McHenry County Blog

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Please excuse me over the next week or so as I share some observations of those watching liberal American Methodists trying to turn my church into something like the American Anglican Church.

For over a decade there has been an attempt by liberals to conform Methodist doctrine, which is determined by majority vote (on a more or less one-member, on-vote basis) to standards prevalent in American culture.

The problem with the liberal strategy is that churches where their philosophy prevails are in decline, while those more aligned with Biblical teaching are rapidly growing. Africa is the poster child for a church in what might be called “Acts” mode.

Today I got an email from Mark Tooley of the Institute of Religion and Democracy with snippets of the cultural clash.

“How fascinating that once insulated elite church liberals from shrinking churches now have to contend with hundreds of biblically minded African delegates representing millions of new church members,” writes Tooley.

In a debate in Church and Society, liberals proposed a motion about encouraging energy efficient cars, Tooley reports.

“An African delegate said: ‘This isn’t relevant to our context.’

“A clueless liberal delegate began to question him: ‘…I don’t know if you carpool [in Africa] – or have access to non-incandescent light bulbs.’”

“Oh yeah,” Tooley comments on the cluelessness of the liberal.

In Africa one district superintendent told of having no roads in his jurisdiction. He couldn’t ride a bicycle; he had to walk to his churches.

As for debating the type of light bulb, most of rural Africa is without electricity.

Methodists are big on “connections.” We are all in one church.

The liberals (and I am being polite by using this word) have a steep learning curve between their “this is the way things should be” and the way things are where Christianity is burgeoning.

The difference is goals between is described by Tooley like this:

“Liberals worry about sexual freedom and coercively redistributing wealth, along with extreme environmental causes that deter economic growth.

AAfricans want to create NEW wealth and more development.

“Instead of Global Warming, Africans are concerned about disease eradication, clean water, and greater food production…

“Growing numbers of Africans, who live in the real word, will increasingly push our church back towards relevance and reality.”

For information on the liberals’ call to ordain homosexual and lesbian clergy, look here.

For information about what the LGBT agenda for youth, look here.

= = = = =
Other articles that may be of interest:

• 4/24/12 Methodist Convention This Week in Tampa – Unity Not on the Agenda
• 4/27/12 The Disconnect Between American Liberals and Africans in Tampa’s Methodist Convention
• 4/28/12 Conservative Methodists Making Headway in World Conference, Big Fight on Homosexuality in Offing
• 4/29/12 Update from United Methodist Church General Conference in Tampa – Conservatives Winning Most Votes, Setbacks for Abortion & Israeli Divestment Supporters
• 4/30/12 Good News Reports Most Endorsed Candidates for Methodist “Supreme Court,” University Senate Win
• 4/30/12 Conservatives Take Three of Four Vacancies on Methodist Judicial Council, Vote on Homosexuality Imminent
• 5/2/12 Methodists Vote Almost 3-1 Against Ending Investments (Divestment) in Motorola and CAT, Proportional Representation for Africans on Ruling Bodies, Preacher Tenure Ended
• 5/3/12 53% Reject Homosexual Liberalization at Tampa World Methodist Conference
• 5/3/12 Homosexuals Take over Methodist Tampa Convention Floor after Losing Vote
• 5/4/12 Coverage of Conservative Methodists’ Victory over Homosexual Activists Missing

From the Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, May 10, 2011: climate change not the reason for frog deaths.

Remember all the hype about Global Warming being the reason for frog and other amphibian deaths?

Man made climate change was the cause.

It turns out that man’s actions may have caused the die-off, but it seems to be because man brought a species of African frog with a skin disease to the New World.

Tribune reporter Aminda Kahn has found an article by San Francisco State University researcher Tina Cheng published last week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that debunks that popular theory.

But the headline on the page 16 story doesn’t mention Global Warming.

Or climate change.

The headline is

Old frogs, toads help
trace a killer fungus

Here’s the news in the story:

“The findings…strongly link the amphibians’ disappearance to the fungus and suggest that the disease was an alien invader rather than a native disease let loose by climate change.”

One theory is that is came in with “the African claw-toed frog, a carrier of the disease that was once imported from Africa for use in pregnancy tests.”

There is still frog work to be done.

The McHenry County Conservation District seeks volunteers to monitor frogs on its land.

You can read about that opportunity below:

You can help monitor frogs in McHenry County on the Conservation District's over 24,000 acres. Click to enlarge any image.

Crystal Lake's Gate 7 Beach at the Gate 9 end on the morning of March 20, 2010.

The ice disappeared from Crystal Lake on Friday, March 19th.

March 15th, same location. The ice on Crystal Lake was rotten.

Click to enlarge.

It was about 4 AM when I awoke and asked my wife,

“What’s that?”

Sleepily she said something like, “What do you mean?”

“It felt like the house jumped,” I replied and got up to see if it was a snowplow that had just passed by.

Lakewood’s main drag was quiet, but the driveway, lit by the chimney star that stays on until the snow disappears, was illuminated.

There was another bright light across the street from our tree house above the swimming pool.

All of a sudden it went out.

When my son awoke, he heard that we had had an earthquake.

I guess the light that went out must have been a motion sensitive spotlight.

Closer to the Pingree Grove epicenter, one family near the Huntley High School, about 14 miles from the epicenter of the 3.8 magnitude quake, said that his bed was vibrating across the floor.

Again, click to enlarge.

Another said,

“It was like thunder, but much more disturbing than thunder.”

You can find more information about the quake here in the DeKalb Register.

If you would like to give the US Geologic Service information about what you saw and felt, you can do so at this web page. There are over 14,000 responses so far.

One interesting tid-bit that the paper did not mention in the context I shall is that the earthquake was caused by global warming.

Paul Stoddard, an associate professor in department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences at Northern Illinois University, points out in the story that the quake was caused by

“glacial rebound.”

From Wikipedia page on "post-glacial rebound"

The thousand feet of ice is long gone, of course.

Global warming.

Not man made, of course.

10,000 years in the making.

Type “global warming” into MicroSoft’s new Bing search engine and one of McHenry County Blog’s “Messages of the Day” is on the second row of images.  It is from March 30, 2009.

It didn’t make the images under “global warming.”

On the way to pick up my son from a sleepover for church, we drove past this

sign near South Elementary School in Crystal Lake.

You will note my just-back-from-a-spring-break-in-Florida son is still wearing shorts.

Some years people have been water skiing by now, so I thought the sign deserved to be memorialized.

When I ran for McHenry County Treasurer in 1966, I remember the last snow came on May 5th. In 1993, there was frost under the leaves in mid-May.

Hiding behind a pile of snow is one of many yard signs posted illegally in Congresswoman Melissa Bean’s district prior to the November election.

It ways,

There’s more, including a web site, but it’s hidden behind a pile of snow.

Hiding behind a pile of snow is one of many yard signs posted illegally in Congresswoman Melissa Bean’s district prior to the November election.

It ways,

There’s more, including a web site, but it’s hidden behind a pile of snow.