of our dialogue. The position Dr. De Jong has articulated is relatively unusual among us. However, Dr. Van Vliet’s position only restates the status quo. This is a topic worth looking into more deeply.

What is happening in Galatians 2? What is the apostle Paul speaking of? And why? Paul wrote to the Galatians Christians because some of them were teaching that being a Christian was all about what you do. Among them were those who insisted that the Jewish customs needed to be followed. They were teaching that circumcision was still necessary for Christians (2:4-5). Even Christians who were not of Jewish descent were required to be circumcised. They insisted that the Christian church needed to continue with the ancient food laws and cleansing rituals (2:12).  But Paul insists that this is not the case. The Apostle teaches us that the only way to be right with God is by faith in Jesus Christ. In Galatians 2, he illustrates this from an event in the life of the apostles. He underlines his point that a man is justified by faith and not by rules that he follows, by recounting how he had rebuked Peter.

From Acts 10 we know that Peter had come to learn that the gospel was not just for Jews but also for the Gentiles. The good news was also for all the other nations and peoples of the world. For the Jews, there were two kinds of people: themselves—God’s covenant people—and the rest of the nations. And the Jews segregated themselves from Gentiles. We need to turn the account of Peter’s vision while on the rooftop patio of his friend’s house. While he was in a trance, he saw a large sheet with all sorts of unclean animals lowered from heaven, and a voice said, “Kill and eat.” But Peter balked. Three times, the sheet came down. Three times, he was told, “Eat of these unclean creatures.” But he said, “I’ve never eaten anything unclean.”

As he pondered this vision and wondered at its meaning, messengers came looking for him from afar. They had been sent to find Peter and bring him to their master, Cornelius, who was a Gentile. Because of the vision and the invitation to come to Cornelius, it became clear to Peter that though he was to be separated from the Gentiles in the past, this was no longer valid. With the coming of the Christ, the message of hope in the Gospel was for all. Food laws were obsolete, and segregation was no longer necessary. More than that, segregation was now forbidden!

Peter then said to those who sent for him, “You know that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:26). He went with them, and stayed with the Gentiles for a time, teaching them of Jesus Christ, while living among them and eating with them. He shared table-fellowship with them.

When the leaders of the church in Jerusalem heard this, they wondered what Peter was up to. How could he be sharing a table, a meal, with Gentiles? They were unclean, were they not? In response to their concerns, Peter went up to Jerusalem to tell the church leaders there what he was doing and why. He told them of his vision and the messengers from afar and how he now understood that food laws were no longer valid and that Gentiles were not unclean. When they heard Peter’s explanation, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life” (11:1-18). Gentiles can be right with God, too!  

In Galatians 2, Paul recalls what happened later. Paul was back in Antioch, an important city for the early church. This is the church that had sent Paul and Barnabas out to preach the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles. Here, Christians from both Jewish and Gentile families came together as one. It WAS the first multinational, inter-raciaL cHUrch. It was some years later, and Paul had heard something about Peter. It seems that Peter and others were no longer sharing table-fellowship with Gentile Christians, even though God had made clear to Peter in that vision that the OT food laws were no longer necessary, and from this Peter had also understood that he no longer needed to avoid association with Gentiles. He should not deem anyone impure or unclean. There was no need for Gentile Christians to “do certain things” to be permitted to enjoy table-fellowship with Jewish Christians.

But somehow, pressure had been put on Peter to change back to former practices. The free and easy fellowship the church enjoyed in Antioch and other places had upset some who claimed to be sent by the leaders the church in Jerusalem. James and the others there were trying to reach their Jewish brethren with the gospel, and it seems that Peter’s (and the church at Antioch’s) new ideas were considered scandalous. This was, it would seem, to be a detriment to the church in Judea (Antioch was far to the north in Syria.) We are not sure where Peter was preaching, but some came from James in Jerusalem to Peter and told him to cease and desist this fraternizing with the Gentiles.

Of course, we can be pretty sure that Peter was focused entirely on the cause of Jesus and on the advance of the church. If his table fellowship with Gentiles was a cause for offence, he might have reasoned that slipping back to previous ways wouldn’t hurt too much. Paul notes that Peter’s return to Jewish ways even caused Barnabas, Paul’s missionary partner to the Gentiles, to do the same. Peter, Barnabas, and the Judean church were no longer sharing table fellowship with Gentile Christians. In the culture of the day, this would have been considered normal. The Jews had been scattered throughout the world, and in every place, they would have refrained from table-fellowship with non-Jews.

We must remember, however, that in the early church, it was at fellowship meals that the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. During a communal meal, bread would be broken, and wine shared in remembrance of the Lord Jesus Christ (Cf. 1 Cor 11:17-34). But now Peter and Barnabas had segregated the church: Jews at this table, Gentiles at that.  

They were not denying that the Gentiles in the church were Christian, but to enjoy table fellowship with Jewish Christians, the Gentile Christians needed to follow some more rules. Peter likely said something like, “We are not judging you, but we can’t share communion at the same table with you because you don’t follow our rules! Of course, you’re a Christian; we just can’t express our unity in Christ with you at the Lord’s Supper.” When the Apostle Paul heard this, he was indignant. God had shown that none were to be considered unclean. The gospel message is the same for all.  As the Jerusalem leaders said earlier, “So then, even to Gentiles, God has granted repentance that leads to life!” (Acts 11)

Paul recounts to the Galatians how when Peter came to Antioch, Paul took the opportunity to rebuke him for his hypocrisy. (“Cephas,” he calls him. That was Peter’s Jewish name. “Cephas” is “Peter” in Aramaic.  Peter the Rock: the solid guy. Paul uses the Jewish rendering of Peter’s name, not the Gentile one, for this hypocrite.) He rebuked Jewish “Cephas” for refusing table fellowship to Gentile Christians and for refusing to share communion with other Christians based on rules. It seems that Peter was no longer following the Jewish customs concerning food, and yet he segregated himself from Gentiles who were not circumcised. “You who don’t follow the rules anymore, are insisting others do!” Peter and the others had misjudged the matter. They were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel (2:14).

Paul insists that adding just one rule beyond the gospel to bar others from table-fellowship undermines the gospel of free grace. It strikes at the very heart of the gospel. Denying table-fellowship based on rules undermines the truth of God that declares “that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (2:15). If we say to another professing Christ-following, Bible-believing Christian, “You can’t have table-fellowship with us because of one of our rules,” we are in danger of destroying the gospel. It strikes at the unity of the church by imposing segregation. It binds Christians to the law, which Peter himself earlier had said was a burdensome yoke (Acts 15). And it sets aside God’s grace (2:21).

How does that square with our own practice? In our history, we have consistently denied table fellowship to all kinds of Christ-followers from Bible-believing churches who come as visitors to our worship services. We have taught generations of our own members to deny themselves table fellowship, even when they visited other churches in our own federation, unless they had a travel attestation. I contend that that undermines the doctrines of grace, of the unity and ecumenicity of the church, and introduces a new legalism.

Some will argue that we are to “keep the table holy” but no such scriptural mandate exists. The holy supper is holy! Even as the Ark of the Covenant was holy. When David had it transported in ways not mandated (on a cart) and someone reached out to steady it, the Ark was not defiled: the offender was struck dead by God (2 Sam 6)! The Belgic Confession even notes that Judas communed at the Last Supper, and the Lord knew what was in his heart. Nowhere in the confessions of the church will you find a mandate for elders to “keep the table holy.” As well, there is no mandate in the Church Order for elders “to guard” or “to fence” the table, nor to “keep” it holy. Nor is there a mandate for that in the ordination forms or even in the Form for the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper itself. 

