Divergence

THURSDAY, 9/28 We got a chance to hang out with the teens who have been attending the meetings. We went to a younger church member’s house and had about 8 teens. As we got into the apartment, the kids immediately felt at home. It’s amazing how much energy they have and how they can entertain themselves so easily. It’s clear that music shapes their lives and they just like hanging out together. After eating some pizza, we had a discussion about whatever they wanted to talk about. It’s clear that the teens are asking different questions than we are answering in the church. Some of the questions were really random, others profound, others kind of meaningless in my mind but important to them. We had a really good time and tried to bring everything back to Jesus and his forgiveness for them. I think they were really encouraged and clearly have A LOT of questions and few answers. I really believe that the teens just want to talk and be heard as well as gain wisdom from older people. This als...

WEDNESDAY, 9/27 FIFTEENTH NIGHT Attendance is very low tonight--around 30 people. This is probably due to the fact that it is Wednesday and it doesn’t seem to be a good meeting day for people. If my memory is correct, Wednesday is the most poorly attended evening. The topic is the Remnant. Again, we have not broken up the topics at all but just keep on going hard. How much change can we expect people to embrace in a month’s time? I think at this point we just need to deal with topics like prayer, Bible study, and other spiritual disciplines. We basically have the same group of visitors coming and we need to lighten up. The other problem is that we have only dealt with issues that deal with the mind. We haven’t focused on Christian living and how to get to know God better. The only Christian living issue we will deal with will probably be the standards sermon where we tell people to take their jewelry off. Is that really Christian living? What about service, love, forgiveness, etc? One ...

NOTE: I’m not going to write much about anything but the meeting unless it’s really important. I also am not going to separate the commentary section but just put it all together. I’m basically just doing commentary now so it’s not worth the separation. I also want to apologize for the writing. I’m basically writing and posting so I know the writing is choppy and scattered but bear with me. TUESDAY, 9/26 FOURTEENTH NIGHT One of the features we do every few nights is answer questions from the “Question Box.” The question for the night asked why the pastor was so condemning of other Christians. He asked Moses and I before the program if we felt he was too hard. I told him that I thought he had been very hard on pastors and other Christians and should tone it down some. He took it well and said he would try to do so. Of course, he said that he had to tell the truth but he would try to do it in a more loving way. The topic tonight was on speaking in tongues. He actually was very respectfu...

SUNDAY, 9/24 We got a chance to go to the 49ers game today. Wells Fargo and the 49ers give away a lot of tickets each game to community groups for free and we were able to get 30 tickets. We took some of the visitors who were doing their lessons as well as the workers. We had a good time and it was an exciting game won by the Eagles 38-24. THIRTEENTH NIGHT Tonight was time for more Papacy and Sunday worship bashing as the topic was the mark of the beast. The usual arguments were used and again the key topic was the Sabbath. The whole 666, Vicarius Filii Dei and the Pope’s tiara thing were used despite the fact that it has been discounted by many Adventist scholars. The evangelist continues to stress the need to leave Sunday churches and not follow pastors but follow God. He has been really tough on pastors and as I recorded before, he said that Pastors who tell people to worship on Sunday are “not of God.” He tells people that he knows what he’s saying is hard but he has to tell them t...

SABBATH, 9/23 This morning was going to provide the first opportunity for many people to keep the Sabbath. We tried to make sure the service was excellent and Sabbath School was appropriate. To do this, we decided to not do the Sabbath School lesson (no comment) and we did a lesson on habits of highly successful Christians. It went really well and provided good discussion and practical tips. The worship service was excellent again and my man Moses preached an excellent sermon. We had around 5-6 people who decided to keep the Sabbath from the series attend. This seemed to be about half the people who had said they were going to do so. We’ll see how things progress in the coming weeks. TWELFTH NIGHT (I dedicate the following to Shakespeare) Attendance continues to be 40-50. Tonight’s main attraction was 5 teenagers who attended. We had a girl do an interpretive dance so she had four of her friends come. This got the evangelist very happy and he addressed them quite a bit throughout the ...

FRIDAY 9/22 Yesterday was a good day. We had class and took care of some business. In the evening we ate at a church member’s house who is a fun guy and great cook. Today, I finally got to the gym for the first time in probably a month. We went to a local YMCA and they gave us a pass for 10 free visits which will cover us while over here. It’s a great facility and it was good to get some exercise. It’s very easy to not take care of your body while working at these series. ELEVENTH NIGHT I was anticipating the evening meeting as we had talked about having a healing service and continuing to build on the momentum from Wednesday. My hopes and dreams were dashed. The sermon was on the judgment and it was presented in a condemning way. The preacher talked about how the angels are writing everything we do and we can’t fool God. It was devoid of grace and he even mentioned that he hoped he was ready when his name was called during the pre-Advent judgment (I thought we had moved on from that)....

WEDNESDAY, 9/20 Today was a good day. We had a quiz and then we started talking with our teacher about some of our concerns. I think everyone was feeling like keeping the status quo was not going to work. Throughout the classes and conversation you could sense that many people were dissatisfied with what was going on. Changes needed to be made. So, we regrouped and worked on making some positive changes. Everyone also felt a stronger burden to pray more. We felt like we were just kind of going through the motions and not truly seeking God. So we had positive meetings about how to improve the series and hopefully they will be for the better. At Rainbow, we decided that we needed to pray more. The evangelist was preaching for an hour and a half every night on the Amazing Facts topics while weaving in his testimony. It was becoming clear that that the A.F. prophecy stuff was simply not meeting the need. So, we decided that he would preach for 30 minutes and then after that have prayer and...