Online churches draw believers, critics

By Anne Hammock, CNN

November 15, 2009 9:18 a.m. EST

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/13/online.church.services/index.html

CNN) — Hjalti á Lava was searching his iPhone for a Bible app when he stumbled across Church Online, a service of Web site LifeChurch.tv. Soon he was regularly logging into the Oklahoma-based cyber-church — some 4,100 miles away from á Lava’s home in the Faroe Islands, west of Norway.

I WONDER WHY THEY DIDN’T MENTION BILL KELLER, THE WORLDS LEADING TELEVANGELIST?

 

“It allows me to connect with others and have conversations about the message,” says á Lava, who shares his faith with other believers in the site’s live chat room. “Technology allows us today to have fellowship across borders and cultures.”

In doing so, á Lava joined growing numbers of Christians worldwide who are migrating from the chapel to the computer. A map on the Church Online site showed users from 22 countries logged into a recent service.

Online religious services offer convenience to those who are too isolated or infirm to attend a real-world church. But can worshipping via a computer offer true spiritual fulfillment?

Internet pastors and parishioners cite their 24-hour access to interactive tools and social-networking platforms to show their online experiences are as meaningful as those that take place with face-to-face congregations.

“We were blown away at how people could actually worship along [online],” says Craig Groeschel, senior pastor at LifeChurch.tv. “The whole family will gather around the computer, and they’ll sing and they’ll worship together. Instead of trying to get people to come to a church, we feel like we can take a church to them.”

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But critics believe virtual worship separates followers from a trinity of spiritual essentials found in brick-and-mortar Christian churches: community, Communion and connection with Christ.

“Online church is close enough to the real thing to be dangerous,” says Bob Hyatt, a pastor who leads the brick-and-mortar Evergreen Community Church in Portland, Oregon. In a blog post for ChristianityToday.com, he writes that calling it virtual church “gives people the idea that everything they need is available here.”

The debate is an extension of a wider argument over social interaction in virtual environments versus the physical world. But because practices of faith are involved, both sides are deeply invested in the outcome, seeing it as a statement on the nature of the Christian person’s relationship with God.

Supporters of online churches have a common response to their skeptics: Try before you criticize. The virtual experience goes far beyond using live chat rooms to exchange emoticons instead of hugs and handshakes, they say.

Links allow congregants to “raise their hand” and publicly commit to Christ, while prayer requests and one-on-one guidance are a click way. Sermon notes can be shared and discussed. And many online churches are aided by volunteers, allowing them to hold services several times each day.

The Internet campus of the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Florida, pulls in more than 2,000 congregants from around the world during its Sunday services. Pastor Doug Gramling said his three children are part of the Internet generation that will eventually decide the future of worship. They use Web tools to stay in constant connection with friends over vast distances, which Gramling says “gives me confidence that it can happen in online church.”

But the disconnect from physical closeness is what Hyatt said he’s “fighting hardest against.” His own church offers online extensions such as podcasts and forums. But he believes “the computer screen is a supplement, not a replacement.”

Hyatt and other critics are particularly distressed by the online offering of traditional sacraments, such as Communion and baptism. He believes it is “ridiculous” that someone can grab grape juice and a cracker from the fridge and watch a computer screen, thinking they are truly participating in a gathering of the faithful.

“Something about the physical presence, breaking the same bread, is what Communion is meant to be,” he says.

But Church Online participant Donna Cole disagrees.

“Knowing that others are also celebrating Communion, regardless of location, makes it an especially wonderful time,” says Cole, who believes real-world Communion can ring hollow. “When I’ve taken Communion in live surroundings, I often got the sense that it was ritualistic and without meaning.”

Matthew Bailey, a parishioner in the Franktown United Methodist Church in Virginia, believes that the meaning of the ritual is what matters.

“If people are willing to go to the trouble of giving their own Communion, then it is quite probably ‘real’ for them,” he says. While Bailey chooses to remain at his face-to-face church, he believes any person “faithfully attending an online church service, is being more proactive, and thus probably more attentive, than many longtime churchgoers.”

