What's Happening This Week?

HangOUT: Thursday @ 7pm at the Center. The new day and time for the HangOUT is starting. We'll be in the basement as usual. Directions can be found at this link. We had several new folks from GW last week and I'm sure more are on their way. Great having yall and be sure to tell others, because Stephanie Kay from GW is going to be leading the discussion this week so it should be awesome.


GroupLink Shindig: We are having our small group kickoff this Saturday from 2 - 4 pm @ Aaron's house. If you want to be in a small group starting this fall, you need to be at this event. We will be picking days, times, and locations. We have leaders for atleast 3 groups so bring a friend. The party will also include: swimming, watermelon, homemade icecream, and college football on the big screen. Directions to Aaron's will be posted to the blog later this week.


Worship Service: THIS Sunday, 1:30 @ Aldersgate Gym. We have some good things planned for this worship gathering so be sure to invite some friends. Also a group of us will be going out to eat after the service, so if you can hold off for lunch until after the service you can eat with us. Aldersgate is the big methodist church located on 74 between the Ingles on 74 and Taco Bell.


Any questions? Leave a comment or email us at: thecorefoundation@gmail.com

Calvinism vs. Arminianism: Introduction

From the title you can probably guess what this blog is going to be about. I have been studying Calvinism lately and have been struggling with what I think about it. I just always assumed I was an Arminian and haven’t ever really thought about Calvinism or studied it in depth.

As I was studying it, it started to make sense, which kind of turned everything I had always thought upside down. So, as of right now I am still in the middle of it and thought that writing a series of blogs and having other people input their thoughts would maybe help me clear things up and also other people might learn something too.

For this blog I am just going to give some background on the whole Calvinism vs. Arminian debate which will help set up the rest of the blogs and introduce the debate to people who are new to it. I am not an expert on this stuff, so if you find a mistake with the background info just point it out.

I am just gonna present Calvinism and Arminianism here, this doesn’t mean you have to be either of the two; I am just going to present these two. There is also, 4 point Calvinist, hyper-Calvinism, molinist and so on, so you don’t have to be reading this thinking you have to be either one of the two.

Background
Calvinism is sometimes referred to as Reformed theology, and is generally held by Presbyterian and Reformed churches and many Baptists, while Arminianism has been held by the Methodist and also by many Baptists.

The history of the Calvinism vs. Arminian debate goes back along time. It was first formulated in the fifth century by Augustine and Pelagius. Pelagius was upset at the lack of holiness in the church, so he started to preach a Gospel that began with justification by faith alone but finished through human effort and morality. He disagreed with Augustine’s view on salvation, and later Pelagius’ followers took it farther and removed justification by faith alone and adopted a works based salvation that came to be known as Pelagianism. In response to Pelagius, Augustine taught a theology that included original sin, limited atonement, irresistible grace and predestination.

John Calvin adopted, refined, and clarified Augustine’s theological system that later became known as Calvinism.

In Holland in the early 1600’s, Jacob Arminius was brought up and studied under a strict Calvinist. He gradually came to reject certain Calvinist teachings (which was what the majority of people in Holland held) and the controversy spread all over Holland. He drew up a creed titled “The Five Articles of Remonstrance” and presented it to the authorities in Holland. The Calvinist initially responded with the Counter-Remonstrance, but their official response “Synod of Dort” came later and is now known as the Canons of Dort. They state the Five points of Calvinism in response to the Five Articles of Remonstrance. So the Five Points of Calvinism are not necessarily a summary of Calvinism, but a response to the Arminians which chose these five points to disagree with.

These five points came to be summarized by the acronym TULIP.
T – Total Depravity
U – Unconditional Election
L – Limited Atonement
I – Irresistible Grace
P – Perseverance of the Saints

Throughout history many important people have added to both sides of the argument.

Important Calvinist:
John Calvin
Martian Luther
George Whitefield – A Methodist who is known for his debates between fellow Methodist John Wesley who was an Arminian.
The Puritans
Jonathan Edwards – known as one of Americas greatest theologians, started the First Great Awakening
Karl Bath
Charles Spurgeon – Famous British preacher known as the “Prince of Preachers”
Albert Mohler Jr. – Current president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Recent Theologians
D.A. Carson
R.C. Sproul
John Piper

Important Arminians
Jacob Arminius
John Wesley
Hugh Grotius
Stephen Ashby
C.S. Lewis

Sometimes Calvinism I think is looked down on and misunderstood. When people hear it they usually think of predestination or no free will, and think Calvinist are people who don’t believe in missions and all that. But as I started to study it I came to realize it wasn’t like that at all and I started to see it differently. Calvinism has produced some of the greatest theologians and thinkers in Christianity and their theology, from best I can tell, is solid and air tight in how it all fits together, even more so than Arminian theology. I think they differ in how you understand total depravity, if you understand total depravity like the Calvinist do, I think the rest of their teaching makes sense.

