Our Life Together Vol. 4 Nr. 10 March 9, 1976

This is an interesting cover in that it is only art -- no captions. This is somewhat unusual in the covers of OLT.

Feelings were very important in these days. We dealt with a lot of people with emotional and mental problems. This made us not only sensitive to them, but to our own feelings. Helen Fast deals with the problem of how we differentiate Conviction (a notification by the Holy Spirit that something isn't right) and Condemnation (Satan's lie that we are "no good.") Mike Sandez writes about the subjective nature of feelings.

Over the years, the Charismatic Fellowship (now Holy Spirit Renewal Ministries) has tried to assist in the placement of "charismatic pastors," with varying degree of success. This was a real problem in the early days of the movement because there was so much suspicion of those within the movement as well as a fear that the pastor would cause division in the church. Much of these fears have dissipated in recent times.

 

McFoone gives us a judgement on aggressive sports. Regardless of how one sees this today, this was an issue in the 70s. We needed to learn to play in a way that there was no competition. I don't think that the NFL agreed -- of course they still don't.

This is another of our children's artwork pages. As I have discussed before, children were very important to us in the community and in the church.

Budgets tell a lot about priorities. We spent a significant amount on international missions. This priority went beyond our own involvement in places like Bogota, Colombia, but extended to American Baptist Missions (International Ministries.) 

Wow, look at the salaries. I only worked at the church for part of the year -- but still, $1300? Salaries were quite a lot lower in general in those days, but to give an example, in my last year in the Navy, I was making in excess of $35,000. It was community that made these salaries possible. It was also a group of people who were more interested in seeing the community succeed than they were in being a financial success themselves. Bravo Ken and company.

There is really no reason for me to comment here. This is a commentary on the giving of the church. I think we did pretty well.