Douglas Estes, lead pastor of Berryessa Valley Church in San Jose, California, and author of “SimChurch,” a book about Internet church services, would like to see this debate go away.

“The Bible sees church not as a man-made building but as a people gathered to glorify God with their lives,” he says. Estes believes the quality of a community should be judged by the spiritual fellowship it offers.

“There is only one substantive difference between an online church and a brick-and-mortar church: The place where they meet.”

I feel gyped on this O.C.E.A.N. personality test.

Some tweaking required to get my readout looking readable.

Openness to Experience/Intellect: High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.

You typically don’t seek out new experiences. (Your percentile: 59)

Well, I’m working on that at least. That’s what the whole Freethinkers thing is about. Get out, do something different and meet new people.

Conscientiousness: High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent.

You tend to do things somewhat haphazardly. (Your percentile: 35)

Yeah, I’ll buy that.

Extraversion: High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet.

You tend to shy away from social situations. (Your percentile: 27)

And again, I’m working on it. I do spend too much time alone.

Agreeableness: High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous.

You find it easy to express irritation with others. (Your percentile: 38)

This is the one that bugs me, but more because it’s true, I suppose. But I am good natured and courteous and I do have sympathy and some capacity of forgiveness. Just not enough, apparently.

Neuroticism: High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy.

You are generally relaxed. (Your percentile: 37)

In this case a low score seems to be good. Awesome.

I’ve done better tests, but this was at least a quick one.

This is a game that I have seen in forums and this is how it works. One person starts off and the next “bans that person.” Now let me give an example.

P:Banned for liking pork.
E_E: Banned for being able to afford L4D2

There are some simple rules….don’t bring your debates here. This is posted as comical relief. If any debates start that comment will be deleted. Don’t say you have a post awaiting moderation in another post. Keep it in that post please. Try not to be racist, like Banned for being a Jew or Banned for being a n*****. Will not be permitted and if you are a contributor I will take away your privileges for a week. This is a game and supposed to be in the spirit of fun.

Liberals cry ‘unfair’ after Fox orders unbalanced YouTube purge

By Daniel Tencer
Friday, November 13th, 2009 — 1:02 pm

The North American Union conspiracy theory has been around for quite sometime. It was something started in 2003. There was a supposed NAFTA corridor that was basically a interstate going from Central America to the Yukon. Several members of congress have said that this report is not based in fact. I need to note that this was in a news report dated 2003. Now this had to be based on something, it was based on a man who stated that America needed to cooperate more with the governments of North America.

Humanevents.com reported this in 2006

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration’s true open borders policy.

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled “Building a North American Community” published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration’s actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union:

At their meeting in Waco, Texas, at the end of March 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin committed their governments to a path of cooperation and joint action. We welcome this important development and offer this report to add urgency and specific recommendations to strengthen their efforts.

Now if you goto humanevents.com be prepared to run a virus scan after you leave. From this site I got two false positives (they are the false positives I keep on my computer to make sure the program is working properly) and 15 trojans, tracking cookies, and malicious software. Any site that does that to your computer is not news worthy. This is just a disclaimer be prepared to do a virus scan. Of course these viruses may have come from the five or so conspircy theory websites that I visted after googling the subject. The funny thing is I cannot find any actual fact that support these claims.
Now I need to comment that humanevents.com is filled with “facts” that have been proved false by factcheck.org

Now Ron Paul made claims that Bush was trying to create a North American Union. This was debunked by factcheck.org here is what they had to say:

According to Paul, a secret organization run by unaccountable government figures is in league with foreign corporations who are all bent on usurping American sovereignty. That’s not from the script for a new X-Files movie. (Or not that we know of.) It’s the gist of Paul’s description of a supposed “NAFTA Superhighway.” Paul describes it on his Web site as “a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside.” And that’s not all. According to Paul, the ultimate plan is to form a North American Union with a single currency and unlimited travel within its borders, all headed up by “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments” that together form the shadowy “quasi-government organization called the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,’ or SPP.”

