Why Do Adventists Not Know "How to Feel" About Ben Carson?

Carson post currently going around Facebook

The greatest want of the world, according to Ellen White, is the want of men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall. Increasingly, as the presidential candidacy of Ben Carson looks more and more like the real deal, I hear Adventists saying things like "I don't know how to feel about that!"

Well why not?

I'm confused quite frankly by all the waffling by Adventist on the subject of Carson. I know Carson is a conservative and for years now SDAs have had this vague impression that it was the right wing fundamentalist Republicans that were going to be the ones to "pass the Sunday Laws" and bring on the time o' trouble.  When I grew up, I was terrified of Baptists and Church of Christ folk. I was being led to believe that hey were out to get us, by the people who liked to tell scary stories about the end of time. But do we really think Carson is going to do something like that if elected even if he is a Republican?  Remember, after all, that it was Democrats who passed the Sunday Laws, Jim Crow laws and fought to maintain segregation. Yet we fear a good Adventist man entering the race for president? Does that make any kind of sense?  Do any of us believe that Scripture really forbids government service for all believers, despite the examples of Daniel, his three friends, Joseph, David and other Patriarchs of the Bible? I'll tell you how we got here, and we did so without ever really thinking it through.

You see, in the olden days when I was a kid in church and camp meeting, the "time of trouble" was used like a kind of vege-Hell to frighten the local sinners and get them to church where they could be instructed about the tithe. The hellfire and brimstone preachers in the "worldly churches" could use the very useful belief in eternal fiery torment to scare sinners into the pews. Adventists had no such coercive tool at hand, so, some amateur and professional Adventist evangelists, apparently keenly feeling the lack of such a useful tool, turned to the "time of trouble" as a convenient terror weapon for whipping the troops into line. 

Satan uses any tool he can to frighten people. He gets as much gratification from the trembling "vegan waiting for the coming of the Lord", as he does from the most unrepentant blasphemous militant atheist. Both can cause quite as much damage among the flock with the militant pointy-fingered vegan perhaps able to do just a little more.

Remember the first words that virtually every angel who presented himself to a human believer said in the Bible - "Fear not!" I kind of believe that anyone claiming to represent God who first sets out to terrify you is probably not representing who he or she claims to represent.

Some SDAs openly fear what Ben Carson might do if elected president. One friend says she fears lest a Carson candidacy collapse the "wide barrier between church and state" that she prefers. So, having a barrier between church and state means what, then? Are you saying that we should only elect unbelievers - nice atheists and greedy politicians - to serve in the White House because they will keep religion out of government. I'm sorry, but that's utterly ridiculous! It's like electing the devil because we think he'll be fair to everybody who is religious.

Carson isn't running for pope. He's running for president and he has some great ideas for turning this country around. How would it be a bad thing to have a president who worships on the Sabbath? How would it be bad for our country to have leaders who believe in Christ and who are being transformed by the power of a relationship with Jesus. Carson is a brilliant man who also happens to be a man of faith - Adventist faith no less. He shares with us, the Adventist view on religious liberty. Are you expecting Carson to start passing Saturday laws when he becomes president? That's absurd. This isn't Ted Wilson running for president. Carson doesn't work for the church. He understands the prophecies as well as any of us. He knows what is ahead. Should we dismiss a warrior who is willing to stand in the breech at this critical moment in history simply because he is one of us? Are we as Adventists afraid to see our brethren take their place in history because it may draw attention to the 3 angels message and suddenly make things difficult for us?

We are in a war, people. It's time we realized that, rolled up our sleeves and took up arms against the forces of evil that threaten at any moment to overwhelm us. At a time when honest, clear-spoken SDA pastors are being criticized for being "too polarizing", perhaps it's time for those men to stand up who will be "as true as the needle is to the pole" that Ellen White spoke about. 

If brave Christian men and women don't stand up to be counted; don't speak the truth to power as Daniel did; then we in effect surrender the field to the forces of darkness. By his own account Ben Carson didn't ask for this. He's clearly a meek and humble man, thrust into the spotlight for speaking the truth to power at that memorable National Prayer Breakfast. Carson says he did not seek the public stage, but was pulled into it. He believes God had a hand in it all and who are we to dismiss the hand of God in it? His rise to prominence has been almost miraculous. While wealthy, famous men have scratched and clawed their way to the center of the great debate of our time, Ben Carson has seemingly been lifted up by powers outside himself, at times polling first or second place in presidential polling. Incredible for a man who has never sought public office in his life.