In these series of blogs I am gonna go through each of the five points (but not in the same order), and hopefully we can all learn something.

This debate will probably go on for along time, but even if everyone can’t agree on all points I think it is helpful to discuss the different sides and viewpoints. This can help deepen our relationship with God as we try to understand who He is and what He has done for us.

These five points I think are very important because they greatly affect how we view God, man, the atonement, assurance, missions and on and on.

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Uplifted Snakes?

One of the most intriguing characters in the Gospel of John is Nicodemus. He does not stand in the limelight but rather remains at the back of the stage, only popping up a few times (3:1-21, 7:50-52, 19:39) as John writes about the Messiah. Nicodemus’ story is not a momentous and immediate coming to faith in Christ, but rather a slow and steady process. This process begins in John 3 with Nicodemus pictured as one who comes to Jesus at night when others cannot see him. Furthermore, Nicodemus is shown at first, to be a man who is at best, confused by Jesus’ words and unable to understand about the Kingdom of God.
However, Nicodemus’ story comes to culmination at Jesus’ burial in chapter 19. Even though religious Jews were not supposed to touch dead bodies, (Pharisees indeed would cringe at even the thought of this, and Nicodemus was a Pharisee) with a servant’s heart, Nicodemus takes down the dead body of his Lord and lays it in the grave.
So what causes this change? I believe the starting place may be Jesus’ words in John 3:14-15. John 3:16 usually gets the most attention but the two verses before it are important for Nicodemus. In John 3:14-15 Jesus says that just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Since Nicodemus was a Pharisee, he would have had all the Torah, (including the book of Numbers) memorized, and Moses would have been his hero. When Jesus spoke these words, Nicodemus definitely knew what he was talking about. Numbers 21:4-9 tells a story of when the Israelites were wandering into the promised land and complained against Moses and God, saying, “why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert.” Because of their complaining, God sent judgment on them in the form of venomous snakes which entered their camp and bit people. When the people realized that they had sinned they came to Moses and begged him to pray to God on their behalf. The Lord then told Moses to make a snake and put it on a pole, so that a person bitten by a snake may look at it and be healed of the venom. Looking upon this snake, therefore, took away the punishment and judgment from the people.
Back to Nicodemus, I believe that when Jesus initially spoke these words in John 3:14-15 to him, he was puzzled about their meaning. However, when Nicodemus saw the Savior hanging on the cross the words became crystal clear. Just as the carved snake on a pole took away the Israelites’ punishment and judgment, so the Son of Man takes away the sin, punishment, and judgment of not only Israel, but also of anyone in the world who believes in him. After seeing Jesus hanging on the cross, Nicodemus knew that he himself could look upon the Savior and have his venomous sin atoned for, and be released from God’s judgment. Though other Jews may have told him that he was “unclean” because he touched a dead body, I believe Nicodemus may have felt the cleanest he had ever felt as he reverently wrapped Jesus’ body for burial.

Weekly Update

• HangOUT THIS Wednesday 8/23 @ 8:00 at the Center: the basement of the Renfroe Center near Sandy Run. If you need directions, click this link. This will be the last week that we will meet on Wednesday's @ 8. Starting next week (8/30) the new time will be Thursdays @ 7. This is so all of us working people can get to bed a little earlier, or if you're in college, so you can get back to your homework ( haha, yeah right). Confused? Send me an email: thecorefoundation@gmail.com or call 704-472-5576

• Worship Gathering: Sunday Sept. 3rd @ 1:30pm in the Aldersgate Gym. (Aldersgate is the big brick church on 74, at the stoplight between the Ingles on 74 and the Taco Bell.)

• Small Groups are starting this fall. We will be having a Grouplink Shindig on Sept. 2nd which will be a time were we will kick off the small groups, eat some grub, and put people in groups. If you are interested in being in a small group, try to come to this event. If you still want to be in one, or want more information, shoot us an email; thecorefoundation@gmail.com

Until next time, stay classy folks.