The problem with Paul’s claim is that there are no plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway. Or a North American Union, for that matter. And while the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America does exist, it’s just a boring bureaucracy.

Like many conspiracy theories, this one is a mixture of fact and fiction. improvements to existing roads, but is not lobbying for, or planning to build, any new thoroughfares. From the NASCO That scary-looking map, with lines that rumor suggested were drawn to scale, is the product of an actual group called North America’s SuperCorridor Organization (NASCO), which is a consortium of public and private entities. But contrary to conspiracy theorists, the map does not show a new highway. Those bright blue lines show only I-35 and I-29 – interstates that already exist. On its Web site, NASCO says it and some of the local governments along I-35 have been referring to that route as the “NAFTA Superhighway” for years. NASCO advocates Web site:

NASCO: “NAFTA Superhighway” – As of late, there has been much media attention given to the “new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway”. NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the ‘NAFTA Superhighway’ for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35.

In terms of new roads, there are, in fact, plans for a Trans-Texas Corridor, a road that would be (in spots) several football fields wide. And the road would be financed by a private company (which is partially Spanish-owned) that would then charge tolls to recoup its investment. But the TTC was approved by the Texas Legislature and the governor of Texas. It is a state initiative, but it is not part of a NAFTA Superhighway, nor is it the product of a shadowy federal conspiracy.

Indeed, Ian Grossman, a spokesman with the Federal Highway Administration told the Los Angeles Times, “There is no such superhighway like the one [Paul is] talking about. It doesn’t exist, in plans or anywhere else.”

The other parts of the conspiracy are much the same. The SPP – that “quasi-government organization” – is really an actual government organization, organized through the White House. According to David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce, the SPP is a bureaucratic dialog staffed by mid-level officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico who work to synchronize customs, security and regulations. “Simple stuff,” Bohigian told The Nation last August, “like, for instance, in the U.S. we sell baby food in several different sizes; in Canada, it’s just two different sizes.” Not exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff.

The SPP has a factsheet on its Web site that attempts to put to rest all the tall tales surrounding it. And if that isn’t enough, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Newsweek and the urban legend site Snopes.com all have previously debunked this particular bit of conspiracy-theorizing.

snopes.com wrote this about the same subject:
In March 2005, the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico (President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Paul Martin, and President Vicente Fox, respectively) met in Texas to

discuss plans for increased cooperation between their three countries in areas of common interest, such as border security, protection against terrorist threats, improved trade relations, competitiveness in the global marketplace, the combating of infectious diseases, and disaster response.

Contrary to the rumor expressed in the example quoted above, the three men did not sign any treaty or agreement to subsume the sovereignty of their countries to a greater entity called the North American Union (NAU), eliminate their common borders, or create a common currency (akin to the Euro) to replace their nations’ currencies. What the leaders agreed to was the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), a “dialogue to increase security and enhance prosperity among the three countries.” The SPP is not itself an agreement or a treaty, it is not a movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union or to establish a common currency, nor does it seek to alter or subsume the sovereignty of those three countries.

The notion that the establishment of a North American Union (along with the dissolving of national borders and the creation of a common currency) is set to take place in 2010 stems from proposals such as Building a North American Community (a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales) which advocate more aggressive plans for North American cooperation, such as the “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.” However, such proposals are merely analyses and recommendations developed by independent “think tanks”; they are not treaties, legislation, or official blueprints for future governmental actions.

None of this is to say that the three North American countries might not someday decide to form closer ties along the lines of the European Union, perhaps with a common currency and more fluid borders. But there is currently no official governmental plan underway to make all that happen by 2010.

Now in 2009, the same claims are being made by Obama. And the same evidence that “supported” that the last President was the anti-christ, that the last president supported a North American Union, that the last president was a puppet of the fictional “New World Order”. Just like the books the same Conspiracy Theorists wrote about Y2K, they now are writing that the “New World Order” will be established in 2012 and Obama will be behind it. These books are not cheap they can be bought anywhere from $45-100.

