{"id":14752,"date":"2021-06-25T22:34:39","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T22:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/?p=14752"},"modified":"2022-01-06T22:20:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T22:20:25","slug":"our-goofy-brethren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/?p=14752","title":{"rendered":"Our \u201cGoofy\u201d Brethren"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Views: 1<\/p><p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">[<strong>Note: <\/strong>This MS is available in larger font on our <strong>Brief Articles 1<\/strong> page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">I once heard a sermon in which the preacher referred to \u201csome of our goofy brethren.\u201d The more I read of some of the statements and practices common to some brethren nowadays, the more I am inclined to believe he is right. Consider a few of these that have come across my desk over the past few years.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">A Kansas church bulletin carried an article by one of the preachers commending a sister in Costa Rica for whom the preacher had asked the church to pray earlier. The article tells of her winning the National Lottery and the preacher credited prayers of many brethren and the blessing of God for rewarding her exercise in gambling.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">A Kentucky bulletin carried the announcement that Zig Ziglar films would be used for the study material in the Sunday young adult class. Several churches could be cited for use of films and\/or books by other denominationalists (James Dobson, Joyce Landorf, et al.).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Some of the announcements we see make us shake our heads in a combination of amusement and dismay. For example, a bulletin from New Mexico had the following note in it: \u201c<strong>NEEDED<\/strong>!!! Baby Booties!!!\u2014We are completely out of booties for our Baby Bootie Ministry.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">In another bulletin from Texas, we noticed a \u201c<strong>Hug Coupon<\/strong>,\u201d redeemable on demand, free\u2014 \u201cGood for one hug, redeemable from any participating human being.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">A \u201cYouth Rally\u201d poster from Oklahoma announced that the featured speaker\u2019s topic was to be, \u201cWould Jesus Wear Kaepas, Reeboks, or Nikes?\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The \u201cFamily Life Center\u201d (alias, gymnasium) craze has spawned all sorts of weird announcements to be found in church bulletins. Several churches host exercise classes. One Texas church announced a \u201cVolleyball Workshop,\u201d and the fixation on recreation and entertainment is so great in this same church that it had to conduct a special \u201cSkier\u2019s Exercise Class\u201d to get their people ready for the slopes!<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The goofiness that out-goofied all the others (so far\u2014no telling what will come tomorrow) was the church bulletin from Oklahoma that came during a Christmas holiday season with three full pages of parodies on \u201cChristmas\u201d songs, titled \u201cXmess Music.\u201d One of the \u201csongs\u201d was \u201cWhat Smell is This?\u201d\u2014an irreverent take-off on the beautiful song about the baby Jesus, \u201cWhat Child is This?\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">One brother made \u201cthe rounds\u201d of \u201cyouth rallies\u201d for years with what he called \u201cGymnastics to the Glory of God.\u201d After a sermon I preached in California a few years ago and young man handed me his \u201cbusiness card,\u201d on which he offered two \u201cservices\u201d: \u201cMagic for the Master\u201d and \u201cJuggling for Jesus.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">On and on we could go with such illustrations of what brethren are offering to a world lost in sin in place of the Gospel. <em>Goofy<\/em> may be too nice a term.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 10pt;\">[<strong>Note:<\/strong>\u00a0I wrote this article for, and it was published in\u00a0<em>The Edifier,<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>weekly bulletin of Pearl Street Church of Christ, Denton, TX, March 20, 1986, of which I was editor.]<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 10pt;\"><strong>Attribution:<\/strong>\u00a0From\u00a0<em>thescripturecache.com<\/em>; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Views: 1[Note: This MS is available in larger font on our Brief Articles 1 page. I once heard a sermon in which the preacher referred to \u201csome of our goofy brethren.\u201d The more I read of some of the statements and practices common to some&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"easywp-readmore\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/?p=14752\">Continue Reading&#8230;<span class=\"easywp-sr-only\">  Our \u201cGoofy\u201d Brethren<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,400,46,456],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authority","category-church-bulletins","category-work-of-church","category-work","wpcat-69-id","wpcat-400-id","wpcat-46-id","wpcat-456-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14752"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16933,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14752\/revisions\/16933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}