David & Jonathan's Story as you've never seen it before

Go one - take 6 minutes out of your busy schedule to enjoy this "historically accurate retelling of 1 Samuel 19 and 20"...

A duck drives through Ripley

Ok, so this is just mildly silly.

The main reason for posting it on a 'Christian' blog, is that the Saintly John McArthur can be heard in the background. For those who have ears to hear :-)

PimpThatSnack

If you like your chocolate and assorted confectionary products LARGE then you must visit: PimpThatSnack.

Treadmills

This may well be slightly outside the scope of this blog, but is a day in need of sillyness. And these 4 men are definitely unclenched in their approach to treadmills. This is one of the lesser sung heroes of youtube :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

A brand new course.

Coming to a book shop near you, the course you've been waiting for all your life. The 6 step programme that will revolutionize your church and your own individual walk with the Lord. Is your church in need of revival? Is your church slumbering away? Are you too concerned with arguments about whether Adam had a belly button or not? Are your church wanting to break away and form a church based solely on their own ideas? Fear not, help is at hand. For just £100 you can purchase a starter pack for the course that will change your life.

The pack includes DVD, leaders manual, training leaders manual, manual for training the people training the leaders and one or two actual course booklets for people attending the course. (extra booklets are available for a small extra sum, please note this course cannot be run without all these essential items)

The course is simply called.
Shut up and be like Jesus*.

Catchy title isn't it? It's a course with the vision to reinvigorate your church members to do just that, to shut up and be like Jesus. To stop those pointless arguments we get into and the building of groups of people gathered around mutual agreement.

It's simple to run such a course, all you have to do each week is tell the group, "Shut up and be like Jesus" and then send them away to work out what that might mean in their lives.

*You may discover that the dvd is empty and the course booklets have no words on them, this is to be expected and an integral part of the course, if people ask you why the response is always, "shut up and be like Jesus".

Karl

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

See.

Applied Clenching: Service Orders

As it is my first post I feel it is important to lay my cards on the table and declare my own personal clenching status, namely Unclenched-Clenched (see below no. 2).

Now we've got that out of the way we can get down to business. It is of course self-evident that the clenched in me DELIGHTS in the direction and structure provided by a service order so usefully produced at a certain kind of church.

However, by the same token, all that is unclenched within me REJOICES in the inadvertant mirth caused by missing consonants, or other kind of typos.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I post the following heading, from a Harvest Service Order at a church with which I am acquainted:

"Reception of the Harvest gits."

Unfortunately I wasn't present at that point in the service so have no way of knowing whether any "gits" were presented, but it strikes me that the way it was handled would no doubt have been a good general indicator of clenchedness.

Glad I've got that off my chest...

Word of the day

(From yesterday, but that doesn't matter because of the nature of this blog.)

Lavished.

From lavish: adj & v; 1. giving or producing in large quantities; 2. generous, unstinting; 3. excessive, over-abundant; 4. causes hall group leaders to sit agape when they read it in context.

(3 out of 4 definitions taken from Oxford English Dictionary; the last definition is just a fact no dictionary could define adequately, and neither can I. But it makes me smile. And that's why it's cool.)

Unclench yourself - be lavished.

The mission statement.

Now really, having a mission statement is exactly the sort of thing we are against.
So there.
But I think we need to explain.

Firstly the theory of clenchedness.

There are four types of Christian.
No 1
The clenched about their clenchedness.
These are the ones to watch out for. Everything you say will be checked against mssrs Carson, Piper, Grudem and frankly even they might not be quite sound enough. Very serious, stern, sound and that's three points all beginning with the same letter so I'll stop there.

No 2
Those who are unclenched about their clenchedness.
People who really believe in truth, but believe that it's best discussed over a large bottle of wine or beer. Good fun but always run the risk of being dragged by their no 1 friends into overly serious debates about whether Adam had a belly button or not and why it matters for our sense of escatatology that he did. (no 1 people will now point out the errors in that sentance)

No 3
Unclenched about their unclenchedness.
Really rather relaxed people, found drinking tea, having lots of fun, if pushed may well think that maybe there might be something good in postmodernism after all and it would all be better if we had a good time together. Not worried about you thinking differently about that either.

No 4
Clenched about their unclenchedness.
You must be as relaxed as we are, stop believing in difficult things like hell and truth. STOP IT. RELAX.

If I had time I'd write a quiz so you could find out which one you are but I can't be bothered.

Anyway.
We are fed up of overly serious blogs, think we should chill out a bit and enjoy God and life (to paraphrase a well known theologian we all like a bit). This should be FUN. Life is best enjoyed with a cup of tea in one hand and a bible in the other. But language has become a problem. We need to start rediscovering the content behind our lovely jargon phrases. However, that's a bit too serious for this fair blog. (we'll chat about that on our own blogs).

So, join us, if you want a laugh, a release from seriously analysing the conferences of the day, or weighty issues. It's not that we hate the weighty issues, it's just that we like, watch neighbours as well. It's just that God likes it when we chill out and enjoy hanging out with each other and talking about how lush he is over a cuppa tea. (apologies for non tea converts, I'll get onto that in another post.)

So, we'll be here once or twice a week having fun, if you want to join you'll have to pass a pop quiz on how clenched you are, and if you are seeking to be more unclenched we can provide the necessary help. Feel free to enjoy yourself. We should also point out that it's ok to post on something you enjoy without it having a spiritual lesson for us to learn. Or it's very ok to post a spiritual lesson you've learnt. We welcome all. (see how unclenched we are?)

We thank you very much.
Now, is anyone else starting to think that Susan and Karl shouldn't have got back together? Controversial I know, am I losing the one true way?