I think I should write a book that is filled with unconfirmed facts and sell it for $45, there are enough people who are afraid and want their fears to be confirmed it seems. Today’s new get rich quick scheme seems to be writing a bunch of things gotten from documents that just do not exist. Hell, I think I can write a book on how McCain was not elected, not because Obama got the majority vote, but because freemasonry did not want him to. And just fill this book with the tons of freemasonry conspiracy theories, present them as fact, Or pass myself off as a conservative and write a book saying that Bill Keller is the embodiment of the second coming of Christ. I could make millions off all the gullible and downright stupid people of the world.

Today there was a different Google Icon. Each Google Icon has a news worthy story so I clicked on it and this is what I found.

Splash! NASA moon crash struck lots of water

By ALICIA CHANG (AP) – 1 hour ago

LOS ANGELES — The lunar dud for space enthusiasts has become a watershed event for NASA.

Spacecraft that crashed into the moon last month kicked up a relatively small plume. But scientists have confirmed the debris contained water — 25 gallons of it — making lunar exploration exciting again.

Experts have long suspected there was water on the moon. So the thrilling discovery announced Friday sent a ripple of hope for a future astronaut outpost in a place that has always seemed barren and inhospitable.

“We found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit. We found a significant amount,” Anthony Colaprete, lead scientist for the mission, told reporters as he held up a white water bucket for emphasis.

He said the 25 gallons of water the lunar crash kicked up was only what scientists could see from the plumes of the impact.

Some space policy experts say that makes the moon attractive for exploration again. Having an abundance of water would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts, supplying drinking water and a key ingredient for rocket fuel.

“Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go,” said George Washington University space policy scholar John Logsdon.

The October mission involved two strikes into a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole. First, an empty rocket hull slammed into the Cabeus crater. Then, a trailing spacecraft recorded the drama live before it also crashed into the same spot four minutes later.

Though scientists were overjoyed with the plethora of data beamed back to Earth, the mission was a public relations dud. Space enthusiasts who stayed up all night to watch the spectacle did not see the promised giant plume of debris.

NASA scientists had predicted the twin impacts would spew six miles of dust into the sunlight. Instead, images revealed only a mile-high plume, and it was not visible to many amateur astronomers peering through telescopes.

Members of the blue-ribbon panel reviewing NASA’s future plans said the discovery doesn’t change their conclusion that the program needs more money to get beyond near-Earth orbit. The panel wants NASA to look at other potential destinations like asteroids and Mars.

“This new and terrific result reassures us about lunar resources, but … the challenges currently facing the human spaceflight program remain,” Chris Chyba, a Princeton astrophysicist who is on the panel, said in an e-mail.

President George W. Bush had proposed a more than $100 billion plan to return astronauts to the moon, then go on to Mars; a test flight of an early version of a new rocket was a success last month. President Barack Obama appointed the special panel to look at the entire moon exploration program. The decision is now up to the White House, and NASA’s lunar plans are somewhat on hold until then.

As for unmanned exploration, previous missions had detected the presence of hydrogen in lunar craters near the moon’s poles, possible evidence of ice. In September, scientists reported finding tiny amounts of water in the lunar soil all over the moon’s surface.

But it was NASA’s Oct. 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS, that provided the stunning confirmation announced Friday — water, in the forms of ice and vapor.

“Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one,” said Greg Delory of the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the mission, led by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The LCROSS spacecraft only hit one spot on the moon and it’s unclear how much water there is across the entire moon.

Scientists spent a month analyzing data from the spacecraft’s spectrometers, instruments that can detect strong signals of water molecules in the plume.

“We’ve had hints that there is water. This was almost like tasting it,” said Peter Schultz, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator on the LCROSS mission.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who in 1969 made his historic Apollo 11 moonwalk with Neil Armstrong, was pleased to hear the latest discovery, but still believes the U.S. should focus on colonizing Mars.

“People will overreact to this news and say, `Let’s have a water rush to the moon,’” Aldrin said. “It doesn’t justify that.”

