Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

That's true (and aren't those precursors and parallels interesting and sobering!), but doesn't mean that the idea of a truly, inarguably immortal soul that would, without exception, spend an eternity in either bliss or torment is necessarily a NT doctrine. Jewish and Christian ideas about God have n...

I talked to some JW's several years ago and actually learned a lot. They said the Bible does not teach that you have an immortal soul. I tried so hard to prove them wrong, but searched and asked questions of people who would know, and they were right! That whole concept comes from Plato and the Gre...

There was a kid over on the 'other side' of the board who flat out stated that services are 'not supposed to fun'. Apparently enjoyment - or even the APPEARANCE of enjoyment - is of the debbil. If congregations aren't already deliberately PLANNING for services to be boring, they soon will be, given...

Well these older members were all kin to the leadership families, and the claim was that they would become "confused" because they could not follow a song leader or if the number of songs changed, etc. And of course confusion is akin to chaos and God is not the author or chaos...so bah-da...

In our case, it was generally phrased "some of the older members" which I think was a cover as much as anything....they just used "the older members" as a club to beat you into line, I doubt any of them ever gave them as much feedback as they were claiming. I don't know - some o...

Yeah, the offendee population of the CofC is a significant minority, twisting a bit of scripture to tailor the church environment as much as possible to their preferences. My wife used to fume about one little lady who wielded extraordinary power in a church we attended, and the elders seemed to thi...

Since then, I have done that four more times on relatives funerals, both CofC and not. Of course, I have not asked them to ignore religion or their basic beliefs, but my view on this is that these preachers like having some good stories and some understanding of the wishes of the family about the t...

I also included (much to my sister, brother-in-law and dad's in law reltives chagrin) the fact he was Baptist many years before marrying mom and converting to church of christ. That was a part of his life and he always talked fondly of the folks in that Baptist Church. I felt that time in his life ...

"Sure, you kicked us to the curb and aren't around here anymore, but please know that we cannot fellowship you...even though aren't around us anymore anyway."

A lot of 'Jewish' music tends to sound like it is in a minor key to us. The musical tradition is different. But (as the links above illustrate) Jews have always 'borrowed' the musical genres of the surrounding culture. It goes both ways, too (as you have shown). That's certainly true...just like lo...