I'm sure there were Jews during the Babylonian captivity, who had mixed feelings about Daniel taking the Prime Minister's job for Nebuchadnezzar too. In looking back at history, though, we can clearly see that instead of criticizing Daniel, they, like us, should have been praying for the man (or woman - remember Esther) whom God has placed in the breech to defend us in these perilous times.

Yours in Christ,

Tom King

© 2015

Star Honor Series: Equipment

Screenshot from Stellarium program.

If you're doing a Star Honor class, here's a really great software program your kids can download onto their laptops and home computers. If you're looking for a good star/planetarium kind of software to help you find objects to look at through your telescope and to show the kids what stars and other objects are, let me highly recommend a free download called Stellarium. It's really an amazing little star-gazing program.

You can use this program to show your kids how to plan their star-gazing for each evening. By setting the time and the coordinates of the place you'll be setting up your telescopes and you can see what stars will be out that night. The thing tracks planets and even helps you find satellites and figures out when there will be meteor showers. 

Most of your kids know enough about computers to use the simple interface that Stellarium uses and it does come with a help utility that explains things.  If you can hook up your laptop to a projector, it also makes a great tool for showing your students where objects in the sky are. The projected image shows a very realistic night sky, just like the kids will be seeing when they go out with the telescopes. It will show you which direction in which to look for things you want to observe.

It's really a marvelous tool and best of all for your Pathfinder Club's budget - it's free!  You can't beat that with a stick!  Download it at:  http://www.stellarium.org/

Tom King
(c) 2015

The Aftermath - GC 2015

Ted Wilson - GC President

There has been a lot of anger and hand-wringing and some behind-the-scenes "attaboys" and high-fives in the wake of the GC's "no" vote on ordination of women.  Nobody, however, was really shocked that it went the way it did. A 'yes' vote would have set a precedent to further the decentralization of authority in the SDA church - not something our newly re-elected president appears to be in favor of.

During the 1903 General Conference, Ellen White noted that angels walked the aisles during the meeting which changed the structure of the church organization, divesting power to the new local union conferences that had been held closely in the hands of the General Conference administrators. Many SDA theologians, pastors, leaders and members had hoped a "yes" vote would signal a further decentralization of the church's command structure. Sadly, it didn't happen that way.

The recent vote not to allow local unions and conferences to decide whether or not to ordain woman who are already working in the ministry came up a not-so-resounding "no" when the votes were counted. The vote seems to affirm that decision-making power is to remain in the hands of a few "key" leaders for the time being.

In Elder Wilson's first inaugural address, he promised a return to traditional Adventism under his administration. I have to admit, that gave me a little shudder. Having grown up in a small SDA college town, my memories of "traditional" Adventism boil down to the night I found myself praying that God would help me remember every sin I committed because after the day's camp meeting sermon, I was convinced that if I forgot something I would be lost.  I was 12.  The next day I became an agnostic and when the church's baptizing lady came around, I turned her down despite haveing scored 100% on all my Bible Study lessons.

A round of blogs and Facebook posts in the wake of the GC vote have reiterated that we must remain loyal to our church and to Christ.  I fully expect to see another round of sermons in the months ahead on the subject of the proper attitude of members toward ecclesiastical "authority" like the one we saw after the Atlanta GC when the delegates were sharply divided over the election of the new president. I remember after that meeting our pastor gave a sermon that was very different from his usual style which reminded us of the authority of the church hierarchy and of our obligation to obey it and not cause trouble.

This concept of ascending levels of authority is a feature of something called the headship doctrine. The headship doctrine is espoused by some leading SDA theologians and challenged by others. It is not the purpose of this post to debate the idea that God has layered his children in ascending ranks. The late George Chudleigh wrote a fascinating ebook on the subject that can be downloaded at this link.

Despite our differences, I think the church will hold together.  One thing we need to do, however, is focus on strengthening our home churches. Every day we see new signs of an approaching storm. We cannot become too dependent on proclamations from on high to lead our families and our churches aright.  We need men and women who will stand for the right though the heavens fall; who will grow where they are planted so to speak. Should the few at the top go astray, we should not fall with them. The more authority in the hands of the few, the more danger to the church.

