#Missionary house

[thebearme]

dogman doodles

[theonewhowails]

nari goes on field trips :]

[samwisethewitch]

On the topic of exmormon stuff, being a cult survivor is so fun because every time one of my old church friends reaches out "just to check in," my gut response is to throw up as many mentions of my sinful lifestyle as possible so they know I'm a lost cause.

Someone with a temple photo as their profile pic will message me like, "Oh, I saw you got married last year! Congrats!"

And I'm like, "Yes, I love being married to my PARTNER, who I met at an LGBT MIXER at my UNIVERSITY. We really enjoyed WRITING OUR OWN CEREMONY based on our favorite PAGAN wedding rituals from history!"

And of course, the conversation ends there because they were trying to find an in to invite me to church with them.

The gay doormat effect is real, y'all.

[misty-memories09]

I...I...I can't find the fic I was writing for sabioba, I'll literally start crying bro what is going on nooooo😭😭😭 the heavens and earth is against me like i swear I opened it a while ago wdym that it's gone??? I'll try recovering it or maybe rewriting it but atleast I have a few screenshots of it so it's not completely gone but I am now rather depressed, I feel like writing an opposite of love letter to Google docs. A hate letter. Also, the fanfic writer curse is real (other than what I just said), I got sore thighs and it hurts so bad bro 😭😭😭

Here's some sabioba chibi for the mean time as I try to cope with my failure :

Ship so rare that you all just know eachother (there's three of us damnit 😂).

[hanniehq]

sohee one chance please…i have something to say…

[ashthewaterghoul]

Why 👻 has a song called missionary man 🤣😭

It’s not their song, it’s a cover.

It’s originally by the Eurythmics, ask them!😂

[panicbones]

i think one of the biggest most egregiously contradicting shit religion wise ive seen is big ass (christrian esque) churches actively putting up wards against homeless people. bro i thought your whole thing was helping the needy what the hell is this

[thefuturewithoutus]

isn't it beautiful when a disturbingly vanilla man and a sick bitch who likes freak sex fall in love

[pirdmystery]

i have now successfully forced two of my friends to watch jacob geller's control anatomy and the legacy of the haunted house and both times their reactions were "this is weird and scary why did you make me watch this"

[timeisacephalopod]

Why do right wingers go on and ON about "father's in the home" when fathers are basically useless in the home? Like every year I see posts that go around about "dad finding out about what I got for Christmas" and it's like if fathers are so uninvolved they don't even know what Christmas gifts their kids are getting I don't think them being gone does much?? Like of course there's good and bad parents of all genders, but traditional gender roles- which the aforementioned right wingers ascribe to- mean men do jack fucking squat in the house OR anything with their kids so what the hell do right wingers think men are doing that's so important in the home if it's none of the childrearing or house work??

All I've got in this framework is a paycheque and these days women work so men wouldn't even be contributing something women DON'T, so I have no idea what these people think men are doing that it's so irreplaceable that being gone is damaging to children when by all means under their ideas of gender and family men are less than useless to their family. Women do all that work (and barring that, DAUGHTERS do more parental work than fathers so them being gone does what, exactly, except maybe rid the family of an overgrown child? Men who actually contribute are the ones families would be damaged without, not traditional men who probably don't even know how to do their own laundry OR cook or have any life skills because women have done everything for them their whole lives so???)

[wezg]

Review: Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia To Confront The West - by Keir Giles

I am a new member of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. On a recent visit, I made use of the vast resources of a very well-stocked library at Chatham House and this book is the first of the loans that I have finished reading. It is apt as Keir Giles is indeed a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert on…

[dirt-goth]

One of the main reasons I am excited to leave Utah is to be able to do literally anything in public without seeing LDS Missionaries like please

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Today in Christian History

Today is Wednesday, March 8th, the 67th day of 2023. There are 298 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

1550: Death in Grenada of John of God on his fifty-fifth birthday, having contracted pneumonia through plunging into an icy stream to rescue a youth. Impulsive and tenderhearted he had operated a hospital for the homeless and insane which he supported through hard work and begging.

