Saturday, June 03, 2006

"Touching Heaven" Women's Retreat

On October 6-8, the women of East Hills will take over Wright Hall, the centerpiece of Menucha Retreat Center in the Columbia Gorge, and hold their annual spiritual retreat. Ann Hight, EHA's pastor of women's ministries, will speak on the unseen hosts: demons, devils, angels, the Holy Spirit, and how they interact with us.

A $125 signup fee buys you three days and two nights in excellent facilities and beautiful surroundings. All meals are included, and the East Hills group will have several community spaces and meeting rooms to itself. However, this is less a vacation event than a spiritual enterprise. In addition to Ann's ministry, Becky Cox will lead worship from a grand piano, and you will have time for personal reflection and private devotions.

To sign up, or to find out more about the accommodations, provision for moms with nursing infants, etc., contact Ann at the church office, (360) 423-0521. In September, Ann will be sending out a detailed packet with packing checklists and suggestions on preparing your heart for this event with prayer and fasting. You can also find out more from our free retreat DVDs, which give you a short video look at Menucha's facilities and have a signup card attached.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Cheap date recipies

Here are the recipes mentioned in the May 27/28 church bulletin.

HEART TO HEART MEATLOAF
  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 1 package dry cornbread stuffing mix
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 eggs

Mix all ingredients; mixture will be soft. Shape into a heart, place in oven-proof baking dish, spread with 1/2 cup ketchup, and bake at 350 for 30-45 minutes.

EASY CINNAMON PULL-APARTS

  • 1 tube refrigerator biscuits; snip each biscuit into two pieces
  • 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cinnamon

Dip each biscuit piece into butter, then into the cinnamon/sugar mixture, coating evenly. Place in greased pie plate, arranging loosely in one layer. Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes. Flip over onto serving plate.

SUNSHINE CAKE

  • 1 yellow cake mix
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 can mandarin oranges, undrained

Mix all ingredients together and bake at 350 in 9x13 pan for 30-40 minutes. Frosting: Gently stir together 1 small dry instant vanilla pudding mix, 1 20-ounce crushed pineapple, undrained, and 1 large tub Kool Whip.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

By-laws and skateboards

First thing: Bob Simmons suggested posting the text of the proposed by-laws amendments on the web, so here you go.

Amendment No. 1 would change Article VII, Section A from this:

Up to four (4) members shall serve on the Board of Deacons. They shall be elected at the Annual Congregational Meeting. The term of office shall be two (2) years with the term of two (2) Deacons expiring each year.

to this:

Up to six (6) members shall serve on the Board of Deacons. They shall be elected at the Annual Congregational Meeting. The term of office shall be two (2) years with the term of half expiring each year.

Amendment No. 2 would add a new section to Article XIV as follows:

Employees, Officers, Board Members and Committee Members will avoid conflicts of interest in the performance of their duties. Such conflicts arise when their decisions or actions would materially benefit themselves or others related by birth or marriage. Conflicts of interest may also arise in decisions concerning employment, performance review or discipline of an employee who is related by birth or marriage. Regulations and guidelines for the avoidance of conflicts are found in a "Conflict of Interest" policy adopted by the Board of Elders.

Remember, May 16 is the deadline to vote on these changes.

Second thing: we hosted the skate-park meeting on Thursday as planned, and several church attenders came to speak. A small contingent of skateboarders argued (very politely!) against building at the much less desirable Tam O'Shanter site, which could not acommodate below-ground structures. And the city of Kelso community development director and his staff spoke highly of the Rotary Park site and of their belief that the park's impact on property values would be positive. Friday's Daily News has more details on those arguments.

The other side of the story was the unashamed display of NIMBYism from nearby homeowners who felt the wants of those who own the land for the park, those who build the park, and those who use the park should take a distant second, third, and fourth to the wants of those who live down the street from the park. As my last post said, East Hills does not take a side on this. But if offered a vote on the skate park, I think Thursday's ugly display of selfishness would push me to the skaters' side.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Skateboarding is not a crime... well maybe

At 7:00 this Thursday, East Hills is hosting a community meeting about a proposed skate park nearby. This is not a religious event, and the church has no position on the park. But it will be our neighbor if it gets built, so there is nothing wrong with EHA attenders showing up to give their two cents. Because of work, I will not be there. Fortunately though, I have a blog, so I can spew my two cents at any time whatsoever.

