The Caffeinated Christian

It was early afternoon when one of our members stormed into the room. I was setting up a ping pong table in the fellowship hall when he walked in. For 30 minutes, he scolded me about how our church spends most of its money on youth and children, while senior adults gave most of it. I explained to him the reason for the disproportionate giving from our children's department was because they weren't hiring many 3rd graders at the rubber plant. My smart mouth didn't help the situation, and so he slapped the ping-pong table, shook his finger in my face and said, "I'm telling you preacher, if we don't start getting some things for the senior adults we are going to stop giving. I want to see where all of this money is going." At least the man expressed what a lot of church people are wondering. "Where is all of that money going?" I would encourage you to watch the offering. But if you want to see where it goes, you're going to have to follow it fur

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The truth of the matter is that you barely get a chance to make a first impression.  According to  research at MIT , we make a judgment call about a person in 80 milliseconds. That means that you and I make decisions about a person four times faster than the blink of an eye. It may be natural for us to make split-second decisions about people, but the gospel calls for us to work to redeem our human nature. Our propensity to define people is the reason much of our society is segmented and segregated . We tend to gather with people most like us, and we have a hard time giving others a chance. Unfortunately, our propensity to make these snap judgments makes its way into the church.  In James 2, a passionate pastor addresses the economic partiality he sees taking place in his church. My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. James 2:1 One of the challenges of the chu