This paragraph appeared in the NAD News Notes about the ordination vote:

"This vote does not determine whether or not women can serve as ministers. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has already decided that women may serve as credentialed ministers. As several delegates pointed out during floor speeches (including special guest former GC president Jan Paulsen), this vote was not about whether female pastors should be ordained, but who should decide whether or not to ordain them."

And there's the point right there. On one side you have the folk like Ng and Paulsen, who do NOT oppose decentralizing power and on the other side the Neil/Ted Wilson group that does. I'm just saying out loud what was whispered around San Antonio and all over the Adventist World. We could have moved further toward the 1903 GC decentralization movement had we voted "yes". Women are serving as credentialed ministers and that's been allowed a long time. The only issue at play here was who decides whether they can be ordained or not. We can live with unordained female ministers if the church pay them fairly (Merikay Silver forced the church to deal with that issue nearly 40 years ago). 
My opinion is that the local conferences should have been able to decide for themselves. This was clearly a procedural and not a theological issue. Even the "no" voters will grudgingly admit that. The issue was essentially whether we operate as a more congregationalist style organization with power divested to the local level or a more hierarchical Vatican-Style organization with power concentrated at the top. 

Me? I prefer the congregational style organization. It's harder to kill a decentralized organization by striking off its head. It's time for congregations to own their own churches. Do you realize that if the law goes after the church, most local congregations could lose the buildings they meet in because the individual churches own nothing. The larger church owns it all ultimately. The final battle will be guerrilla warfare after all.  When the forces of evil try to shut us down, the first thing they hit will be our church properties. We will need to be ready to find new places to meet and new ways to do our ministries.

For now, little really changes due to the ordination vote, other than a lot of ruffled feelings among those who sought the change and the reaffirmation of GC central authority. For now we Adventist men should stand in the breach and be prepared to defend the faith. The Army of the Lord has a fight before it. I prefer we adopt the American style military organization, where the commanders in the field have greater leeway in making battlefield decisions.  I fear the church is going with a more top-down decision making process (reminiscent of German and Soviet military command structures where knocking off a general creates a massive decision-making vacuum in all the forces he commands). 

That said, the church is still the church and with prayer and courage, we must stand in our place in the line and do our duty. The sisters who stand next to us in that line may not wear the stripes of ordination, but that does not mean God has not called them as he called Deborah and Esther and Ellen to take their places on the front lines; even, sometimes, as leaders. If they are ever to be ordained to take those places of leadership, however, it will have to wait for the blessing of Ted Wilson and crew. 

 In the meantime, prayers are ascending as the time grows closer.

(c) 2015 by Tom King

Servants of the "Angry" God

Angry God

There is a myth in Christian mythology to the effect that somehow, between the Old and New Testaments, God had some kind of conversion experience. After this, He became a much nicer God and let up on all that obedience stuff in favor of a looser, more pagan friendly lifestyle. Many attribute the change in attitude of God the Father to His having worked out a lot of His anger by punishing his Son on the cross in our place, which, this unexamined myth goes, turned God into a God of Love and no longer a God of Vengeance.

This seldom consciously examined theory reminds me of the theory that in the mid 60s Republicans, the heirs of Abraham Lincoln, all suddenly became racists. Meanwhile, the guys who ordered firemen and cops to turn the fire hoses on Dr. King and other Civil Rights marchers and who previously had run around in white robes with pointy hats burning crosses, churches and scaring

Post-Crucifixion Cuddly Happy Non-threatening God

the life out of little black children, supposedly all suddenly got saved and began to love black people. That's the story anyway and they're sticking to it.  The idea that the God of the Old Testament is any other God than the God of Love we find throughout the New Testament is preposterous. If you do even a light examination of Scripture. Take a look. I challenge you to examine why God was wrathful and you might come to a rather different conclusion as to the character of God the Father.

Cleanest picture I could find of temple prostitution.

You see here the sorts of things that
Scripture tells us that God got angry about.
Can you blame him?