For many years, some have interpreted Article 61 of the Church Order to mandate the elders to require a “travel attestation” from visitors to permit their participation in communion. However, this article does not speak of visitors but of the requirement that baptized members and new members make a public profession of faith before becoming church communicant members. It is by their public profession that they are admitted to the holy supper (See Form for the Public Profession of Faith). Members are not “re-admitted” at every communion service but rather only once at their public profession of faith. Afterward, both members and visitors are welcomed to the table.

Moreover, several of our churches will welcome visitors through an interview or some other sort of confirmation, which shows that this article does not require a travel attestation. There is no regulation in the CO that demands an attest prior to welcoming a visitor to communion. I am thankful that our churches have never adopted nor approved a standard rule for welcoming visitors to communion.

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[i] “The Invitation to the Table.” Clarion. Vol 68.5. March 8, 2019. (pg 131.)

[ii] “Response to Dr. Bill de Jong.” Clarion. Vol 68.5. March 8, 2019 (pg. 133). Italics in original

Memorization

This is a guest posting written by Matthew van Popta a Guido de Bres Christian Highschool senior English teacher (he's my nephew). It was originally published in the Guido Gazzette in Dec 2011.

Invariably at some point in the semester a student will ask me, “Do we really have to memorize all this?” implying of course that my request to memorize a dozen or so lines of Shakespeare and recite it in front of the class is not only completely unreasonable but also a thorough waste of time for all parties involved.  Unfortunately for them, I disagree.  The ability to remember and to memorize is an interesting and complex process.  Throughout the course of a day we are constantly remembering.  Some things we just need to remember for a few seconds, like a number to “carry over” in a math problem or perhaps a salient point needed to persuade a friend to see things your way.  God has given this unique ability—the ability to hold onto certain pieces of information for short time periods for very specific purposes—only to humans.  Using our short term memory activates our pre-frontal lobe, a highly developed region of the brain.

 How do pieces of information move from our short term memory to our long term memory?  Simply put, the hippocampus, a small sea horse shaped part of the brain, is the area of the brain responsible for this transfer.  Every piece of information decoded in the sensory area of the cortex converges in the hippocampus which sorts through them and sends them back where they came from.  The hippocampus compares these new sensations to previously recorded ones and creates associations and connections with other things we remember.  When we remember new facts by repeating them, using mnemonic devices, or by connecting them to other things we know, the hippocampus continually strengthens the associations among these new elements until it no longer needs to do so.  Eventually, the cortex has learned to associate these various new facts itself and is able to reconstruct a ‘memory’.

Perhaps as a student you remember reciting times tables over and over and over and over so you could ace that mad minute or maybe you remember being part of a school play and having to memorize hundreds of lines for that big performance.  Or perhaps, you had an English teacher that forced you to memorize a famous soliloquy from Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet. Maybe you remember staying up half the night to memorize the table of elements or a multitude of physics formulas.   I think the more mature among us could attest that memorization played much more of a role in school forty years ago than it does today.

And so what?  Is it important to memorize Canada’s prime ministers?  What about all the provinces and territories and their capital cities?  Should everyone know Lincoln’s famous address at Gettysburg?  What about snippets of the Constitution?  How about Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”?  Should we all know a Shakespearian sonnet or two or be able to quote something from The Merchant of Venice? How about a chronological list of major world events? Or, is this an old fashioned whim, nothing more than a nostalgic notion in the age of the internet and Wikipedia?  Why remember anything when you can just “Google it”?  Would we be better off outsourcing our memory to our iPhone?

Dave Schuler in his article, “From Memory” argues that there is a massive difference between being able to find information and actually living with it inside you.  He likens it to owning a Persian rug and being able to find a picture of one on Google Images.  Schuler argues, and rightly so, that memorizing poetry and other texts make them “part of the cadence and subtext of your thought and speech.”   Perhaps Lincoln’s speeches would not have had their effect and force if he hadn’t committed parts of the King James translation of the Bible and parts of Shakespeare’s plays to memory.  Further, Schuler points out that an underlying cause of our impoverished daily discourse is the transition to memorizing advertising slogans rather than classic poetry.

