About Church Vision

Church Vision Statement:

1)    to foster holy relationship with God as individuals, with each other in the local body, and with  the Body of Christ at large.

2)    to add to the number daily of those who are being saved, so as to see God’s Kingdom come on  Earth, His glory to be revealed, that as many people as possible would be ushered into the  Kingdom.

3)    to be a church for the city, ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit to meet the spiritual and  temporal needs of our community.

About vision:

1)      Vision is not our slogans or what we’ve written down.   Vision is what we see by the Spirit.

2)      The elders and deacons certainly need to be people with   vision. So also the prayer team.

3)      The Church’s purpose is to help bring people to maturity   so they can see for themselves.

4)      The church can then be people of vision.

The New Compassionate Conservatism and Trickle-Down Economics - Robert Reich

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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Dr. Reich is profoundly myopic regarding what impacts the country's economic performance. This man holds a doctorate, he was a Rhodes scholar. Yet as we read we will discover that he attributes the economic performance of the country to a single factor, the political party occupying the White House, and from there infers an entire economic framework. As if the hundreds of other factors, like tax policy, business regulation, wars, the political composition of Congress, labor laws, technology, and court rulings somehow don't come to bear. Read on:
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Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on inequality as America’s fundamental economic problem. (Unfortunately, it isn't the fundamental problem. Government profligacy is.)

Marxism – Deconstructed By Ronald Cherry, MD

Found here. A lot of good information.

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In its essence Marxism, the core ideology of modern Socialism, is an irrational, utopian and coercive perversion of human equality. Marxism seeks equality where equality does not exist, demanding legal enforcement of equal social outcomes, including those related to economics, higher education, athletics, religion and human sexuality. This ideology even extends to international relationships whereby no nation is allowed to excessively prosper or achieve greatness, i.e.: all nations must be “equal.” Never mind that when people are free their human nature leads to inequality of outcomes – some are hard-working and some are lazy – some are more intelligent and some are less intelligent – some are stronger and some are weaker – some are tall and some are short. Unequal results occur naturally without force when people possess rightful liberty. Based on their degree of truly Free Enterprise nations similarly divide themselves unequally into various degrees of prosperity or depravity.

Under the guiding hand of intellectuals and massmedia Marxist ideas are slowly and silently transforming the mental attitudes of Americas. For example, we fail to recognize Marxist equality at work when elementary schools do not keep score during athletic events – we must not hurt little Johnny’s feelings when another team scores more goals or points – that is inequality. Never mind that athletic competition results in a form of natural and healthy inequality which leads to an appreciation for success and an acknowledgement of failure.Collegiate Title IX rules are a form of Cultural Marxism since equal numbers of men’s and women’s athletic programs are unnaturally enforced instead of a natural program of equal liberty for men and women students to create athletic teams. This form of Marxist thinking is called “gender equity,” but Marxist thinking is dysfunctional in the real world, frustrating the natural liberty and the equal rights of students to freely pursue athletic recreation. Under a natural system of equal rights men and women would take turns forming teams until the athletic budget was exhausted. Let’s say the women at a certain university ended up creating ten athletic programs, and taking turns the men also created ten. Let’s say there was still sufficient money in the university’s athletic budget for two more athletic programs, and since the men wanted two more programs but the women didn’t, the men would end up with twelve athletic programs and the women ten. This inequality of result would occur naturally under an equality of rights, but under the cultural Marxism of Title IX, despite the unequal demand, there will be ten and ten – the natural desire for the guys to have two more athletic programs must be crushed – equal rights sacrificed on the altar of equal outcome. Of course it could turn out the other way around, where the women ended up with twelve programs and the men ten – who cares as long as equal rights is the rule? Marxists care – they aim to unnaturally force equal outcome in every aspect of life – because they are attracted to the use of force – because they crave an animal-like “will to power” over others – wrongful liberty “to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.”

New Year’s resolution for a living wage - By MARY ANN DUNWELL

Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.

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This New Year rings in another 15 cents. On January 1, Montana’s minimum wage goes up from $7.90 to $8.05 an hour. I propose a toast however, not to 15 cents, but to a 15-dollar-an-hour minimum wage in Montana.

A "Fight for 15" movement is spreading across the country. It’s a campaign to pay folks a living wage. It means paying full-time workers enough to afford basic necessities, like food, shelter and health care, and maybe even a little to put aside for that unforeseen, often inevitable emergency. (No, it does not pay workers enough "to afford basic necessities." $15 is an arbitrary number, selected so as to sound reasonable and compassionate, but not excessive. It's a number selected for its marketability and image. It has nothing to do with a "living wage," because the cost of living varies greatly depending on where you live. 

That alone tells you all you need to know about the level of intellectual sophistication in the living wage movement.)