If you check out the Old Testament stories where God is portrayed as vengeful or wrathful, and you look at the kinds of things He was mad about, then imagine yourself in His place, you might draw a rather different picture of His character.  When the prophets condemned what went on in the groves and the sacrifices taking places on the high places, they weren't talking about the Hebrews attending Friday night football games instead of going to temple. They were talking about things like the annual slaughter of some 25,000 infants a year. Moloch's priests demanded that you toss your newborn infant across a wide fiery pit as part of presenting him to the stone god.  If you didn't throw the kid far enough or the receiving parent fumbled the kid and dropped him in the pit, the priests chalked it all up as a sacrifice for the good of all the people to appease the gods. Another fun Friday night activity was the sacrifice of virgins to make crops grow. This fun practice involved tying a naked virgin out in the fields and cutting her up so that she bled to death slowly and "made the field fertile".  Then there was the systematic prostitution of young women in the temples of Baal and Ashteroth, Dagon and Astarte. Twelve to 15 year-old girls were forced to serve as temple prostitutes. The dirty old men of the town would pay for their services. When the girl had earned sufficient money for the god (and, by the way, the priests), then they could be released to be sold to some old guy to be his third or fourth wife. If you were a homely girl, you had to work a lot harder and longer to be released. Anyway you get the idea.

You can kind of see why even a God of Love might be a little angry at such goings on. If I were God and my people were committing all those horrors, I'd get more than a little chapped at them too. I might well be tempted to blast the whole gang of pederasts, pedophiles and perverts into a big ash cloud, just to clean things up a bit in Caanan.

Just look at how angry we Americans have been lately at just one guy who admitted that he molested his sisters. Mind you this was decades ago, when he was a stupid, hormone-soaked 14 year old living in a culture that throws sexual images at children from the time they can sit in front of the boob tube. How is it that we are surprised at this?  The man was a kid at the time AND he tried to make it right at the time and still, many of us are ready to descend on him and his family like a pack of ravening wolves and to crucify him, to totally destroy his entire life, to shame his sisters and to destroy everything good the man has done since. And this mob that's crying for blood are the very same self-righteous prigs who complain because the God of the Old Testament is a little too judgmental for their tastes!

Should not God have gotten angry at the systematic pedophilia and sadism of the priests of the Canaanite religions and the people who supported them, especially those who knew better? Those people were a bunch of perverts. I'd tell you to read up on some of their practices, but I'd rather not recommend that you read that sort of pornography. It's enough to say, it was very sick and disturbing, what went on when Israel went a-backsliding in the hill grove temples.

Does that make God a vengeful deity or is He, instead, a loving Father protecting his helpless and innocent children? Was God justly angry at their mistreatment by people who weren't 14 years old at the time, didn't EVER apologize or try to make it right, and killed anyone who said anything negative about what they were doing?

Enquiring minds want know.

Tom King © 2014

What To Do About The Enemy Within?

We all should be looking in the same direction,
that is, if we all plan to go to the same place.

Dan Jackson, President of the North American Division of the SDA Church recently issued an appeal for unity within the church. He did so in response to an alarming increase in the number of disruptive factions within the church. It's not surprising that we see this as the signs of the times point ever more clearly toward the soon-coming of Christ.

There was a line I remember from an old 60s rock song that went, "Satan, Satan is my name, confusion is my game."

We should not be surprised that our fellowship is being attacked from within. Satan knows he's fighting a losing war and the only way to win a war you will lose if you fight out in the open is to fight a guerrilla war using subterfuge, lies and manipulation.

The many denominations of the Christian Church are evidence of Satan's past attempts to fracture the fellowship of Christians.  They are also evidence of God's ability to work all things together for good to them that are called according to his purpose. The various denominations and independent churches also serve as MASH units for wounded children of God looking to find their way to Him. Churches minister to various specific needs, bind up wounds and, if they follow scripture at all, point the way to Christ.

Anyone, whatever denomination he or she may at first find themselves in, may find their way to God for God is strong enough and smart enough to find his true children in whatever church or place they may find themselves. Scripture does not teach that we must learn magic words or perform special rituals to earn the favor of God. There are some things like communion and baptism that we practice as a way to help us to mark the milestones in our journey to God and to remind us of what it means to follow Him. But one thing is certain. Wherever we are when we get started, God will lead us surely to Himself and the closer we get to Him, the closer we draw to one another.

So what have we got to contribute as Adventists that we should do as Elder Jackson says and stand together in unity?  Well, the most important thing we contribute is a clearer understanding of God's character. Let me give you some examples of SDA theology that helps people to know God better. After all, to know God, as Jesus said, is the only way to have eternal life.