Many progressive educators don’t like rote learning citing that exercises in memorization are nothing more than archaic curiousity with little to no educative value.  Forcing students to memorize classical poetry is an oppressive act, one that promotes a culture of servility and hampers creativity.  Students need to construct their own meaning from authentic and dynamic experiences.  Few educators will deny that students do need to construct their own meaning from what they have learned.  If a lesson is taught and a student does nothing but memorize a few key lines, the value of that memorization is little.  Memorization without understanding is having useful information but not knowing where it fits in context.

Kids need poetry and memorization, Michael Beran argues in his article “In Defence of Memorization”. And they need it not just because of the rewards rote learning offers: the sense of poetry, the heightened feel for language, the abundance of tales and myths, the turning on of their language capability and enhancement of their language store.  Most importantly, kids need poetry and memorization because the power of memorization lies in its ability to introduce them to their cultural inheritance of Western civilization.  Knowing what came before them improves their cultural literacy and it “etches the ideals of their civilization on their minds and hearts.”  According to Beran, these older educative techniques, and not the ‘progressive’ ones, are the techniques that nurture critical thinking and enable students to articulate their own thoughts and feelings and give them the ability to question authority intelligently.   

                 

Based on this line of thinking, should we make more room for memorization in our community?  Do we find that our dependence on technology makes this goal difficult, if not impossible?  Should we be worried that our reliance on technology is separating our society from the past?  Do we sometimes have the tendency to think that we are the first people to have ever lived?  Is the igeneration’s philosophy of “Leave me alone, I’ll figure it out by myself with Google” starting to rub off?  Teachers, especially those teaching the humanities, wrestle with what exactly the function of the memory in the 21^st century should be.  If our students have almost instant access to everything, should they even bother memorizing anything?  Even if we agree that memorization is important, what should we all know off by heart?  Is there a set of core knowledge in every subject area that everyone should know perfectly?

I won’t pretend to have all the answers to these difficult questions but I do think memorization should continue to play a vital role in education.  And so, my students will continue to memorize, for through memorization they remember “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” and “The quality of mercy is not strained”; they understand the need to “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” for “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day”.

Matt vanPopta

Empty Pulpits

This is an article that I wrote recently for Clarion, our church magazine.

Empty Pulpits

John van Popta

For several decades, various church magazines in the broader Christian world have predicted that with the retirement of the baby-boomers there would be many empty pulpits in the various denominations in North America. Some very large church communities, which have more than ten thousand congregations, are reporting a thousand more empty pulpits than a decade ago. Though many of these churches had thought that by permitting women’s ordination they would stem the tide of “vacant” pulpits, this did not prove to be so. (I use the word “vacant” in the popular way: defined as a church without a fulltime preacher/pastor). Also there has been a trend to entering full time ministry in various Christian churches as a second or even third career. However, many of these new clergy are not interested in working in small rural churches. Many who choose to enter the ministry later in life take positions in larger urban centers where they can work in multi-pastor churches. They also gravitate to the cities because they often need to take their spouses’ careers into consideration. This leaves the many small rural churches vacant.

So far, however, the Canadian Reformed Churches and the Free Reformed Churches of Australia have not had this problem.[1] “Vacancy rates” in the pulpit have not been too high. Twenty-five years ago, there were five vacancies (in Canada; I don’t have Australian data for that far back) in the 42 pulpits and mission posts in the two churches. Fifteen years later, there were four vacancies in Canada and one in Australia, and yet there were 20 more churches. On average, together the two federations have instituted about one new congregation every year for the past 25 years (29 since 1986).

Today there are 84 positions in our federations for ordained ministers: exactly double the number 25 years ago. Add to that number the five professorships at the seminary (CRTS) in Hamilton, and we have nearly 90 positions for ordained men, but only 63 ministers, 10 missionaries, and 4 professors.

