This Week's Stupid News Of The Church

[filkertom]

As one of the commenters puts it, "When mega and limos are used to describe a pastor's life you know something went horribly wrong."

Comments

[alverant.livejournal.com]

note the plural. not just one limo, multiple limos.

[jasperjones22.livejournal.com]

Wow...I am so glad I left organized religion a while ago...

[capplor.livejournal.com]

This isn't organized religion, this is organized crime. There's supposed to be a difference.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

There is?

[jss]

"Supposed to be," yes. "Is," very rarely.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Well, at least with this crowd. I know some people who are very religious and sufficiently organized, they just don't have any clergy, and they are extremely honest as a whole.

In fact, most of us who have a faith in God tend to be embarrassed by preachers like this.

[his-spiffyness.livejournal.com]

That's all too typical, especially in these Evangelical circles. These independent pastors have no effective oversight. The Church's Board of Directors is usually filled with family and cronies so that it's little more than a rubber stamp. The ministry becomes little more than the pastor's personal ATM machine.

The problem is really prevalent here in Dallas, home to more of these giant eyesore wannabe cathedrals and the business headquarters of half of America's biggest televangelists.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I'm just up the road from Colorado Springs, tell me about it. I think that we have the other half.

[valkyrwench.livejournal.com]

Seems to be the day for this quote...

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion. ~ Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Government works at least as well as religion.

[misterseth.livejournal.com]

Didn't they learn ANYTHING from the PTL scandals?

[his-spiffyness.livejournal.com]

Mostly how to avoid public scrutiny and turn it into "persecution" my the mainstream media.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

The really tragic part:

1) Most likely, this guy will never spend a day in jail for looting his church.

2) In fact, he'll probably continue to have a following until the day he dies. It may be at this church, it might be another one that he'll start after he's stripped this one bare, but the people he's fleeced will never turn their backs on him. Lends whole new levels of meaning to the description of a pastor as "the shepherd of his flock", doesn't it?

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

As the Blessed Saint Leslie (patron saint of fish) saith: 'The shepherd fleeces every lamb that he guideth with his rod.'*

*("No High Ground" -- & boy, has _that_ song been on my mind the last month or so...)

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember something about Jesus telling His followers to sell all they own & give the money to the poor.

I also remember something about False Prophets who will fool even the elect & come as wolves in lamb's clothing.

But they must not be in the Bible because guys like this would have seen it.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Must be somewhere in those books between the Old Testament & Revelations that these types ignore 99% of.

They ignore the old testiment, also

[capplor.livejournal.com]

Mostly they ignore the disconnect between what they read, and their contention that we should do exactly what it says.

[rickvs.livejournal.com]

My marching band played a couple of gigs at the Crystal Cathedral in the mid-eighties, and my family attended some of their holiday ...spectacles. They were awesome to look at, but not very personal -- sort of like if Michael Bay had directed _The Last Temptation of Christ_.

Rev. Schuller always came across to me as too-well-polished, and that was twenty-five years ago. Sorry to see he continued down that path.