1. The soul is NOT immortal.  God told the truth about that to Adam and Eve. Therefore, God is also not an unrelenting torturer of sinners. As Jesus said, God can destroy both the body and soul in hell.
2. There is no ever-burning hell.  God does not want his lost children tormented forever, nor for his saved children to ever have to see such a thing again.
3. You don't mess with the ten commandments including the one about the Sabbath. God is just and his law is not complicated. Ten simple rules is all the universe needs to work quite well.  Nobody should meddle with them in order to better market the church to pagans. God is consistent. He is not capricious. You can trust that He will be the same tomorrow as He is today. Also through the Sabbath command, we learn that God wants us to take a day off every week to spend with Him. How cool is that?
4. Jesus is coming soon. God can be trusted. If He says, "I will come again and receive you unto myself..." then He means it and will actually come back and get us.
5. We are saved by God's grace alone.  God knows our frame, He knows that we are dust. He knows that we cannot change our hearts nor our behavior on our own and supplies us the strength to obey his law and to choose what is right. We need only choose to allow him to work that change in us. God loves us that much.

We Adventists have a lot to say about God's character. It's not about who has the right take on doctrine. It's about having the right understanding of God's character because knowing God is the key to achieving eternal life. We should teach these wonderful revelations to all the people out there for whom the hell-fire and damnation preaching and legalism is seriously problematic. The fact that we do just that for the most part, may account for the fact that in North America, the Adventist Church is the fastest growing Christian denomination out there.

Elder Jackson's right. Instead of spending time playing "Sister Bertha Better'n You" and looking down our noses at our brothers and sisters over some obscure doctrinal interpretation, we need to be telling people the good news - the stuff we already agree on and quit attacking our brothers and sisters over minute and petty points of interpretation in order to make ourselves look more pious than everyone else.

God's not going to be impressed with your sanctimony I promise you. If you stand up before the judgment and try to get by with saying, "But God, I had my doctrine exactly right!" He's going to say to you, "I never knew you."  That would be sad given how easy God has made it for you to gain eternal life.

(c) 2015

Tom King

Fallen Warriors: Ron Halvorsen Sr.

Pastor Ron Halvorsen Sr. - Hairy-Chested Adventist Man

"Jesus ate fish." The simple statement by her pastor shocked the very rigid Adventist church lady of the sort Ray Stevens dubbed "Sister Bertha Better n' You" in his song "The Mississippi Squirrel Revival. Sister Bertha (not her real name) had been busily laying some harsh judgment on a fellow Adventist church member for his revelation that he had eaten some fish in his time. She turned to face Pastor Ron Halvorsen in some confusion, having expected, as such people do, to have won some vegetarian brownie points from her pastor for having schooled this obviously lapsed saint regarding his dietary duty. She had, after all, chosen a spot well within earshot of the pastor to deliver her judgments.

"Well Jesus didn't have the Spirit of Prophecy!" the lady sputtered aghast at her pastor's loosey-goosey attitude on the burning issue of dietary morality.

"JESUS IS THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY you whitewashed SEPULCHRE!" he thundered silencing the good sister and sending her scurrying for cover.

Ron Halvorsen was one of those he-man, testosterone-filled warriors for the Lord who inspired me as a young person looking desparately for a strong male role model. My own father took a powder when I was five and my relationship with my stepfather was not terribly strong. I found my role models mostly in books - King Arthur, Captain Hornblower, Captain Blood, Captain Kirk; those sorts of guys. I had a few flesh and blood men I looked up to as well. Ed Burns and Sam Miller from summer camp both taught me a lot about what a man was supposed to be like and to do.

My first encounter with Ron Halvorsen was actually in the chow line at Lone Star Camp during a ministerial conference just after he came to Texas to take over the Keene, Church. I was doling out peanut butter and asked him if he wanted some.

He grinned at me broadly and said in his thick Brooklyn accent, "Sure. I love the stuff," he stuck out his plate. "I ate so much peanut butter as a kid that if they'd stuck me with a knife I probably would have bled peanut butter. I knew this was the right pastor for my hometown church. I'd grown up in Keene. My family helped build the town. I had a feeling he was going to shake things up in the Holy City.

I was right. Within a year, Pastor Ron had two services packed with more than 3000 people coming every Sabbath. He soon had more than 900 showing up for prayer meeting. Before he came they were meeting in the Youth Chapel and there were fewer than 40 showing up each week.