These numbers reveal a remarkable trend. Not only are there twice the number of pulpits, we also have twice the number of missionaries. Fully one seventh (15%) of our preachers are missionaries! They are working abroad in foreign lands, as well as in our own country. These are good trends, demonstrating vibrant, healthy, growing, and missions-aware communities, both here and in Australia.

However, the data also show a serious threat to our church life in our federations. Whereas 25 years ago there were five vacancies, a number that remained stable for the next 15 years, the trend is towards more and more empty pulpits. Some have said that we were heading to a time of “surplus ministers” in our federations. But the demographics tell us different. Rather, it will be difficult to fill all the pulpits in our churches in the coming years.

Of the 63 active ministers in our churches, 12 will turn 65 in the next five years. (These are the first of the baby boom retirees.) That is nearly 20 percent of our preachers! As we noted above, historically we have added one new pulpit per year for the past 25 years. If that trend continues, we will have five new pulpit placements by 2016. However, there are now 12 vacancies (counting churches actively calling a second man, and the need for a “fifth” professor at CRTS).

If we assume that most men will retire at around 65, in order to fill the pulpits in our churches we need to ordain (or find) at least 28 men in the next five years. Six more ministers will turn 65 in the following half-decade. And if the trend to new churches continues, five more new pulpits will open up. This means we will need 35-40 new preachers of the gospel in the next decade!

Reviewing the last decade of the alumni of CRTS, we can learn that only 20 of 30 graduates were ordained to the ministry. Though the enrollment at CRTS has been significantly higher this past decade than in previous years, we are not keeping up. We will need to ordain twice as many men in the next decade than we have in the last decade. Enrollment figures at CRTS at present show that there will be perhaps 15 graduates in the next 5 years. That number, however, is not keeping pace with the number of potential retirees and newly opened pulpit placements.

It takes 10 years to prepare a young man for the ministry. Churches, consistories, families, need to identify young men with gifts for the pastorate already at high school age, groom them to study the humanities, prayerfully coach them through a bachelors degree, support and encourage them through seminary. If we fail to do this, our story will be similar to many other church communities around us. There will be many congregations with no full time pastors.

Pray the Lord of the harvest send out workers; the harvest is plentiful. May there be many workers!

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[1] I have combined the data concering these two federations in this article, since our minsters are (mostly) educated at CRTS in Hamilton, and students who graduate may often just as well accept a call in one federation as the other, regardless of their “home” country.

Prayers to the gods: the paganism of Global Warmists

The Washington Post reports that the Global Warming Summit in Cancun was opened with an invocation to the moon goddess, one of the gods of the heavens of the ancient American indigenous peoples.

Imagine the uproar if it opened with an invocation to the true God of Heaven.  The hyper warmists show their real colours. What next human sacrifice? Oops! That's already on their agenda: depopulation of the world by way of abortion as a moral way of restraining growth in 3rd world countries.

Random Acts of Culture

I wish I had been there



A random act of culture!

Mother Church

Here is an article I wrote for a Column in Clarion which I co write with my Brother George

Ecumena

Commentary on News and Trends in the International Church

Mother Church

In Sept. 2010, The Bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI came to London, to visit the Queen, the head of the Church of England. Some 500 years earlier, the King of England, Henry VIII, had broken with Rome and declared himself head of the new Church of England. Since then, the British Monarchs have been titular head of the Anglican Church. In the years that followed Henry’s break, the Anglican Church joined the Reformation. Under the direction of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and with the ascendancy of Elizabeth I to the throne, Calvinism came to London and Westminster. Since then, the Anglican Church has been part of the Protestant world.