The Bomb

This comes from a book by C.S. Lewis that I've been reading a little of lately. It's a book with daily writings by him and this one especially stuck out to me when I read it about a month ago. I've shared it with a couple people and it's been in the back of my mind since so I figured I'd share it with yall.

Progress means movement in a desired direction, and we do not all desire the same things for our species. In 'Possible Worlds' Professor Haldane pictured a future in which Man, foreseeing that Earth would soon be uninhabitable, adapted himself for migration to Venus by drastically modifying his physiology and abandoning justice pity and hapiness. The desire here is for mere survival. Now I care far more how humanity lives than how long. Progress, for me, means increasing goodness and happiness of individual lives. For the species, as for each man, mere longevity seems to me a contemptible ideal.
I therefore go even further than C.P. Snow in removing the H-bomb from the centre of the picture. Like him, I am not certain whether if it killed one-third of us (the one-third I belong to), this would be a bad thing for the remainder; like him, I don't think it will kill us all. But suppose it did? As a Christian I take for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation. I am more concerned by what the Bomb is doing already.
One meets young people who make the threat of it a reason for poisoning every pleasure and evading every duty in the present. Don't they know that, bomb or no bomb, all men will die (many in horrible ways)?

New Orleans: August 5-12

I’m so excited to be able to post blogs on here now! I think for my first post I will tell about the mission trip to New Orleans I just returned from, so here goes…

Almost a year ago Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans, the levies broke which led to devastating flooding throughout the city. Homes, buildings, stores, street lights and signs, along with trees, bushes, and everything else that came in contact with the storm’s fury still show signs of being damaged by hurricane Katrina. It was astonishing to see what work was still left to do after a year had passed.

Driving through the ninth ward, one of the hardest hit places in New Orleans by the flood waters, our team saw homes caved in, street lights not functioning, stores vacant, and parking lots filled with FEMA trailers where people are still living. Our team’s focus during the day was to gut homes. I heard many stories on the news of how people lost everything…but it never really hit me how much “everything” meant until I was picking it up piece by piece. Furniture, clothes, toiletry items, towels, photos, televisions, shoes, birthday cards, the latest purchases from Wal-mart, ceiling fans, tile, carpet, and sheet rock. After gutting everything out of the home, the studs of the house would be inspected. If the studs had too much water damage, the entire framework of the person’s home would be lost; the house would have to be demolished. Our group was able to finish two and a half partly gutted homes; it was a lot of hard and humbling work, but well worth it when doing it in the name of the Lord!

In the evenings, our team would return to the church we were staying at to get cleaned up. After eating dinner we filled our backpacks with Ziplock bags that were stuffed with toothbrushes, toothpaste, socks, deodorant, and other toiletry items. We headed out to Jackson Square, which is in the French Quarter, and passed these bags out to the homeless who were sitting out on the park benches. The time in the evening was amazing, we had the privilege of talking with the homeless for hours every night; the relationships built during this time were precious and made it very difficult to say goodbye on our final night out.

Homeless people may often be viewed as the lazy or crazy people living on the streets, however, our team met several who were working hard to get off the street. One man called “Shorty” said he knew he did not need to be on the streets anymore. Shorty had just gotten a job and hopes to find an apartment to move into soon. The homeless people we met were all precious, and I have too many stories to share right now about people like Momma Rose, DeAngelo, Carl, David, Stephen, Popi, Barbados, and many others.

This week in New Orleans was very challenging, and our group witnessed the Lord move in peoples’ lives and our own lives in some mighty ways. For now I’ll just leave you with this recap…but rest assured I will follow up with more specific stories and lessons from the trip in the future! :)

New Location for HangOUT

As mentioned the HangOUT will be changing locations from Steve's old house to another place. The new location is in the basement of the old Pastor's Parsonage across from Sandy Run Baptist Church. The upstairs of the house is now the church offices and is called the Renfroe Center (MAP).


Directions: From Shelby

1. Head West on 74 towards Mooresboro/ Rutherford.
2. At the cautions lights on 74 in Mooresboro turn left.
3. Travel up Academy street to the stop sign.
4. Cross straight over at intersection and stop at next stop sign beside post office.
5. Turn left onto Sandy Run Ch. Rd.
6. Contine 1/4 miledirectly after you pass Sandy Run Church there will be a brick house on the left with a sign in the front yard for the church offices. This is the new house. We will be in the basement.