Under Pastor Ron, though, we soon had a fleet of school buses fanning out through the surrounding county picking up children and old people and bringing them to church. Volunteers like me rode along and played the guitar and filled the buses with the voices of children and elderly saints singing at the top of their lungs as we rumbled across the country-side.

Pastor Morris Venden

Needless to say, the "white-washed" sepulchres in Keene hated Pastor Ron too, but to the children of Christ in that church, he was like oxygen. God rest his soul.

Some people leave a terrible hole in the fabric of space and time when they are taken from us. It has been a privilege for me to know such people. Some of them like Pastor Ron and Pastor Morris Venden loom large and you cannot help but notice their absence when they go to their rest. With others, like my friend Dave Spenser and my beloved son Micah and the many stout-hearted, hard-working, God-fearing men with whom I have shared my church, you don't realize what a hole they have left behind in our lives, until they are gone. Only later do you begin to discover what awful gaps are left behind in our world without them.

May each of us live lives that, when we are taken to our rest, the world is rendered as full of holes as a Swiss cheese for the lack of us being in it.

The quote by Sister White in the sidebar is a clarion call for men of faith to arise and take their place in the front lines. Time is growing short and as warriors like Pastor Ron and the others I have mentioned fall, I pray that ten Adventist Christian men arise to take their places. God knows that we need them.

© 2015 by Tom King

Church Fellowship: The Pizza Party With a Twist

This is what the finished pizza ought to look like.

Sometimes you just need to get the brethren and sisteren together for some old-fashioned fellowship. Here's an interesting twist on the pizza party that's sure to encourage people attending the event to talk to one another, share recipes, laugh and develop new relationships. The secret to stimulating all of this "fellowshipping" is simple.

Everybody helps make the pizza.

My wife and I used to do these with people we invited from the church. The party design is also simple:

1. Everybody who is invited is asked to bring some combination of cheese for the pizza, a jar of their favorite pizza or spaghetti sauce and all the creative kinds of pizza toppings they'd like on their pizza. Also ask anyone who owns a pizza pan or pizza stone to bring it. You'll need lots of these. In a pinch you can make the crusts on a sheet of aluminum foil and transfer the foil to a large baking sheet to cook.
2. Two hours before the party, make up dough balls for individual pizzas - one for each group you will divide the attendees into. With kids I'd put two in a group because each will eat half a pizza at least.  You can find the recipe for the never-fail pizza crust we used here at the Potluck Vegetarian. Just click on the link for full instructions.
3. As everyone comes in, have the stove heated to 450° to 500° and ready to go. Have them move to the tables, bars or counters where they will work with their group and give them a ball of dough. If you don't have a dough hook, give them a half-formed dough ball and let them knead the dough for about ten minutes. That'll settle the more ADD among the group. Kneading is hard work. That's why bakers have huge arms.
4. When the dough is ready, each group gets the ingredients they brought. Share the jars of sauce around. It doesn't take very much sauce. Make sure everyone has cheeses and whatever else they need.  Then go away and let them make a pizza. It's easy. They'll figure it out.
5. Make sure the floor is clean. Someone will inevitably try to twirl their crust. It never fails. We make guests take their shoes off. That way the floor is clean enough that you can brush off a dropped crust and cook it.
6. As the pizzas are made ready, put them in the oven two at a time. Put the top and bottom racks of the oven as close together in the middle as you can. Pizzas don't need much room. They're very thin. It only take 8 to 20 minutes depending on the thickness of the crust.
7. As they come out, cut the pizzas into 8 to 16 pieces so everybody can sample each others' pizza creations. Keep rotating the pizzas through the oven for the rest of the evening. The extra ingredients can be dumped into a big salad if you like. Have someone bring a lot of lettuce and tomatoes and suggest people bring their favorite salad dressing along to share.

For more details, go to "The Potluck Vegetarian" for the tricks and secrets to making perfect homemade vegetarian pizzas. A lot of people are confused at first when you tell them they have to make their own pizzas, especially the guys, but they will warm to their task I promise you. When their pizzas come out, they'll be worse than new papas showing off "their" pizzas and bragging on themselves and their pizza making technique.

It really is a lot of fun and stimulates a lot of conversation and good fellowship and you don't have to play any embarrassing ice-breaker games to get people talking.

Try it some Saturday night in the fellowship hall. It's tons of fun and educational for the kids - just make them wash their hands first - I'm just sayin'.

© 2015 by Tom King