Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Deacons and Elders

At the moment my laptop is in the shop, and I'm thankful for the fact that I have AppleCare! When I get that puppy back I'm planning to do a series of posts on what exactly deacons and elders are in the Bible, and I hope to take up some gleanings to think more about what exactly these roles should look like in the local church. In the circles I am a part of a lot of focus has been given on elders lately, so I'm going to start with deacons.

With that said I'm planning to slowly walk through what deacons are using 1 Timothy 3 as a road map. I hope that when this is through I'll have a more deep understanding of how I think of deacons and elders as they relate to the local church. Blessings!

Friday, October 02, 2009

Healthcare Deja Vu

When the current political climate started to rain "healthcare debate" a few months back I had no clue that when I was watching Aladdin and The Lion King in the theater as a kid that the same arguments and fears were being presented.

Between the ages of 10 and 14 I probably wouldn't have listened or given much attention to the political debate if it was actually mentioned. That being said after sorting through hundreds of newspaper articles at work recently (from the 90's Healthcare Debate) I was able to catch up on what I missed, and I was surprised at how much the current conversation sounds almost identical to what was going down about thirteen years ago. Here are a bunch of cartoons from the 90's that literally and figuratively illustrate the similarities:

The first 9 are from 1994

























It's amazing, you could take almost any of these and publish them in a paper today without any revision and it would be just as relevant to the current debate. Well, I guess the proverb still applies plus ça change, or as Ecclesiastes puts it, "There is nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1:9)."