Personally, my little contact with local skateboarders has made me think their unwholesomeness is very exaggerated. I spent several hours at a skate park in Longview to practice action photography, and I was impressed. Although they were unsupervised, the only bad behavior I ever saw was the occasional underage smoking, and they seemed to get along with each other well. And they were certainly more polite about having their pictures taken than a lot of respectable adults and downtown businesses! Add in the ministry opportunity they represent, and I suggest they would do us more good than harm.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

The Da Vinci Code, part 2

In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown takes a skeptical tack toward the historical accuracy of the Bible and the lordship and preeminence of Christ, and his alternative view of morality uses a liberal reading of Scripture as just one of many influences. My natural response to reading it was to want to answer his criticisms in detail. In 2003, when the book first came out, many Christian writers did just that, in articles like "Dismantling The Da Vinci Code" and "Breaking The Da Vinci Code" that employ detailed, point-by-point rebuttals.

If reading the book troubles you, or if someone should bring it up in an effort to question your faith, my advice is to not use those techniques. Do not be drawn into a defense of some small, technical, difficult point of history or Biblical teaching. It gives your opponent-- or your own doubts-- too much credit. A better way is to turn questions back on the questioner. Brown asks "Why faith? Why trust Scripture?" Instead of reaching for an art-history book or theological tome to form an explanation, I would ask in return, "Why skepticism? Why trust Dan Brown?" The illusionist and skeptic James "The Amazing" Randi said this:

I'm highly skeptical, but what is that skepticism based on? If you're skeptical as well, have you asked yourself, "Upon what do I base my skepticism?" Are you just plain ornery? Do you just not want to go along with the status quo? Do you know some people who believe in it who are really pretty dense and you don't want to join their group? You must have a reason, I think, for yourself and for others as to why you are skeptical.

Brown is not here to answer the question for himself, but he does not hide his own personal views either. Brown seems to admire a life based on moral values. The values he proposes, though, do not come from a more accurate account of Jesus' life or teachings. In fact, they do not draw from ancient teachings at all, but from the counterculture of the sixties, the universities of today:

  • We should remove our trust from the writers, compilers, and translators of the Bible. They passed on a record that is barely usable-- certainly not to be regarded above all other ancient manuscripts, and probably less reliable than many.
  • Religion is valuable so far as it improves our lives on this Earth, but missionaries who convert people from other beliefs to Christianity are no better than those they come to save. Christians have no better claim on truth than any other past or present religion, and a worse claim than scientists and historians.
  • Christianity oppresses women; they should be elevated to a new status, officially equal to or higher than that of men. Promiscuous sex should be permitted or even encouraged.

Brown's skepticism and moral relativism do not come from understanding long-ago events better than the rest of us. They come from hipness and up-to-the-minute trendiness.

Each era's writers recast history and myth in ways that are tinted by the distinctive concerns of their time. For instance, T.H. White's The One and Future King, written between 1938 and 1958, is a novelized treatment of Arthurian legend, but filtered by then-current world events such as World War II and the nuclear arms race. By expressing the anti-war concerns of his own time and portraying the Round Table as a scheme to release England from the grip of brute force, White lends his version a recognizable coloration from his time, one it shares with C.S. Lewis' and J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy works. Fast-forward to 1983: the feminist fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley writes The Mists of Avalon, the first volume of her own Arthurian series. She retells the story from the viewpoints of its female characters, painting Arthur's rule as a clash of male-dominated Christianity and an older, fictionalized matriarchal paganism.

For one good Christian evaluation of our time's own tinted glasses, the ones Bradley, Brown and others like them are looking through, I suggest reading this whole speech. It is the 2005 Easter address of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he devotes it to challenging the skepticism of Brown and others (such as the writer of the "Judas Gospel"). His key point:

We are instantly fascinated by the suggestion of conspiracies and cover-ups; this has become so much the stuff of our imagination these days that it is only natural, it seems, to expect it when we turn to ancient texts, especially biblical texts. We treat them as if they were unconvincing press releases from some official source, whose intention is to conceal the real story; and that real story waits for the intrepid investigator to uncover it and share it with the waiting world.