1551: Genevan authorities admonish Hierosme Hermes Bolsec for meddling in theology, but Bolsec now and later argues that men are not saved because they are elected but are elected because they have faith. Eventually he is expelled from Geneva and writes unflattering biographies of Reformation leaders Calvin and Beza.

1740: In Nottingham, Pennsylvania, colonial evangelist Gilbert Tennent preaches his famous sermon, “The Danger of An Unconverted Ministry.” His message deplores placing men in pulpits who are not themselves converted to new life in Christ. “Is a dead man fit to bring others to life?”

1782: Over a period of two days a group of Pennsylvania militiamen under the command of Captain David Williamson attack peaceable Indians of the Moravian mission at Gnadenhütten in retaliation for the deaths and kidnappings of several Pennsylvanians by other Indians, murdering twenty-eight men, twenty-nine women, and thirty-nine children.

1839: Overcoming difficulties, such as two stout Hindu bodyguards set to prevent him from visiting Christians, Mahendra Lal Basak leaves his father’s home in Calcutta determined to forsake idolatry and pursue Christ. He is baptized this day and will become a Christian minister and educator, but will die of cholera within six years.

1892: Death in England of Methodist missionary James Calvert, a pioneer in the Fiji mission.

1921: The Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Synod and the German-Scandinavian Synod of Queensland, Australia, merge with the General Synod at Ebenezer, South Australia, forming the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia.

1948: In McCollum v. Board of Education, Justice Hugo Black hands down a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that religious education in public schools is a violatation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The court rules that allowing children “release time,” even with parental consent, to receive religious instruction during school hours on school property is a violation of the separation of church and state.

1960: Death of the Orthodox archbishop Vitaly Maximenko of the North American diocese. Born in Russia he had endured many hard knocks as a young orphan and obtained a reputation as a rebel. However, he so proved himself on every job he undertook that he was delegated tasks of great responsibility and  built up two major religious printing houses as well as laboring with minimal rest to evangelize and build up his church. In America he strove to reunify expatriated Orthodox groups.

2009: Angered at Christian conversions of Hindus, Rajesh Singh tosses a bomb into a House of Prayer church in Buhar state, India, and then shoots pastor Vinod Kumar, who will survive.

[umbralwaves]

Reeling from my coworkers and their increasingly hostile rhetoric around ability, immigration, and religion.

[bow-and-beg-before-me]

TCK's Lament

When I was 8, I thought I knew what home was. A place to stay for a while, a place which grew comfortable and familiar. I'd had many homes before. Green carpet and gravel driveway for a year, a school with blue carpet and books in the library they wouldn't let me read because I was still supposed to be on picture books. Red brick and a park with the tree I could only climb with daddy's help for two years. The snow and the yellow school bus and my pink dress with daisies for two years before that. Tales of places I didn't remember were home, too. They were mummy and daddy's home, so they just must have been mine.

This was going to be another home, as I stepped off the train. A house of wooden floors and a room in the middle of the stairs less than a metre tall. For suitcases, daddy said, and so it was called the suitcase room. I had a new school, with green lunch trays and a dusty playground. I didn't look like the other students, with their shiny straight black hair and skin that didn't burn easily. I didn't care, I was 8. I wonder how much they cared; me with my fluffy blonde hair and lighter brown eyes, different but ignorant of it. I told them I was only there for 4 years. I wanted to warn them, to warn myself. I was going to disappear soon. Oh, 4 years sounds like such a short time. Maybe I was always different, but I was part of their group nonetheless. I made friends with a quiet girl, whose skin was like theirs but her black hair was wavy like mine. We taught ourselves to ride unicycles together, dust and falls and clinging to railings. We drifted apart as the months went by, but I played in the class games of tag and never felt alone. The whole class worked for weeks on our sports day dances, because sports day was an Important Event. It was Important to me, but not to my parents who grew up where sports days were an afternoon of egg and spoon races. They came anyway, tried to reach my world, and I was happy. When I was eleven, the whole class had a trip to the mountains. We hiked and milked a cow and made butter and sang songs and made noodles and watched Despicable Me in the bus on the way back. We were family. My parents changed the deadline. Instead of leaving in March, when the school year ended, we would go in the summer to arrive with the school year. I was 11, just starting to understand that not all rules were absolute. Why couldn't we stay untill I finished school, I asked. We had another trip this year that I didn't want to miss, to the sea this time. Graduation was an Important Event. I wanted to stay, I told them. This wasn't like other homes, this was part of me. There were Important Events I didn't want to miss, a second family I wanted to stay with.

