Yesterday USA Today featured an article entitled Some megachurches closing for Christmas. Why are these mega churches canceling their services on Christmas Sunday? “Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.” Parkinson goes on to say that, “If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don’t go to church, how likely is it that they’ll be going to church on Christmas morning?” First, using the fact that the unchurched do not go to church, as an excuse for canceling church is absurd. Such logic is completely nonsensical. Secondly, it is important to note that their church’s mission is to reach the unchurched; not to glorify God or to herald the Gospel of Christ. Willow Creek, and every other seeker friendly church, is driven by the fickle desires of the unchurched instead of being driven by sound Biblical doctrine. Ultimately, their church is controlled by the desires of the unchurched and therefore their church has become a product to be marketed.

USA Today also reports, “Among the other megachurches closing on Christmas Day are Southland Christian Church in Nicholasville, Ky., near Lexington, and Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, outside of Dallas. North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., outside of Atlanta, said on its website that no services will be held on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day, which also falls on a Sunday.”

Most interestingly enough the secular newspaper reports that, “It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture.” Are these churches bowing to secular culture? Yes, in shame of the Gospel and to their shame before Christ.

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24-25) Need I say more?

Yesterday The New York Times reports that Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker. I will briefly touch on four important things discussed in this article.

First, The New York Times disturbingly reports, “While intelligent design has hit obstacles among scientists, it has also failed to find a warm embrace at many evangelical Christian colleges. Even at conservative schools, scholars and theologians who were initially excited about intelligent design say they have come to find its arguments unconvincing. They, too, have been greatly swayed by the scientists at their own institutions and elsewhere who have examined intelligent design and found it insufficiently substantiated in comparison to evolution.” Scholars and theologians? Evangelical Christian colleges? These are our supposed leaders, our learned men, and yet they have traded the wisdom of God for the foolishness of man. I only hope that you, like Paul, are asking, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (I Corinthians 1:20)

Second, “The only university where intelligent design has gained a major institutional foothold is a seminary. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., created a Center for Science and Theology for William A. Dembski, a leading proponent of intelligent design, after he left Baylor, a Baptist university in Texas, amid protests by faculty members opposed to teaching it.” As Christians, we need to support schools like The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who teach sound doctrine and oppose schools, like Baylor, who do not.

Third, the Dover trial will determine “whether intelligent design can be taught in a public school, or whether teaching it is unconstitutional because it advances a particular religious belief” Intelligent design advances the most ecumenical, universal, and basic religious belief possible, a belief in a god who created the universe. Evolution advances a particular religious belief, ATHEISM. I agree with Derek Davis that, “It’s a religious worldview that’s being advanced.” The only problem is that if advancing a particular religious belief is the determiner of unconstitutionality then the theory of evolution is just as unconstitutional. This gets to the heart of the ecumenical monoculture, erasing the knowledge of God and replacing it with lies (Romans 1:23, 25, 28). The issue is not constitutionality, it is not truth, and it is certainly not ecumenism. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote The Gay Science, in which he exclaimed, “God is dead.” and now, that God is dead, the proponents of the monoculture are attempting to erase Him from our memory. If God the Creator is erased then all of God is erased and this is their goal.

Fourth, “If the judge in the Dover case rules against intelligent design, the decision would be likely to dissuade other school boards from incorporating it into their curriculums. School boards might already be wary because of a simple political fact: eight of the school-board members in Dover who supported intelligent design were voted out of office in elections last month and replaced by a slate of opponents.” Far too long have American evangelicals been plagued by the sin of theological and intellectual sloth we must study God’s Word and defend it. The opponents of Intelligent Design are forcefully advancing their worldview and we cannot afford to stand idle any longer.

Earlier this week in France a 38-year-old woman underwent the world’s first partial face transplant. The CNN.com article Face transplant woman thanks team recounts this amazing medical feat. Of all the ensuing controversy, none of it has dealt with the true issue surrounding this surgery. CNN.com reports, “The donor tissue came from a woman who had been declared brain-dead, with the permission of that woman’s family, doctors said.” This surgery has ushered in a new age in human history, the birth of the Human Commodity.

The Human Commodity is nothing new; black-market organ sales have occurred for a long time and recently embryos have been used as a source for stem cells used in research. What this event represents is the normalizing of the abnormal that occurs due to ecumenism within the monoculture. From the normalizing of homosexuality into merely another alternative lifestyle to the “Dutch Cure,” the monoculture embraces and normalizes the most abhorrent and base behavior.

The issue is that the “donor tissue,” a female face, was removed from a living human being and surgically transplanted onto another. In the September/October 2005 issue of Foreign Policy Peter Singer writes, “During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments.” He goes on to assert that, “Hence, a decision to remove the feeding tube will be less controversial, for it will be a decision to end the life of a human body, but not of a person.” Singer believes that being alive does not necessarily constitute being a person and thus believes that there is a difference in killing a body and a person. The sanctity of human life is already collapsing and has already collapsed to the point that the organs of a living woman are now a harvestable commodity, with her family’s permission of course. According to the ecumenical monoculture, you are no longer a person you are a commodity, and your life has no intrinsic value.