Benedict addressed the combined houses of Westminster, the “Mother of all Parliaments”. It used to be a beheading crime to vow allegiance to Rome in Westminster Hall, but relations, it seems, are better now. (Although Tony Blair left the Anglican Church for the Roman Church only after he left No. 10 Downing Street: no British Prime Minister could be allied with Rome, after all!) Later that same day Benedict joined Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Westminster Abbey. There no Pope had ever set foot in its 1000-year history.  The Anglican Church had invited many, and in the congregation were official representatives of the many branches of British Protestantism: Methodists, Baptists, Reformed, Presbyterian. And so, in Westminster Abbey, the “Coronation Church” of the British throne, Archbishop Williams the Protestant, and Pope Benedict of Rome, greeted each other with the hand of fellowship and with a kiss at “the passing of the peace” and the congregation broke out in spontaneous applause. Benedict’s wry smile betrayed his pleasure at the moment! During his discourses that day, at both Westminster Hall—to the Parliament—and at Westminster Abbey—to the Church—he did not shy away from reminding the audience that he was the successor to the bishopric of Peter. In other words, “I am head of the church, not Rowan Williams; not Elizabeth II.  Rome is the ‘Mother Church’.”

His visit to London is a remarkable moment in the history of England, Britain, the Commonwealth and the world, but more so in the history of the church. One of the great Protestant churches of the world makes peace with Rome, but does not speak of their differences.

Closer to home, however, something different happened this year. The GKNv, our sister churches in the Netherlands (in a certain way, our ‘mother church’) has for the past decades sought to extend the hand of fellowship to many Reformed churches around the world. They were instrumental in the founding of the ICRC (International Conference of Reformed Churches). They have investigated various churches, and recognized and declared them true churches, and desired to have ecclesiastical fellowship with them. Recently they invited the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church) to enter into a closer relationship; full ecclesiastical fellowship. (In our older vocabulary, they asked the OPC to formalize a “sister church relationship.”)  The OPC would find their history not in the Netherlands, but in Westminster. 100 years after Cranmer, the English churches met at Westminster Abbey, and drafted the Westminster Confessions (WCF). Via Scotland, these confessions became the standard of English Presbyterianism, also in North America.

Students of our own church history will know that it took nearly 40 years for us to move to that full relationship with the OPC. One of the obstacles we had was the “sister church” relationship the OPC had with the CRCNA (Christian Reformed Church). We had doubts about the faithfulness of the CRC and its trends concerning the truths of scripture.

Remarkably, the OPC has declined the invitation of the GKNv. At their General Assembly, in June 2010, they made (in part) the following decision.

However, the Assembly believes that, given the serious nature of the obligations undertaken in the sister church relationship, such relationships should not be entered into in situations where the Assembly finds itself unable to affirm, without reservation, that the other church is indeed Reformed in its confessional standards, church order, or life. It is our prayer that the Lord would be merciful to our GKNv brothers and grant them grace to work through the weighty issues facing them—particularly those touching upon the sufficiency (WCF 1.6), interpretation (WCF 1.9), and authority (WCF 1.10) of Scripture, that seem to be currently troubling the GKNv—in a manner that is in full obedience to and accord with Scripture (Article VII of the Belgic Confession).

Two strands of the English Church: both look to continental Europe. One looks to Rome approvingly; the other looks to the Dutch Reformed, and finds it lacking.  Perhaps we too need to look to our “mother church” and warn them seriously of encroaching error. Our Presbyterian “Westminster” brothers and sisters are hailing the first serious warning: “We are unable to affirm, without reservation, that the [GKNv] is indeed Reformed.” 

We must yet extend the right hand of fellowship to our “mother”, and be willing to give a kiss in peace—but not at the expense of the truth!

jvp

The Heidelberg Rap

this for my catechism students tonight: The First Ever Rap Song About the Heidelberg Catechism.


They were impressed that their confession had a song written about it. As we listened there were smiles and nodding heads all around!





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CRTS Conference

The Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary is hosting a conference in January 2011

Dr. Cornelis Van Dam has taught a whole generation of ministers and missionaries in the Canadian Reformed Churches. It seemed appropriate to gather a number of his friends and colleagues together to celebrate what our faithful God has given us in this faithful teacher and preacher. 

