“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshal, Wednesday, part 1

“My Week at the FUll Armor Lectures”
by Jeremy Marshal
Wednesday, part 1

from Wednesday:
“Brother Sharp was acting like a game show host announcing that I’d won the grand prize. “Besides the vacation, Calvin, the Cortez church is going to be donating these books to you, for your personal library.” He handed me the list to look over. Debates I’ve WonMore Debates I’ve Won; and Debates I’ve Attended and Really Enjoyed, all by Dr. Remus Philbert. A Critique of Everything Written By Strudel Harrison Since 1985 (Including Church Bulletin Articles), by Mance Tatum. Whores of Babylon: Why All the Liberals Want to Score, by Flavil Waddey. A Preacher Boy’s Guide to Pulpit Humor and Potluck Etiquette, by Herbert and Edwina Sharp. “What do you think, Calvin?” he asked. You might have thought he was telling me I just won a new BMW the way he was going on.”

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 3 (pt. 2)

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures”
by Jeremy Marshall
Day 3 (pt. 2)

From day 3.2:
“After my talk with Beauregard Jones Tuesday morning, I decided to skip the pre-lunch lectures and go to the Memphis Zoo. It dawned on me that the Full Armor Lectureship—indeed, our entire fellowship—was its own menagerie, a stationary Noah’s ark whose inhabitants refused to leave, all blaming one another for the stench in there. We are not exotic breeds from faraway lands in the First United Primitive Christian Church, however. We are more like stubborn relics of the recent past, looking at the world through nauseatingly garish Technicolor lenses. We live on in the rubble of Modernism, proudly making no concessions to the rest of the world as it evolves without us, flinging our filth at each other. I felt quite at one that day with the animals in the zoo, for it came to me that I, too, had been bred in captivity.”

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 2 (pt. 4)

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall
Day 2 (pt. 4)

from part 4:
“Just look at the logo on the dust jacket. This book was published by the once-sound, now apostate Harlan Publishing House. Let me give you a brief list of titles, so you can see what other heretics they are harboring. They’ve put out My Mama Sang Tenor, Too by the weepy story-teller Buddy Silver. They published the downright odd volume,Jesus and the Art of Volkswagen Repair by the so-called “Hippie Preacher,” Archie Klein. And they also released an awful book called Lessons I’ve Learned About Christian Living From Playing Texas Hold ‘Em, by Francis Spicoli. That Harlan Publishing released this book from Brother Jones is very telling–it means that none of our faithful publishing companies like Banner of Love or Full Armor Press will touch it with a thirty-foot pole!”

 

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 2 (pt. 3)

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall
Day 2
 part 3:

“Good Brother Mack was shaving the other Sunday morning, and he cut himself several times. I mean he tore his face smooth up! And when he came downstairs for breakfast with several hanks of toilet tissue on his face, his wife asked him how come he’d cut his face all up. He told her he’d been distracted–thinking about his sermon more than he was about shaving. So his wife told him he might ought to think about shaving his sermons!”

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 2 (pt.2)

My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall
 Day 2 part 2:

“After a wholesome and patently uninteresting luch at a nearby Picadilly cafeteria, I arrived back at the Doogood Ave. building about half an hour before Brother Mack Snipes’ lecture, “Hell is ETERNAL,” was slated to begin. I checked the lectureship schedule, and saw that the session was to be held in room 17 of the children’s wing. It turned out to be a classroom for five-and-six-year-olds.”

“My week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall

Over the next week (or two) I will be reblogging a series of installments by my friend and fellow blogger, Jeremy Marshall.  As he himself will tell you, these installments are completely fictional.  I mean, no church would ever dare to limit God’s grace to the event on the cross, let alone mark hymns as “dangerous” that focused on God’s grace.

My week at the Full Armor Lectures: “Day One”.  by Jeremy Marshall
an excerpt:
Brother Olley continued this way: “See, God’s only just so gracious. You know John 3:16, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have 
e-ternal life!” Brother Olley’s delivery of that verse was rapid-fire; he can quote Scripture with the speed and force of a machine gun. “Now that’s all the grace a man or woman could ever need, folks!” He concluded, “And there’ll be no repeat performance of that, Hebrews 9:25-28. Essentially, the message of the Gospel is that we’ve gotten all the grace we’re going to get, so stop messing up! Or what? Should we continue in sin, so that grace may abound, Romans 6:1? Certainly not, because there’s no more grace to be gotten!”

Jesus is…

Sunday night during a Bible study with some saints in Blacksburg, we discussed the nature of the kingdoms of the world and the kingdom of God in accordance with a theme one of our ministry leaders, Frank Sullivan, has been carrying us forward on: The Real Jesus.  On this night he brought up four things about Jesus we teach in particular that we must confront both the world and ourselves with:

  1. Jesus is God
  2. Jesus allowed people to choose to follow him by responding to testimony.
  3. Jesus is a man (not that he is still walking the earth, but that he came in the flesh and that experience is in his “memory” today and he lives in his saints, who themselves live in fleshly bodies, today)
  4. Jesus came to show us God.
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2013 Church Directory, Abridged

The Abridged 2013 Church of Christ Directory:

Barbed Gate Church of Christ

Welcome, is this your first time?  Would you like to be added to the church?  Just sign up for our six-month course and then we’ll have you fill out our ten-page doctrinal questionnare before we get you in the water just to make sure you’re being baptized for all the right reasons.

Billy Peebles Church of Christ

Brother Billy Peebles has been preaching for our congregation for thirty years.  Come and enjoy preaching by Billy Peebles.  If you have a question about our beliefs, just go ask Billy Peebles.  Visiting the sick, conducting Bible studies, representing our church—Billy Peebles does it all!  We hang on every word Billy Peebles says.  Billy Peebles is the place to be.

Bitter Springs (House) Church of Christ

We used to go to _________ Church of Christ, but they rubbed us the wrong way after years of faithful attendance.  We now meet at brother Manning’s house, and we’re still trying to figure out how to accomodate to every member’s perfect ideal image of what a church should be.

Box Springs Church of Christ

With the most prime location, Box Springs Church of Christ maketh you to lie down in your own private green pasture.  Close your eyes in prayer, and remain until the service ends.  After all, the day after the Sabbath is a day of rest, too.
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