Directions: From Boiling Springs

1. Travel North on Main St. towards 74/ Lattimore.
2. Continue past John Deere Store towards Springmore Elem. School
3. Just before Springmore, turn Left onto Whitaker Rd.
4. Contine till the end of Whitaker and turn Right onto Sandy Run Ch. Rd.
5. Travel 1/4 mile and the brick house across from the Graveyard at Sandy Run is the new location.

Man Laws for Christians

I came across this the other day on this guy’s blog and I thought it was funny.

Some Man Laws to help avoid those awkward moments with other dudes in church:

1. There shall be no hand holding during prayer. The proper alternative to hand holding is the placement of the hand on the other man's back or shoulder, but in the case of some lapse in mental judgment or sheer desperation, and hand holding becomes the last resort, then a man shall not interlock fingers with another man.

2. When two men feel the need to hug, the Hug-Hit law must be followed. This is where the two men involve themselves in a skillfully choreographed motion that makes the experience last no longer than 3 seconds. This is a careful discipline because there can be no lingering or holding on. This is a seamless motion where the guys' shoulders collide, then the mandatory 2-hits on the back and we're done. This is to say that I am not only hugging you, I am hitting you also.

What you think? Any more Man Laws?

What's Happening This Week

• Service THIS Sunday Aug. 13 @ 1:30 in the Aldersgate Gym. Goal for the service: Every person invite atleast one new person to the service. Professor Webb will be preaching and there may be some special music so stay tuned..

• The HangOUT this Wednesday is the last time we will be meeting in Steve's old house. The new youth minister at DSBC will be moving in so we have to find a new home. Directions to the new place will be posted ASAP. This Wed. 8:00 @ same house as usual.

• Our small groups for the fall will be kicking off soon. A tentative date for the small group kickoff bonanza is Sept. 2. Check back for more details soon.
  

• New Website coming.... The new site will be www.thecorefoundation.org. As of now it is forwarding to the blog but construction of the site is underway. If you want to help or know someone who could help us do the web design for free let us know... we need all the help possible.
  

Camping Retreat Pics

Just a few pics from the Rafting/Camping trip to Ocoee this past weekend. More to come.

(Click on any image to enlarge)

Guilt

I didn’t really know what to name this one so I just decided to name it Guilt. This is something that has been on my mind for a long time now and I’ll have a follow up to it soon I just didn’t want to write on this as well because I thought that it would make it unbearably long. Well after seeing Bill Donohue on The Colbert Report the other day I decided that I would write something. Bill is the President of the Catholic league. Two things that he said during his interview with Steven struck me pretty hard. They were, “I believe in moral restraint and it is not a dirty word,” and, “I am all in favor of guilt.” This brings me to what this blog is about, guilt.

My question for this blog is; do Christians ever feel conviction anymore? I look around at some people who know good and well what they are doing is wrong but continues to do it anyways. This blows my mind completely. Not to say at all that I am perfect because I am not, in any way at all, but I still feel conviction. I just wonder how someone can claim to be a God fearing Christian but continue to live in the ways of the world without feeling any shame or actually believing that they are living right. Matthew 15:7-8 says, “You Hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” This verse also shows up in Mark 7:6.

In my own opinion I feel that if you do not feel convictions anymore than something is wrong. Something I’ve always heard in my church is when you think everything is alright something must be wrong. As humans we will continue to sin throughout our lives and if we no longer feel convicted that just means that we have become accustomed to our sin. We let our sins become acceptable and sometimes habitual. When we let this happen we continue to live in the ways of the world and can cause someone to stumble. In Galatians 2:13 it says, “The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.” 2 Peter 2:2 says, “Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”

Also if we allow the world to continue to influence us we can become a lukewarm Christian. It says in Revelations, “So because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” This is one of my biggest fears, that God sees me as a lukewarm Christian, and I hope it is one of yours too.

After reading some more I found some hope, just so some of you won’t think that I only point out problems and do not try to offer a solution. In 1 Peter 2:1 it says,”Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Sorry if this blog is in anyway hard to understand, I know it is kind of unorganized but after hearing Bill say that stuff about guilt it got me thinking. I do not think guilt is a bad thing, in fact I see it as a good thing. Whenever I feel guilty or convicted about something I see it as God screaming at me, “Hey Justin, look at what you’re doing!” I pray that more Christians will feel convictions when they sin as well instead of letting it become a habit.