Because of this, new rewritings or alternative versions of classic stories are often unfriendly toward our faith. Michael Crichton wrote Eaters of the Dead, a Beowulf-derivative in which the Christian narrator is replaced with a Muslim one. Phillip Pullman, who considers the Narnia books highly misogynic, wrote His Dark Materials, a trilogy of children's books with many of the same elements (talking animals, child heroes traveling to other worlds, etc.) but in which God is the enemy. And Brown shows us what our own religion looks like through that same suspicious, countercultural lens.

You cannot recognize the perfection of Scripture when looking through the filter of any one era's transient issues, important at the time though those issues may be. In the antebellum South, some theologians decried the Bible's endorsement of slavery while others complained of its support for abolition. Thomas Jefferson famously compiled his own edited Gospels to remove the supernatural passages and give a realistic account that fit his own beliefs, ending with Jesus in the grave. Going further back, the gnostics were so dismissive of physical reality, so eager to "wake up" from this flawed world, you could almost say they only needed the parts Jefferson left out! The Da Vinci Code is not a serious attack in need of a scholarly defense; it is a good example of why the passing trends of our day-- or any day-- are not good measuring sticks for eternal truths.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Please vote

East Hills is currently in the middle of an all-mail election. On Tuesday, May 2, the church sent out ballots to the (just over 100) official members, so they can vote on two proposed by-laws amendments.

Amendment No. 1 would change the Board of Deacons rules so that we are technically allowed to elect six deacons instead of four, which we have been doing anyway for some time. No. 2 would direct the Elder Board to write and enforce a conflict of interest policy for church leaders. (Full disclosure: I am the son of Ann Hight, Pastor of Women's Ministries, and Tom Hight, an elder.)

If you have one of these ballots, please mail it back or drop it in the box in the church foyer by May 16, because if the total number of votes cast is less than 50% plus one, we do not have a quorum and the outcome does not count.

Monday, May 01, 2006

The Da Vinci Code, part 1

I read Dan Brown's bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, last week in preparation for the movie's release. As a novelist, Brown is certainly no Stephen King. He discloses plot points to the reader in a contrived and mistimed way, with some anticlimactic revelations at the very end that actually undermine the importance of the heroes' search. However, I doubt very many people will be turned away by Brown's flat characters or shaky handling of flashbacks. The reason to read The Da Vinci Code is because you want to guage, or take a position on, the accusations Brown levels against Christ and the Church.

John 21:25 tells us this: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Just as Christians sometimes stretch the plain reading of a verse in an effort to nail down Christ's supposed vegetarian or anti-alcoholic teachings, the secular reader sometimes daydreams that those other books would legitimize his unscriptural beliefs.

Without giving spoilers, I can say that Brown's own attempt to fill those gaps in the record is an offensive one, but not one that Christians should find convincing or even particularly disturbing. The Christ he paints is a good man with a permissive, vaguely 1960s-vintage doctrine and no pretensions to Godhood-- in other words, he makes the argument scorned in the famous C.S. Lewis quote:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-- on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg-- or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.

With this puny motor powering his accusations, Brown lands only weak blows. The internet is full of exhaustive, point-by-point takedowns of his work, both from theological and secular historical viewpoints. (For instance, the Focus on the Family take is here.) Over the next few posts, I hope to give some practical defenses against his brand of skepticism and revisionism.

Deep, members-only secrets within!

East Hills tries to be a seeker-friendly church, giving prominence to the needs of new attenders. If you come to our building, you will find handouts interesting to visitors are out front and internal things like budget reports in the back. If you go to our church homepage, you will see Pastor Nick's blog-- written with visitors in mind-- out front, while this newsletter-- aimed at participants in church ministries-- is only visible after following an "EHA Family" link.

