My lovely RSS picked up an interesting feed from ChurchRelevance.com tonight. They have listed their Top 25 Most Innovative Churches in America and I found a couple things noteworthy. There are certain listings which I am not all too familiar with – such as LifeChurch.tv, the number one spot – but I am aware of many of the other listings.
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Author Archives: Ryan Imel
God and Time – Perfection and the Purpose of Scripture
Another student in class brought up something which we covered a day or so ago, that is that God is immutable (for argument’s sake) because His changing in any way would either mean (1) that He is becoming more perfect and thus wasn’t perfect before the change or (2) that He was perfect and is changing from His current perfect state. The proponent of immutability is going to use this to show that God mustn’t change or else God cannot be perfect.
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God and Time – DeWeese and Atemporality
God and Time is a lot to chew on. The bright side is that there are plenty of slightly off track comments and questions to keep the conversation trailing and away from the reading material for the day’s class. Unfortunately the down side is that there are plenty of slightly off track comments and questions to keep the conversation trailing and away from the reading material for the day’s class.
Funny how that works, eh?
God and Time – Kretzmann and Immutability
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything – blame the business. As far as projects go, I currently have two weddings in the pipeline, a church website, a political website, my own to redesign, a few redesigns for friends, not to mention my day job and (oh, yeah) class.
But I’m not one to complain about work. I enjoy work. I try to keep it so I enjoy all of it.
I’m taking a class right now – January term, they call it – called God and Time. It’s a 300 level course that has about fourteen class members right now – four of which are senior philosophy majors. At least they seem like it. Will I be that scary in three more years? The class isn’t actually all that bad; it should be interesting. We’re using a book that my philosophy professor co-edited called (you guessed it) God and Time.
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Santa – Still Coming to Town?
This was originally published in Issue 4 of The Huntingtonian on December 7, 2006.
If I have my way my kids won’t believe in Santa. I won’t teach them to believe in “him”.
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Church – Should We Sell It?
This was originally published in Issue 3 of The Huntingtonian on November 9, 2006.
What is the purpose of church, and how important is it to bring people in and keep them around?
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Can I Pray for You?
For anyone who really thinks this is a question, try and say no sometime.
Awkward, right?
Women in Ministry
At a recent group discussion of the topic “Should Women Serve in Ministry” I was struck by something (which I consider to be) odd. When the question was proposed, near the end of the discussion, “Who of you would be comfortable listening to a woman preacher/pastor/whatever at your church?” My hand went up, as did many others. More of the men raised their hands than anyone else.
“Who would feel uncomfortable?” All but a few women raised their hands.
Interesting.
Pulling the Petals off T.U.L.I.P.
First of all, this may come off as an attack on Calvinism. I don’t want to be offensive. But I find serious problems in the beliefs put forth through the mnemonic TULIP.
So please, don’t be too upset. But try to think through the ideas I’m presenting. They are different, but I will do my best to make sure they are Biblically sound (rather than only philosophically) and well presented. Call me out if they are not.
As I’m sure you will.
The Naked Truth
This was originally published in Issue 2 of The Huntingtonian on October 12th, 2006. More of my thoughts on this topic may be found in this post.
We should all be naked.
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