Posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Donald Trump is Twice as Duplicitous For Saying Two Corinthians Instead of 2nd Corinthians at a Christian University

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Hello World,

It was already insulting that presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has already proven to have very little respect for black pastors, (see Why Black Pastors Cozying Up to the Donald (Trump) Is the Wrong Thing for the Black Church…), was invited to speak to a Christian school, Liberty University, on the federal holiday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest black pastors to have ever lived. But I’m doubly insulted that he is trying to pass himself as protector of Christianity and incorrectly quoting the Bible while doing so. In his attempt to quote the school’s verse, he says, “Two Corinthians 3:17″ rather than “2nd Corinthians.” To be fair, the Bible is not known for having easy-to-pronounce words, and people get things wrong all of the time when it comes to quoting the Bible. During my speech on racial reconciliation at my church on Sunday (it went well by the way 🙂 ), I made a note to pronounce Philemon correctly because it is one of those obscure books in the Bible that few people talk about so I’m not as familiar with it. And people are always saying “Revelations” when the book is actually “Revelation.” Mistakes like that when you are not a Biblical scholar are to be expected, but if you are quoting a school’s Bible verse in front of the school while trying to present yourself as a champion of Christianity, you come off like a duplicitous dullard…

His disastrous attempt to dupe Liberty University comes a day after his revealing interview with Jake Tapper was aired on CNN. Tapper asks him about a crazy statement he made last year when he said he has never asked God for forgiveness! Instead of cleaning up his statement, he claims he is above forgiveness again by stating, “I like to be good. I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness, and I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad. I try to do nothing that’s bad. I live a very different life than probably a lot of people would think. I have a very great relationship with God, and I have a very great relationship with evangelicals.”

Christianity is all about forgiveness! Jesus’ death was in vain if we didn’t need forgiveness! His couplet of statements back to back should show that he doesn’t deserve to come up on Christians which is what he is trying to do. In fact, comeuppance should be in order. And this post better be a warning to Christians who have been supporting his supposed Christian coup d’état.

Any thoughts?

Posted on Friday, January 15, 2016

A New Church Shaped Like a High-Heeled Shoe Hopes to Attract Female Worshipers!!!

How Do We Get More Men to Come to Church?

Hello World,

Just when I thought I have lived long enough to see almost half of everything since I’m 42 years old, something happens to let me know God’s mercies are new every morning!!! According to the Daily Mail, a new church, “a Cinderella-like high-heeled shaped house of God made almost entirely out of glass,” is slated to open in Taiwan, before Feb. 8, the Chinese New Year! Made out of 320 pieces of blue glass, the church is 55 feet tall, 36 feet wide and was constructed in over two months. Not only is the design of the church supposed to appeal to female worshipers, the church will also have 100 feminine features such as “ chairs for ‘lovers,’ maple leaves, biscuits and cakes – all ideal for romantic photographs,” according to Zheng Rongfeng, spokesman of the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area, in the article.

Gives new meaning to the verse “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” 1 Corinthians 9:22…Below is a video about the church…

And this is my reaction…

I don’t know what the stats are for Asian countries but stateside, there are more women going to church than men! According to ChurchForMen.com, “the typical U.S. Congregation draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female, 39% male. This gender gap shows up in all age categories,” and “this Sunday almost 25 percent of married, churchgoing women will worship without their husbands.”

Maybe Taiwan is on to something, would more men come to church if it was built like a giant football, a La-Z-Boy recliner or a flat-screen TV? I wonder what masculine features would make men swoon? Maybe chips and dip or wings and blue cheese would be served instead of communion? What if people yelled “Touchdown” instead of “Amen?” How about deaconnesses instead of deacons and they would wear high heels? The more I think about this, the more it seems that a Hooters restaurant would be ideal…

Men, what say you?

Any thoughts?

Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2016

How To Achieve Your Goals, Dreams & Resolutions in One Year…

Hello World,

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten really personal on this space but since it is a New Year, the time of the year that many of us reserve to reassess our personal and professional goals, dreams, resolutions, etc., I have decided to let you into my head…

I have LOTS of dreams, but two are most important to me….one is personal and one is professional and only God and my husband know all about them right now and they will remain that way for now…

However, back in 2008, I also had LOTS of dreams and similarly to what is going on in my life now, two of them – (one was personal and one was professional) surpassed the rest…As I shared in a previous post in 2013, but did not share then, “I wanted to meet and get married to the man God kept for me, and I wanted to be a published author.” In 2008, it seemed nothing I did got me any closer to my dreams, but as I look back, God was leading me to the realization of my dreams…I just couldn’t see it then…

So let me take you back to 2007-2008…I was 34 years old and had gotten reacquainted with a man I dated in college. We had a lot a fun when we dated in college but we just didn’t work out as a couple. However, we had kept in touch here and there over the years, and we decided to give it a try again. Being the storyteller that I am, it seemed like the perfect ending to a long and winding story. College fun turns into lasting love…But that is not what happened…For all of the things we had in common and all of the fun we still had, he was not a churchgoing Christian man and that was a deal breaker for me…He was not an atheist, but he just didn’t think it was necessary to go to church…Nothing I did, said or prayed changed that so we broke up, and I was heartbroken…

So I did what made sense for me to do right then…I turned my pain into profit and pitched an article to UPSCALE magazine about why black men don’t go to church…An editor liked and approved the idea, and I happily tracked down sources for the article…One of those sources was Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, the author of book “Adam! Where Are You?: Why Most Black Men Don’t Go to Church” Now, here is where the story gets kinda spooky or super spiritual depending on how you look at it. I read his book before I interviewed him, and I was shocked to read one of the illustrations in his book about someone who was looking for a black man in church. This illustration featured a woman named Jackie who was 34 years old and had made all of the “right moves” but was still unable to meet the right churchgoing man…Hello, my name was (is) Jackie, I was 34 and I had felt I had made all of the “right moves” and still hadn’t met the churchgoing man of my dreams…I knew then that the interview was one of those pebbles that God throws down on your path to let you know that you are moving in the right direction…After I interviewed Dr. Kunjufu, I told him I was a lot like the “Jackie” in his book and even he was surprised that we shared some of the exact same qualities…In fact, he later e-mailed these words to me – “I enjoyed our interview, and I believe God has your husband waiting for you!” By the way, my article was published in the August 2008 issue of UPSCALE magazine…

Meanwhile, I also felt stalled in my professional life…I mean I had some wonderful things going on…I had secured freelance writing opportunities that made it possible for me not to have the traditional 9 to 5 gig and I was profoundly grateful, but I had wanted to be a published book author since I was a little girl…And it seemed that every door I tried to walk through to make it happen was eventually slammed in my face…In 2007, I had gone to a writers conference in Philadelphia and had attracted the attention of the senior acquisitions editor of my DREAM publishing company…He enthusiastically took my book proposal and promised he would be in touch soon…He kept his promise and within a couple of weeks, he e-mailed me…I thought it had to be good news because only good news comes that fast…but it wasn’t…He e-mailed these words to me – “I read over your book proposal, My Journey, but my marketing department tells me that this is a hard kind of book for them to sell nationally, and so I have to reject it. Sorry.” I bet he wasn’t as sorry as I was…I was salty about that…

But I also realized that if I had gotten the attention of the senior acquisitions editor, I had something to offer even if it wasn’t quite right yet…At that same conference, I had pitched my book “My Journey” (which is what the book was called then…What a boring title!) to someone else in the publishing industry, and I had used the words “after the altar call” in the pitch…She told me I should rename my book “After the Altar Call.” Also, at that same conference, I learned about having a “platform” and why every nonfiction author had to have one…By the following year, I decided I was going to be the next blogger who turned it into a book…After the Altar Call was born in September 2008…

It would take TWO MORE YEARS before these two dreams would come into fruition… By 2010, I had dated more men but those relationships hadn’t worked out either…But there was a guy at my church who I knew I had a crush on me, but he wasn’t my usual type so I never took him seriously…by then, I thought well, I will give him a chance…That guy revealed himself to be my husband in 2010…Also, after two years of blogging, it occurred to me that if my story and platform weren’t enough by themselves maybe I should include the stories and platforms of other women in a new book proposal for After the Altar Call: The Sisters’ Guide to Developing a Personal Relationship With God…That was the key that unlocked a door that had been previously slammed in my face…I secured a book deal that year…

So how do you achieve your goals, dreams & resolutions in one year?

Well, there is good news and bad news…In my experience, some of the best goals, dreams and resolutions can be achieved in one year, but it usually takes years to get there…But the good news is if you trust in God and in His timing, you will receive God’s best for you…It goes back to my favorite verse:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Any thoughts?