It wasn't Important to my parents. Not enough.

We were leaving in the summer. Wasn't I happy to be going back to see Grandma and Grandpa? To see my cousins? I was always so good at moving, I'd bounce right back. I didn't have the words for it then. How can a 12 year old understand that my home was my family, and every time we'd moved before I'd taken everything important with me? But this time, my home was the people, the school, the sports days and the lunches and the games and the trips. My first real home that I couldn't take with me. I made gifts. I sewed dolls for all the girls in my class and made paper crabs for the boys. I cross stitched a kitten for church. Little crumbs of myself, left behind like they could anchor me to my home. It was all torn away. Distance and time and noisy aeroplanes and everyone waiting for us as we left the airport--aren't you so glad to be back? how does it feel to be home? But I wasn't home. I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't I WASN'T home and my home was gone and everyone assumed I would be fine because I had been before but they don't understand how much difference 2 extra years make. We were only in the new place for a year. I rebuilt my tattered home, patched up the holes, pulled the rips together.

Then we flew again, a train ride away from the shell of my old home. The people were gone, the school was different, and I didn't want to hurt so I never went to look. For 3 years, it was fine. I had a new home of people like me, American and Korean and Japanese and maybe I was the only Brit but we all understood what it was like to be different and yet belong, to have different Important Things from the people we lived with. We made a home of red lockers and a hideous lemon yellow wall on the new cafeteria. There were teachers we liked and teachers we didn't, tests and APs for the older students and the ominous Senior Capstone research project. There was a week in each autumn where we didn't have school and instead went to a lake or hiked and camped or watched movies and walked through the hallways blindfolded. There were class beach days and student council events and dress up days. I found a new set of Important Things. My parents don't know what the fuss was about high school graduation--getting your degree is the important thing. Oh, they understand so much of me, love me, listen to me, but they don't share my Important Things.

My brother went to a school like mine, brown haired in a sea of black. We visited for his sports day and my ragged stumps of what home had been, screamed out their loss and agony. I miss my home, even with the new. I miss what was, and what could have been. I wish I knew, when I arrived, just how long 4 years would be. I don't want to graduate and leave this home, to go back to where the people look like me but I'm still different. I don't know how supermarkets work, I don't know how to order over the counter medication, I am foreign, alien, different.

I left behind my first home, I won't fit in my second much longer. I'll leave behind my family soon.

I want my fourth home to be my last.

I don't want to lose more than I already have.

[tmarshconnors]

"In our efforts to not be offensive to people, we can be very offensive to God."

Francis Chan is an American Protestant author, teacher, and preacher. He is the former teaching pastor of the nondenominational Cornerstone Community Church, an Evangelical church in Simi Valley, California founded by Chan in 1994.

Born: 31 August 1967 (age 56 years), San Francisco, California, United States.

Author and Speaker: Francis Chan is a prominent Christian author and speaker known for his impactful books, including "Crazy Love," "Forgotten God," and "Erasing Hell." His writings often challenge readers to deepen their faith and live more devoted lives.

Founder of Cornerstone Community Church: Chan founded Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, California, in 1994. Under his leadership, the church grew significantly, emphasizing simplicity, discipleship, and outreach.

Emphasis on Radical Living: Chan is well-known for his emphasis on living a radical Christian life. He advocates for sacrificial living, intense commitment to following Jesus, and serving others, often questioning comfortable or complacent Christianity.

Humble Living: Despite his success, Chan is known for his humble lifestyle. He and his family have made significant financial sacrifices, including giving away much of his book royalties and reducing their standard of living to support charitable causes and missions.

House Church Movement: In recent years, Chan has been involved in promoting and participating in the house church movement. He left Cornerstone Community Church to focus on a simpler, more organic form of church that meets in homes and emphasizes intimate community and discipleship. He has been working on this vision through his involvement with We Are Church, a network of house churches in San Francisco.