Mission scientists said it would take more time to tease out what else was kicked up in the moon dust.

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

This image provided Friday, Nov. 13, 2009 by NASA shows the ejecta plume created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket about 20 seconds after after impact Oct. 9, 2009. It turns out there’s plenty of water on the moon- at least near the lunar south pole, scientists said Friday. (AP Photo/NASA)

Now this discovery is very significant, this may be the first step of many for us to build a Lunar Space Station. This may be the first step of many for us to be able to explore the stars beyond our solar system. In my opinion, this is a very momentous occasion. Now to Colonize Mars I think we should Colonize the moon first, since it is the closest satellite to the Earth, this way if anything goes wrong it will not take a year for a rescue to be made.

Evangelist Alamo sentenced to 175 years on sex charges

November 13, 2009 5:33 p.m. EST

(CNN) — Evangelist Tony Alamo is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after an Arkansas judge sentenced him to 175 years Friday on charges that included taking minors across state lines for sex, according to prosecutors.

A jury convicted Alamo in July on 10 federal counts covering offenses that spanned 11 years and dated back to 1994, according to documents from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.

Alamo, the 75-year-old founder and leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, will serve the sentences on each count consecutively, for a total of 175 years in prison, prosecutors said.

In addition to his sentence, Alamo was fined $250,000, court documents showed.

His lawyer filed an appeal Friday.

Christopher Plumlee, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, welcomed the sentence.

“Given the number of victims and the difficult type of testimony they had to provide in order to get to trial, it’s gratifying for them to see him get this sentence,” he said. “Not only did they entrust their lives to him, he did it in the name of God. And he betrayed their trust.”

Authorities in September 2008 arrested Alamo, whose real name is Bernie Hoffman, and raided his 15-acre compound near Texarkana, Arkansas.

An indictment released in November 2008 accused Alamo of transporting five girls across state lines for sex. The criminal complaint included accounts from three girls, two of whom were 17 when the complaint was released last year, and one who was 14.

All three said Alamo sexually abused them.

In a phone interview last year with CNN, Alamo called the accusations a hoax.

“They’re just trying to make our church look evil … by saying I’m a pornographer. Saying that I rape little children. … I love children. I don’t abuse them. Never have. Never will.”

HERE IS A LITTLE ABOUT TONY ALAMO’S “CHRISTIAN” MINISTRY

Pastor Tony Alamo is not guilty, yet they still convicted him.

PRESS RELEASE
From Tony Alamo  
July 17, 2009  
Regarding Government-Vatican Persecution vs. Tony Alamo  

It is a violation of the US Constitution for the government to attack any religion, especially Christianity!! My trial is government vs. the Bible. The five young women who are falsely testifying against me have all been convinced to do so by the FBI.

The FBI paid all of their tuition to go to a place called Wellspring, which is a “deprogramming center.” Deprogramming is a nice word for hypnosis, brainwashing, mind-control, voodoo, black magic. Their testimony is not to be believed because it is not true, and they are not in their right mind. They are under a hateful spell of witchcraft. They (in court) have all said that I, Tony Alamo, said, “The Lord said you are to marry me.” This is all a lie. I never told that to any one of them. Their testimonies cannot be believed because they are all uniformly brainwashed. They (the young women) never contacted the FBI; the FBI contacted every one of them and gave them thousands of dollars and many gifts to lie for them. The FBI is against the Bible, Christianity, God, and all Christian churches.  

The legal age of marriage is puberty. Webster’s Dictionary states childhood is the “state or time of being a child; state or time from birth or infancy to puberty or maturity.” Webster’s definition of puberty is “the age when one becomes capable to bear children, which is marked by maturing of the reproductive organs, with the onset of menstruation in the female; the period at which sexual maturity is reached.” The Bible says this as well.

God’s Word, the Bible, never condemns a man for having more than one wife!  

Remember how they murdered, burnt up, the Christians at Waco, Texas! They are demonic. Witnesses for the FBI and all those they have paid to go to Wellspring are all saying the same thing, what they are told to say.

TONY ALAMO CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES