Released time is a time set aside during the school day that public school students that provides public school students an opportunity to leave school grounds with parental consent and study the Bible. Currently there are more than 590 students in 9 programs in the Upstate area attending Released Time Classes. There have been more than 990 students who have made commitments to follow Jesus Christ in these programs since 1998.

The program costs approximately $35.00 a month (on a 12 month cycle) per student.

Go to http://www.upstatereleasedtimeinfo.com/ and find out how you can get involved.

Fact: 85% of people come to faith in Christ before the age of 14!

Their newest store will be opening in Clemson on September 17, 2009. It is located in the Langston Place Shopping Center, 500 Old Greenville Hwy., Suite 3. Their operating hours are from 9:00 am -6:00 pm Monday- Saturday.

Salkehatchie Work Camp is coming up in the first full week of July. A program of the United Methodist in South Carolina it provides a means of proclaiming the gospel through imporving the homes of needy families.  Our youth have participated in the program for years. This year Pendleton Presbyterian is scheduled to provide a lunch on Friday, July 10. Volunteers need to arrive at Pendleton United Methodist at 11:30am.  Thank you Greg Quarles for organizing our participation in this ministry.

Obviously meant to be entertaining how would you answer these serious questions about God? What would you say without being glib, bumbling or dismissive of the children?

Since our earliest childhoods we have been schooled in ways of thinking that do not allow for religion, God, gods or spirits. As I recall we were never taught why the Pilgrims came to the New World only that they did- boring. I am not trying to suggest that we should return to the past when Christianity was institutionalized in our schools.  But I wonder if we have overreacted to the mistakes and abuses of our past. As a result of removing all religious study from the classroom we have effectively favored only one way of knowing. Is it a problem that our modern, objective, scientific way of thinking does not allow room for anything that cannot be empirically known through the senses? Can this a good thing? 

There was a short time when those who wielded power, namely the church,  seemed able to resist the challenge of science and hold fast to ideas that are now ridiculous to us in our day. Fortunately, science has since flourished and enabled us to extricate ourselves from the mire of unknowing superstition. Now we KNOW! But do we?

I am thinking that this modern scientific mindset shares more in common with the uninformed flat earth thinking of our past than we realize. What if there is knowledge that is rounder, fuller and more true than what scientific enquiry alone can ever give us?  Consider love between two people or the love of a family. We know something about the physical science of attraction, of sex, but can science ever delve into the heart of two soulmates or  a mother as she gazes into the eyes of her nursing baby daughter? The great blessings of education, science and technology have alleviated unimaginable suffering and are in that sense supportive of things like faith, hope and love. But does this way of knowing actually produce such knowing as faith, hope and love?  Can science explain promise making and keeping without reducing it to theories of social Darwinism (i.e. self preservation or survival of the species, etc.)?  Can scientific discovery eliminate evil from our world? Unfortunately, the history of the twentieth century leaves no doubt as to the answer. Our knowledge of how the physical world works seems to intensify rather than eradicate evil; to make  it easier for the powerful to gather more power to themselves at the expense of the poor and dispossessed; easier for states to wage wars and kill their enemies; easier for small fringe groups to terrorize whole populations. 

Just as the state has successfully removed religious ways of knowing from public education, so much of the church in the West has eliminated God the “Spirit” from its life. I think the two are related. But things are rapidly changing;  religion, spirituality, God, gods are coming back and with a vengence. There is now more religion and spirituality in the West than ever before and it includes people with different skin color, different language, different faith and orientation to life.  Within the fasted growing parts of the church there is a “Spirit” emphasis. These are the churches who have not forgotten their first love. Their God is redeeming, transforming, creating and they are all about their “Father’s business.”  There are other churches who have organized themselves around the maintenance of buildings and organazational structures. The grounds and buildings are almost always immaculate, records are neat, worship is ordered. No one can be critical of such commendable things but what are they if unsullied by the messy chaos of sinners being transformed and babes in the faith blundering their way toward spiritual maturity?

The Summer 2009 Concert Tour  of the Chapel Choir is presenting “The World is About to Turn” at Fort Hill Presbyterian Sunday, June 13 beginning at 7:30pm. Admission is free.

The Shallowford Chapel Choir is composed of 60-70 youth from grades 7–12. A highlight of Chapel Choir is the annual summer tour. On these tours the choir has sung in 24 states, several Canadian provinces, Scotland, and England.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.

It is very comforting to know that we can turn to God for wisdom. I once even heard an avowed atheist say that he missed God for he had no one to turn to. Thus it was all up to him to make his own way. The fact of the matter is that our lives are unavoidably messy, no matter who we are, and  there are many times when we have need of the wisdom of others. James takes for granted that we can, and that we should, ask for wisdom from God. But here James is being very specific. “Why and what kind of wisdom does James have in mind?”

“If we let James define his own terms and seek to understand this passage in light of the whole letter, which is where any good understanding of this letter begins, we will want to ask what kind of wisdom were these Jewish Christian communities were in need of.” McKnight says, “James makes that abundantly clear in this letter: they were mostly the oppressed poor (cf. 1:9-11; 2:1-13; 5:1-6) who were tempted to find justice (1:20; 4:1-2; 5:1-6) and perhaps even by using violence (1:20; 4:1-2).” 

They are to seek a different kind of wisdom: wisdom from God which the hard living poor need as they face  grinding oppression in their daily lives. McKnight suggests we begin right here.

Why? Well, they could count on God’s wisdom because God “gives generously to all without finding fault.”  

McKnight says James is thinking like his brother Jesus in how he understands God. God is good and God is there and God is not silent and God responds: “who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

He refers us to Matthew 7:7-11:

7 ”Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 ”Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

James says God simply gives wisdom to those who come to God in faith. Jesus says God is good and gives to his children who come to him.

What he’s getting at here is that these people who are in the midst of so much suffering and stress and oppression can know that God is good and that God is there and that God is not silent and that God is listening. They can go to God with their request for wisdom.

Given the larger context of the letter we  see, in some ways, that James provides the wisdom they were seeking. He doesn’t give a promise that God will rescue them from their suffering. So what does one do? There are those who might internalize their anger and turn in on themselves.  Many relationships have come to an end in this way. There are others who might become aggressive toward the dominate culture and attack it with violence. This is the way to self destruction. Instead, what James urges upon these early believers in Jesus is “to gather round one another, to live as Jesus taught, and to look to God for justice. James is not advocating wimpy withdrawal or aggression, rather here is an active, aggressive stance of waging peace in the face of injustice. Take for instance James 3:17-18:

17 But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace‑loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. 18 Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.