Bubba reports on attending a baptism Sunday at an unfamiliar church with family members who do not attend church and do not believe. He describes a pastor who opened with a family photo and a 'six kids' joke, cited a Galatians chapter-and-verse that Bubba says does not exist in the Bible, then told the 'grandfather and the two wolves' story — 'the wolf that wins is the one you feed' — as though it were one of Jesus' parables, to the congregation's delight, and closed the sermon with 'everybody in here has just gotta die.' Bubba grants the church's radical acceptance of every walk of life but argues the preaching was gimmickry and self-help: neither wolf is the Lord Jesus, and the message puts transformation back on the listener's inertia rather than on Christ's work.
More on Baptism
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Is skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee sacrilegious?
- Is skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee sacrilegious?
The hosts debate the hard question: one argues the category of 'sacrilegious' itself is man-made — something is sin or it isn't — and that the congressman's real problem was foolishness, not location (Jesus was in a boat there; it is moving, recycled water).
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Chat questions: what must one do to be saved?
- What must one do to be saved?
- At what point is someone saved?
Reading listener questions from the chat — one host tosses the first to Dan by name — the hosts answer that faith is always the baseline: belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of the living God who died physically and rose physically, since 'demons believe and shudder' too.
From No. 34 · Where Do I Start?
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Dawson: everything feels like a sales pitch
Mike asks Dawson where the church presents community poorly. Dawson: everything feels like a sales pitch now — every invitation defended with ten reasons, which makes people suspicious.
From No. 590 · Theodore Franco
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Baptism Sunday spectacle: mascot, dunk Sunday, inflatables
Ben describes a church advertising a big baptism Sunday complete with a basketball-team mascot, “dunk Sunday,” rides, and inflatables, and asks whether meeting Jesus is really that life-changing or whether churches fluff it up.
From No. 588 · hypokritēs