Friday, September 19, 2014

3 Reasons Church Choirs Are Dying - The question is why??

Over at Charisma Magazine, there's an article dealing with the disappearance of choirs around Evangelical churches.

The article gives 3 reasons:
1. People are reluctant to perform.
2. People move.
3. Money problems force people to change their address or work hours.

Read the whole article here. It may affect you or your church.

Short Review of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

Monday, September 15, 2014

The Journal of New Testament Studies has made some of its articles for free for a limited time

This is a good opportunity to get hold of of scholarly articles. This offer will not last for ever, but will end at the end of the year.

So, go to the address by clicking here.

This is the first article I've got from the website, and it's extremely important and interesting. Click to find out what it is here.

Friday, September 12, 2014

The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship

One of my very dear and honored person, Jim West, despises Pentecostals. He, like McArthur, throws everybody under the bus, and calls Pentecostals "Pentabablists".

Well, there's a lot of scholarship going on in the Pentecostal Camp, and it has answered its critics. What I don't like is that people like McArthur and West (wow, the two of them beside each other in a sentence!!) mark Pentecostals by the fringe groups and radicals that take all the TV time.

Well, for this end, I offer them, and you, this web, that will provide those in the Pentecostal camp with a lot of academic info.

The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship, which you can find here.

You will find a number of other volumes that are useful for the understanding of Pentecostalism, its practices and beliefs.

The book you see in this entry, is the book specifically written to John McArthur's wrongly intended conference "Strange Fire". This is the scholarly answer, to the lack of scholarship that was so evident in that conference. That conference has had a total contrary effect, Pentecostal have banded together, and responded in a very solid way.

Please, take your time to look at this important web.

Hill Song and U2 - Is there a connection?

I was just talking to my daughter yesterday about the new U2 Album, Songs of Innocence, while we were on the car, listening to it.

Nathalie made a very interesting observation. She said, "they sound like the Christian songs that we sing at church". Yes, at our church, we sing HillSong songs.

Today, I find that there's already an article written about my daughter's observation. Get Religion reports:

The sound has evolved over the decades, but is now sometimes compared to U2’s. Tom Wagner, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Edinburgh, said Hillsong’s music was characterised by rich orchestration, but simple harmonies, and was often regarded by listeners as “spiritually anointed.”
“They’re very good at writing songs that are catchy,” Mr. Wagner said. “They know what works.”


The concern is that they are packing their services just to serve a youth culture, and not the whole church over all, which is in tune with today's culture of consumerism, which targets the young, and does not pay much attention to the rest of the community.

Ed Stetzer and Albert Mohler also have a go at HillSong:

But its critics, and there are many, deride Hillsong as hipster Christianity, suggesting that its theology is thin, its enthusiasm for celebrities (Justin Bieber is among its fans) unbecoming, its politics (opposition to abortion and a murky position on homosexuality) opaque.
“It’s a prosperity movement for the millennials, in which the polyester and middle-class associations of Oral Roberts have given way to ripped jeans and sophisticated rock music,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr., the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “What has made Hillsong distinctive is a minimization of the actual content of the Gospel, and a far more diffuse presentation of spirituality.”

I am bit surprised that after Victoria Osteen's debacle, I have noticed that more scrutiny is given to prosperity Gospel preachers. Hopefully, these Prosperity-Thin Gospel proponents will lend an ear and change their ways, and make Jesus the center of their Gospel.

In the meantime, I am enjoying U2's latest album.

A New Keyboard key some should introduce


Goodbye iPod, your 13 yrs on Earth were appreciated!!!

The Washington Post reminds us today that the iPod as we knew it, is no more.

It came in with a simple promise, a hefty price tag and a man with something white sticking in his ears bopping around his apartment. Soon, it would transform music as we know it, inspire a business model built around pocket change and turn a struggling computer maker into the most valuable company in the world.
Yet the death Tuesday of the iconic iPod just before its 13th birthday went unacknowledged by that company and by a Silicon Valley crowd that wildly applauded the unveiling of a new phone and a smartwatch — products that stood on the slim, metal shoulders of its predecessor. Instead of an announcement, there was only the sad implication of a redirected online page, sending visitors not to information about the iPod Classic but rather to Apple’s home page.
I verified this, and it's true. Not even here in the Australian store, you can find an iPod.
For the divise that took Apple out of dire straits, this is a very unceremoniously farewell.
Well, long live the iPod, the gadget that got me hooked to everything Apple, as it was meant to do.

Is Jesus a Copycat Savior? - J. Warner Wallace

Should I resurrect this blog?

I haven't posted here for a very long time, and now I noticed that it had a bit of an impact.

I am blogging consistently at luisjovel.com, but some don't like the English and Spanish mix, and this blog was always in English.

Oh, what do to do? The dilema I am currently facing!