To keep people who call East Hills their home from feeling left out or ignored, Nick hosted a Shop Talk event last Sunday afternoon. It was a time for the staff and regulars to discuss some of the dark, confidential aspects of the Christian life:

1. Park as far away as possible. Visitors often show up a little late, and we like for them to find a few good parking places left.

2. Seating: front half of the sanctuary, middle half of the pew. If frequent attenders fill up the rear aisle seats, newcomers must climb past them or sit uncomfortably close.

3. The five minute rule. It's common for us to come to church and see a friend we have not spoken to for a week. But instead of homing in on old buddies the instant the service ends, Nick asked the regulars to spend five minutes with the unfamiliar faces.

4. Be a shareholder rather than a moviegoer. After you watch a film, you don't take any credit for its successes or blame for its failures. Most of us approach our first visit to a new church in the same way. The staff asked the shop-talk crowd to take a more interested attitude in EHA, to act as if they have a personal stake in what happens there.

Nick also gave a sketch of the church's finances. Our year-to-date income over expenses is $61.58, with a healthy general fund balance of $20,194.35. So far in 2006, we have given 9,316 to missions and $4,028 toward the great commission fund, which pays the salary of our denomination's overseas missionaries. Over the past 18 months, we have completed $25,827 of our $30,000 Rongxian missions giving project. Due to favorable exchange rates, the dollar goes a long way in China, so our donation is enough for this Chinese C&MA body to buy and renovate a warehouse into a church building.

Obviously, we do not really need to keep any of this a secret, from first-timers or anyone else. But it was still more comfortable to talk about it outside of a seeker-friendly service. If I were to try a new church and hear the pastor list off those four requests above, I might think, "Man, this is a nice place to visit, but once you settle down, it's rules, rules, rules!" If, during the announcements, we project a slide of the missions giving, newcomers can very easily form a bad first impression that money is our focus.

Nick plans on making Shop Talk a quarterly event. Not only is it a time where you can hear the staff speak more freely about internal matters, it is a time when they will be asking for your feedback as well.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Comments

Blogs like this one let you, the reader, become part of the action. Anyone can leave a comment attached to a Headlight 2 post, where all visitors can see it. You do not need to get permission or know a password in order to gain the right to post, and no one edits or passes judgement on your comment before it is automatically published online. I like getting comments-- especially accurate corrections-- and I encourage you to post what you really think, good or bad. That said, I do have a couple of comment-related requests to make before I start posting the meaty, newsworthy articles.

1. The internet is a public place. Anyone with access can read what we say here. Visitors may look at it and form opinions about it before they ever walk through the doors of East Hills. Unbelievers may look at it out of curiosity. Random web-surfers may find it by accident. And all of those people can comment back as well.

2. Since you do not have to prove your identity in your comments, Headlight 2 is not a good place for criticism you want the church leadership to act on. I dislike censorship, and if you send in a negative comment, I will not delete it just to make myself or East Hills look good. But when you want a response from the staff, face-to-face meetings carry more weight than anonymous notes.

3. If you see a mistake in an article, or a small point missing, by all means post a comment that corrects it or questions it. If you have information that you think would make a good article all by itself, I am reachable at lithium099@hotmail.com by email and (360) 425-5362 by phone.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

First Post!

During 2005, I produced a monthly paper newsletter for East Hills Alliance Church. Called the Headlight because I wanted to spend more time telling my readers about upcoming events than past ones, it soon displayed some shortcomings. A rigid, once-monthly format made some of the information less timely than it could have been, and my own streak of perfectionism meant I spent too much time on physical design and not enough on content. To counter these problems, we bring you the all-new, all-electronic Headlight 2!

The old newsletter was wholly a house organ, but in recognition of the first-person, informal atmosphere of web publishing, Headlight 2 will have a little more of my own personal slant. I still write it under the leadership and with the cooperation of the staff, but you can expect to see a friendlier, less detatched tone.

Soon, this blog will begin frequent updates with church news, and I will be soliciting ministry reports and asking around for interviews. I hope to make this the first method you think of when you want to get or give information about what God is doing in our church. Until then, watch this space and God bless!