Join Us For Dugger Band Christmas: “Sleigh Ride” Concert

Really looking forward to kicking off the Christmas season with my friends, The Dugger Band! These guys and gal (you’re welcome , Kasie!) love the Lord and they love music. They also love to have a good time which is the perfect trifecta for me! They have just released a brand new Christmas album with some new fun takes on some traditional Christmas classics, as well as, some cut-to-the-chase celebrations of Christ’s birth.

They will be in concert tomorrow, Thursday, December 5 at 7:30 p.m. at our Glenwood Campus location. Tickets are on sale at both campuses and will be available at the door. Cost is $10 with children 6 and under free! For more information, call Indian Springs Baptist Church at 423-323-2187. 

Here is a little taste.

A Tiger Roar Rant and Christmas Prayer

Last night, I tuned in to The Voice. The beginning of the show was a tribute to the Sandy Hook / Newtown victims. I applaud this on many levels. It was a touching tribute in terms of the sentiment that was communicated and a showing of unity and support.

Make no mistake, we ALL mourn the loss of precious life due to a senseless and evil act. I saw the front page of a Hartford, CT newspaper today on which was published a photo of each victim’s face. I sat in my office and wept seeing each innocent, smiling face and thinking of the grieving families who long to see those faces again.

The biggest problem I have with what The Voice did was their choice of song. They sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. This song has been covered approximately 1,354,569 times by every artist from Kermit the Frog to Jeff Buckley. The best way I can describe my relationship to the song is like watching a car wreck. It’s bad and one ought not look, but curiosity and one’s own blood lust takes over and you have to look.

The title of the song and the word most often repeated in the song is the only reason they chose to sing the song. It was NBC’s way of trying to communicate a spiritual sentiment without having to really be spiritual about it.

I read one tweet that said “they sang the hymn Hallelujah…” See? The song is no more a hymn than Sweet Home Alabama, but since it has hallelujah in it, well, it must be deeply spiritual and meaningful, right?

A few thoughts:

Hallelujah is a transliteration of the Hebrew phrase for “Praise Yahweh” or Praise the Lord. It’s a wonderful phrase and the only thing of redeeming value in the song. The rest of the song makes very little sense.  It’s a marriage of several paraphrased Biblical excerpts and various and sundry nonsensical lyrics. [Click HERE for lyrics] However, the musicality of the song with its compelling hook and cool chord progressions make it feel like a song that has some deep spiritual quality.

Full disclosure: I have heard and loved several renditions of the song, but I refer you to my earlier car wreck analogy. I’m not proud of myself.

The real problem is that people get confused at times like this. When there is a crisis of life and death on the magnitude that we experienced last Friday, people who have no basis of faith in Jesus Christ (who is the Way, the Truth and the Life) do not know how to reconcile their feelings. Often in an effort to cope, people wrap themselves in things that feel like  spiritual warmth though it is just a shadow, an empty shell that quickly disintegrates. This is what NBC tried to do.

If you are okay with singing a song entitled “Praise the Lord” (that Lord specifically being Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Old Testament manifestation of Jesus Christ) why not sing a song that actually might herald some real hope and comfort for people? A real hymn?

The answer to that question is elusive. That answer could also explain why people, in general, prefer a pseudo faith to the real thing. People throughout the ages have developed elaborate theories to explain our existence, the meaning of life, what happens after death and other perplexing questions. The funny thing is the answers man has come up with, in many cases, are far more outlandish and far-fetched than the truth that we are a product of God’s infinitely wise plan.

This Christmas my prayer, like many Christmas prayers before it, would be that wise men would still seek the Christ; that hurting people would turn to the only true source of comfort; that lost people would step out of the shadow and embrace the Light of the world.

Hallelujah! Emmanuel!

A Selection from Christmas at ISBC Glenwood

We had a great Christmas service at ISBC Glenwood. Paige sang a rendition of Downhere’s How Many Kings. We got a very rough recording of it and I wanted to share it.

Just click on the link below to listen. She may kill me for adding this, but I thought it rocked!

Enjoy!

 

Paige_HowManyKings

 

Hope you had a merry Christmas and will have a blessed New Year!

The Mathematics of Santa Claus

Have you ever stopped to think about the plausibility of a real Santa Claus being able to pull off the amazing feat of Christmas present delivery each year? Well, someone with WAY too much time on their hands sure did.

The Not So Small Print: I found this piece online and there was no citation that I could find which might have indicated who originated the material. I reprint it here for your enjoyment and I make no claim as to its creation or the veracity of its content.

Let’s assume that Santa only visits those who are children in the eyes of the law, that is, those under the age of 18. There are roughly 2 billion such individuals in the world. However, Santa started his annual activities long before diversity and equal opportunity became issues, and as a result he doesn’t handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children. That reduces his workload significantly to a mere 15% of the total, namely 378 million. However, the crucial figure is not the number of children but the number of homes Santa has to visit. According to the most recent census data, the average size of a family in the world is 3.5 children per household. Thus, Santa has to visit 108,000,000 individual homes. (Of course, as everyone knows, Santa only visits good children, but we can surely assume that, on an average, at least one child of the 3.5 in each home meets that criterion.)

That’s quite a challenge. However, by traveling east to west, Santa can take advantage of the different time zones, and that gives him 24 hours. Santa can complete the job if he averages 1250 household visits per second. In other words, for each Christian household with at least one good child, Santa has 1/1250th of a second to park his sleigh, dismount, slide down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, consume the cookies and milk that have been left out for him, climb back up the chimney, get back onto the sleigh, and move on to the next house. To keep the math simple, let’s assume that these 108 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth. That means Santa is faced with a mean distance between households of around 0.75 miles, and the total distance Santa must travel is just over 75 million miles. Hence Santa’s sleigh must be moving at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound. A typical reindeer can run at most 15 miles per hour. That’s quite a feat Santa performs each year.

What happens when we take into account the payload on the sleigh? Assuming that the average weight of presents Santa delivers to each child is 2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons — and that’s not counting Santa himself, who, judging by all those familiar pictures, is no lightweight. On land, a reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Of course, Santa’s reindeer can fly. (True, no known species of reindeer can fly. However, biologists estimate that there are some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, we cannot rule out flying reindeer.) Now, there is a dearth of reliable data on flying reindeer, but let’s assume that a good specimen can pull ten times as much as a normal reindeer. This means that Santa needs 214,200 reindeer. Thus, the total weight of this airborne transportation system is in excess of 350,000 tons, which is roughly four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

Now, 350,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, and this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The two reindeer in the lead pair will each absorb some 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In the absence of a NASA-designed heat shield, this will cause them to burst into flames spontaneously, exposing the pair behind them. The result will be a rapid series of deafening sonic booms, as the entire reindeer team is vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Meanwhile, Santa himself will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. That should do wonders for his waistline.

Now that we have pondered all things Santa Claus, here are two thoughts:

1. As I read this, I began thinking about the people who make arguments against Creation. They are forced to believe things as outlandish as Santa’s schedule in order to support the stance that our universe just blossomed out of nothingness.
2. It’s sad that some would choose to believe Santa or evolution over believing that Jesus Christ came into the world, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a cruel death on a cross and was raised on the third day so that you and I can enjoy victory over death and eternal life with Him.

Let’s go change that.

Merry Christmas!