I realize that elections are two years away.  In the meanwhile, be sure to check out your favorite candidate at Vote Smart.  Don’t vote for someone who may not represent who you are and what you believe.  Vote Smart!

First, please remember David Whitsel’s dad Chuck.  He’s got a medical situation that we need to pray for him concerning.  Second, join us Sunday and don’t forget that it’s the Food Drive, so bring your non-perishable items for a family here in the community that needs a helping hand.  And too, don’t forget that after the Evening service, we have our fellowship meal.

I ran across this neat quote today and thought I would pass it along. “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.” — W. Somerset Maugham

See you Wednesday evening for our Bible Study.  We are continuing in 1 Peter.

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life. — Evelyn Underhill

It was on this day in 1529 that Martin Luther published his “Small Catechism“.    Luther explains his reason for writing this brilliant theological treatise in its opening paragraph:

The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare [publish] this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form. Mercy! Good God! what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable and incompetent to teach [so much so, that one is ashamed to speak of it]. Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, have been baptized and receive the [common] holy Sacraments. Yet they [do not understand and] cannot [even] recite either the Lord’s Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and irrational hogs; and yet, now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to abuse all liberty like experts.

Nothing much has changed since then.  Many Christians still have no idea what they believe or why.

Tuesday at 2 we will join together to discuss Matthew 11:16-24.  Next Sunday is our Fourth Sunday Fellowship Meal (after the evening service) and Food Drive.  Please bring your non-perishable food items.  Items collected will be taken to a family in need here in our community.  If you are interested in helping in times of disaster, you may find this announcement from the Big Emory Association useful:  January 23 - Introduction to Disaster Relief Training, 6:30 p.m. at South Harriman Baptist Church.  Call the Association office for more information at 882-6446.   February 4^th (during the evening service) Randy Roper will be preaching.  Pray for him and invite someone to come with you.  Finally- remember our snow policy which is, if it snows, we never close!  If you want to come, there will be someone at the Church.

Progress is being made on the classroom renovations.  Here’s another photo in the series.

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. — Mark Twain

By way of background, for those not “inside” the doings of the Southern Baptist Convention; the SBC has a “Foreign Mission Board” and a “North American Mission Board”. Every time a collection is taken at a participating SBC church, a portion of the offering is funneled to the “Cooperative Program” which supports these two agencies and other entities.

Two times a year a special offering is also taken in which 100% of the funds received go to these two agencies- in December for Foreign Missions and in March or April (depending on Easter) to North American Missions. Hence, these two entities receive a LOT of money. And I mean millions upon millions of dollars annually.

So it was quite disturbing to a great many of us who faithfully contribute for MISSIONS to learn that our monies were being grossly mismanaged by the North American Mission Board.

A new book chronicles the excesses of the President of that Board, Spending God’s Money: Extravagance and Misuse in the Name of Ministry by Mary Branson, is reviewed on Ethics Daily today.

Here’s some of it.

Branson says NAMB’s culture plummeted when Reccord, the first president of the agency established in a denominational restructuring in 1997, became an author. After his first book, ghost written by a magazine editor and promoted by NAMB staff, she says lines blurred between personal and NAMB business. Reccord resigned in April after a Georgia Baptist newspaper ran an investigative article describing waste and ineffectiveness at the agency, but NAMB’s chairman insisted Reccord was not asked to step down. That effort to whitewash his leaving, Branson writes, indicates that NAMB trustees are more concerned with secular criticism than getting God’s work done. “Bob Reccord wanted to brand himself, and in a sense he has,” she says. “His name is now right up there with Bakker and Swaggart, synonymous with extravagance and self-indulgence. Unfortunately, he’s taken NAMB down that branding road with him.” Money was spent on flying Reccord and his wife to London for the premiere of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and expensive vacations guised as executive retreats. Reccord funneled $3.3 million to business friends, while NAMB staff was downsized. All power was vested in micro-managing vice presidents, paralyzing competent staff. Decisions were based on ego and power struggles instead of solid business.

Be sure to read the whole report. Especially if you contribute to the North American Mission Board. It’s your money they are spending. No, it’s God’s money.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly noted once — “…has it not again and again become terribly clear in all that we have said here to each other that we are no longer obedient to the Bible? We prefer our own ideas to those of the Bible. We no longer read the Bible seriously, no longer read it as against us but only as for us.”   Amen.

Carson-Newman College is hosting the Walter & Kay Shurden Lecture-at 9:30 am on February 27th at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, TN.   Dr. James Dunn, Former Director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, will speak on ”Religious Liberty & the Separation of Church & State”.