Dear Family,
Great stuff coming up at SRPC!
• October 11 – Teri & Adam Hill begin on staff.
• October 14, 15 – Mark Futato, Professor of Old Testament at RTS Orlando is coming to teach our Leadership Institute. For more details, click here.
• October 29, 30 – Baptisms
• October 30 – Trunk or Treat on the athletic field. Click here to sign up to provide a trunk!
• November 14-20 – Hunger Week
• November 26, 27 – Brandon Lauranzon’s Ordination
• December 18 – Christmas Concert
• December 24 – Christmas Eve Worship
• January 15 – Blind Boys of Alabama MLK Concert. Check them out here.
Good Reading
o A recent article by David Brooks on the extreme moral relativism of young Americans was sobering. Brooks writes,
Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith is leading a study on the state of America’s youth.
Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.
It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. “Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kids of questions about morality that we asked, “Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner.
The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”
Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism – of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources – by schools, institutions and families – to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. To read the whole article, click here.
o Marvin Olasky challenges the church to rethink Social Security and retirement. Read it here.
• For those given to such — I am tweeting now! @RayCortese
• Really, really exciting Cortese news. Diane and I are grandparents— twice! Our son Tony and daughter-in-law Ashley are pregnant (Click here for a picture of our grandbaby!) and our daughter and son-in-law Bibb are as well. Babies are due in April and May!
• This weekend in worship we’ll visit The First Wedding in Genesis 2:18-25. We’ll rehearse for our future wedding as we enjoy the feast of the Lord’s Supper together. Our pastors and elders will offer anointing for healing as a part of our communion service in accordance with James 5:14-16, “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
I’ll see you this weekend.
Love,
Ray