Link to CRTS

Register Online at www.canadianreformedseminary.ca

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Polygamy and the Greens

When the same sex marriage debate filled the press and the airwaves, Christians argued that if the state attempted to change the definition of marriage to from a union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, it would not be long till some one would advance an argument for polygamy. Of course that was scoffed at as scaremongering! "That will never happen!"

Well a mainstream political party will debate the question in a plenary session of their convention. In Canada! I'm not making this up!

TORONTO - The Green Party of Canada will consider a motion Sunday on whether or not they will push to decriminalize polygamy.

Party members in a workshop on Saturday evening voted to send the motion to the full-Party plenary, where they'll debate and vote on it.

Excuses

I found this deep in an old archive file on my hard drive! I thought it might be time to revisit this!

_____


Have you grown tired of hearing all the time-worn excuses people give for not going to church? Two pastors
put together this list of reasons for not attending the movies:

WHY I DO NOT ATTEND MOVIES

1. The manager of the theater never called on me.

2. I did go a few times, but no one spoke to me.

3. Every time I go they ask me for money -- they mention it even before I get in.

4. Many of the folks who attend do not live up to the moral standards of the films.

5. I went so much as a child I've had all the entertainment I need.

6. The performance lasts too long -- I can't sit still for a couple of hours or longer.

7. I don't always agree with what I see and hear.

8. I don't think that they have very good music.

9. The thermostat is always too high or too low, and the lighting is terrible.

10. The shows are usually in the evenings, and that's the only time I am able to be at home with my family.

Dominion Day

Here is an interesting article explaining why we should continue to call July 1 "Dominion Day". Changing the name to "Canada Day" was actually illegitimate, if not illegal!

Earthquake 2

It was a 5.5 magnitude quake along the Ontario Quebec border. Maybe Quebec is separating!

Earthquake

At 1:45 PM today we had an earthquake roll through southern and eastern Ontario. I was sitting at my desk and the whole house started shaking and groaning. My computer screen was rocking back and forth intensely. I immediately sent chat note to my son who lives outside of Ottawa and they felt it too. That's nearly 400 Km away! I'm going to watch the news!

Dinosaurs killed in (the) flood

I find this quite interesting. Evidence that the dinosaurs of Alberta were wiped out by a catastrophic flood -- a flood that occured "on a geographic scale that [was] so vast" that it created unprecedented carnage...


I wonder which flood that was: Could Noah have something to say about this.


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Burlington's Number One!

But this is a dubious distinction. Remarkably, the city I come from is number 3!

This only underlines the need for maintaining computer security!

Bonita's story

Bonita (my lovely companion) is posting a short illustrated story here. Enjoy... It's very cute.

Here is an interesting perspective!

Here is a man who would put "hot iron to flesh" for information!

Kind words from an American

It's not often that an American broadcaster notices Canada or says something nice....
Here is an exception.



This reminds me of a former Canadian broadcaster speaking well of our southern neighbours in 1973.



We may thank God for the peaceful coexistence that we have on this continent. No other continent has had peace for as long!

Abortion and Cancer

Here is an interesting and necessary read concerning the abortion industry, health and politics. It seems as if more and more evidence is coming to light that abortion is bad for the health of the mother as well as for the child! Go figure!

Google Staring Down the Tanks

I just read that Google's US executives have given an ultimatum to Beijing!

The Globe and Mail reports: 

Risking both billions of dollars in potential revenue and the prospect of triggering an Internet fault line, the world's biggest search engine is threatening to cease operations in China.
Citing a “highly sophisticated” cyberattack on its corporate infrastructure that appeared aimed at stealing intellectual property and spying on human-rights activists, Google said on Tuesday it will no longer censor search results on the Chinese version of its site, and may shut down its operations altogether in China, one of the fastest-growing markets in the world.
 
Read the rest of the story

This will be a watershed moment in history. It is either the beginning of the fall of a communist bloc, or the balkanization of the internet!

As Obama bows to the East

the ultimate free-enterprise no-borders internet-cloud company calls Beijing's bluff. "We're not playing your game anymore!" The audacity of it all!