Paul Long's Ramblings

Over the past few months, have had a number of emails, letters,telephone calls and personal visit (all cold calls) promoting various ministries and organizations, Christian and non Christian alike ... In my humble opinion, all FAILED big time. And I am the type of person who will actually try my best to take time to be courteous and listen, and even respond .... so like I said FAILED big time. Reasons ... 1. If you email me about your ministry and promote yourself, ask me to buy your merchandise, financially support your ministry, promote it etc., then for goodness sake, have the courtesy to respond to my email queries. I won't name the ministries but it seems ridiculous to me that if I happen to read your email a couple of minutes after it arrives in my in-box (meaning even if if is spam as you got my email from my church website), and I respond with a couple of questions about your ministry, please answer! And if you do answer, it ought to be within a few days. Just...

I subscribe to all kinds of email lists. I certainly do not check or read them all the emails I get from these lists - in fact most of them end up deleted without a second glance ... But every now and then if something catches my eye and I have a little extra time, then glancing through an email does at times results in some helpful information One list I subscribe to is Christianity Today's Preaching.com. I wonder, is it just me who is rather disturbed that it is a site that charges money to listen / read good sermons? The email heading caught my attention: The Good Samaritan Like You've Never Heard It: Preaching Today So I thought, hmmm... interesting ... And then even more interesting was the first line after the date Wednesday, May 02, 2012 Featured sermon:   The Parable of the Good Samaritan , by D. A. Carson I know DA Carson is an excellent expository preacher So I click on the link ... http://www.preachingtoday.com/sermons/outlines/2012/april...

I like this article by William Willimon's (from his e-list). It gives me a lot of encouragement in the light of our church moving closer to confirming our building project. Encouragement despite the fact that members are not only "not rich" but quite a number are on limited fixed income and some are even poor and struggling financially. Encouragement because even a non Christian community worker from the local council is excited and enthusiastic about our very modest proposed building project because she shares our church leadership's vision of having an extra building to provide better (which is actually pretty basic) facilities for community work. Encouragement because more and more members are excited about reaching our community for Christ and being a blessing to those in need. Encouragement because I have seen how generous and sacrificial church members can be in responses to doing their part in meeting practical needs for Christ's sake. I think back of past ...

From the Breakfast with Fred e-list. Good practical reading especially in the light of the economic recession. I can identify with this post as I started married life (after exhausting most of my resources on 4 years full time study at the local seminary) with Under RM 1,000. Jennifer brought in no savings, having spent the few hundred she had on her wedding gown. My father in law kindly agreed to take care of the traditionally required wedding dinner costs and collect the ang pows as we had no money to even book one table. My father let me pay him RM 250 a month to use his old Daihatsu Charade until I paid up a set amount in a special interest free loan. Our honeymoon was 2 nights at Cameon Highlands in a one bedroom apartment at Strawberry Park (courtesy of one of Jennifer's church members from her Bangsar church). We re-started working life a couple of weeks after our wedding, and had to request an advance on my RM 1,000 salary as we would not have enough to pay our utility bill...