How can I find a local Reformation Day party?

Every year around this time I'm searching around the web for a local church offering any sort of Reformation Day party on Halloween, and, sadly, finding nothing.

I'm still between churches now, so don't have a local pastor to bug with this idea, but honestly I shouldn't need to. EVERY protestant church should be celebrating the Reformation on Oct. 31st! Everywhere I look online, there are no Reformation Day parties or events. I've exhausted Google with all of my searching, but alas, there are absolutely no churches doing anything on October 31st to celebrate the Reformation around my area. What's wrong with you pastors!!! The only thing I've been able to find are "pumpkin patches" at some area churches, but what good is that theologically? How is that celebrating the gallant efforts of the reformers? (then again, these are Methodist churches hosting these events, so no surprise they are lacking in doctrine and substance.)

Some Baptist churches have "Festivals" going on, but these are just games and candy. Don't people want to read about the reformers to their congregation, or do they just want to poison their kids with processed white sugar and dyes? What's the point, if all you're doing is having a candy party? I mean, if the Reformation is that meaningless to you, pastors, then why not just give your congregation instructions to go and trick-or-treat with their kids? Are there ANY pastors in the world that actually practice Richard Baxter-direction for their congregations? Why not just line up to go and apologize to the Pope?

Speaking of the papists, even the local catholic churches don't do anything to celebrate the Reformation and.... oh, yeah, I forgot, the Reformation is when the catholic church got stomped by the sola scriptura super-heroes, so I guess they don't think too favorably of Oct. 31st (to them it's just another "let's pray to some dead saints" holiday or something...) Don't forget the Reformation. If you do, don't be surprised if we lapse back into history of the Bible and the church suppressed and the papists burning Christians all over again...

Squinty Whistles Reborn as Ultraconservative, ESV-only, Pro-life, anti-PowerPoint Revivalist Pastor

Squinty Whistles, late 19th-century mountain man and corn bread enthusiast, has been thawed and revitalized in a secret new Mexico lab, and once he came to his senses, and sprouted a massive beard, suddenly vaulted into a calling of a revivalist pastor of a most unusual persuasion. His followers, known affectionately as "Whistletarians", have been following him as he leads a series of revival crusades across the Midwest. His key tenants include

A radical new idea to preaching: Squinty actually does the incredible... he stands up, opens the Bible, and actually TEACHES from it! No stories, no jokes, no idiotic personal reflections, no puppet shows, but he actually opens the Bible and explains it to people! An incredibly novel idea!

Also, Squinty holds to strict ESV-onlism! (Although the NASB is fine as well. KJV is cool, too. And he doesn't mind the NIV. The Message is strictly forbidden, though)

Strict credo-credible-baptist. No sprinkling water on angry, unrepentant babies, or even on smug, just-doing-it-because-youth-pastor-said-to pre-teen kids, but rather it's adult-only baptism featuring a full-submersion (for an extended 5-10 seconds to make sure the candidate is completely dunked) and only done when the baptismal candidate can make a completely credible, convincing, realistic and plausible profession of faith and genuine repentance. None of this 'unguarded baptismal' stuff.... that's just as idiotic as sprinkling water on a baby and calling it a "sacrament" (and where, Squinty wonders, is the actual word "sacrament" found in Scripture, or was that just whimsically dreamed up by some goofy Pope? It's an "ordinance", papists. Call it what it is.)

Strictly guarded (literally) elements of the Lord's Table. And when I mean strict, I mean that there's an elder standing at the table, guarding it with a tazer. And if anyone comes up who is not a church member, and has not met with the session and again provided the aforementioned genuine profession of faith, they get the loving reprimand of a 50,000 zolt zap.

Hymns alone are sung, but not the stuffy kind. The only rule is that the hymns must be completely Scriptural, and they must not contain any one word/verse that's repeated more than 10 times. Those aren't Christian hymns: those are tortuous exercises in monotonous chanting

Squinty holds to a literal, universal interpretation of Leviticus 21:5, "'They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh." Squinty has a handsome head of hair, and the edges of his beard are vibrant, but most importantly, he holds to a strict antivasectometarian viewpoint, that Lev. 21:5 is saying that "cuts of their flesh" applies to the vasectomy scalpel of the urologist

Squinty also quotes from I Kings 18, regarding the priests of Baal: "So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom..." It is also the custom, he notes, that urologists slash at the vas deverens of men with swords, attempting to make them shout louder. "The priests of Baal aimed to serve a false god," observed Squinty, "no different than men today who go to urologists in order to serve their own false gods of self, indulgence, and convenience. Two kids was probably all the priests of Baal had as well."

Squinty is fiercely pro-life, and demands that all members of the church be as well. "Well, of course we are, pastor!" "And how many kids do you have?" "Well, two, of course, pastor... how else would we afford the over sized SUV and the annual Disney trip?" At this Squinty goes on an impassioned explanation of the Scriptural emphasis on the blessing of children, from Gen. 1:28 through the life of Israel and explains, clearly and slowly, that blessed is the man who fills his quiver with children, and two or three arrows in a quiver would be a pathetically lacking arsenal. He then drives home the pro-life thing: "How can you be pro-life, and yet only be pro-two lives, when you could easily have more, or easily foster care or adopt more. What, you think if you asked the church to raise up a fund to help you adopt that no one in the church would rise up to help support you in that goal? You can't say that you're TRULY pro-life unless you prove it with your actions and actually LIVE a pro-life life with lots of lives..."

Women wear head coverings in the church as well, because, as Squinty puts it, "Quit fiddling around with I Cor. 11 and making it say things it doesn't. 'Covering' isn't long hair, nor is it a wedding ring. Those are the lame Eve-style excuses whispered by pastor's wives to their husbands so that they wouldn't tell their church to do what the Bible actually says to do. Covering should be worn because it's tied to the creation order, it's done on behalf of the angels, and it goes against the proto-feministic rage of this era (aka "the spirit of the age"). Stop making excuses and do it!"

Finally, Squinty maintains that any church that incorporates PowerPoint is violating some Levitical law, but he hasn't quite pinpointed it out.

The Squinty Whistles campaign is slowly growing in momentum, and Squinty himself hopes to soon become a regular contributor of this blog, with regular messages and a handy guide to theological definitions and what not. Stay tuned!

Martyrdom and Blood Donation

I've been reading a lot lately about the Christian martyrs of history, particularly the Anabaptists who were viciously persecuted by the Roman Catholic papists. Again and again, the historical record shows that Rome had this wickedly-satanic hatred of people who preferred a different mode of baptism as understood from Scripture, and Rome lashed out in a horrific and violent manner and would endlessly burn baptists alive. It's no wonder that the protestant confessions of the 17th century refer to the papists as antichrist, as their actions reflect that darkened designation.

Anyhow, this had me thinking about what I'd do in the same situation. Thankfully, Rome seems to have lost most of it's luster globally and has been relegated to the false, withered cult that it truly is, but what, I wonder, if true-Christian-burning Roman Catholics ever ruled the land again, and perverted the church/state line with their wickedness? What if *I* had to die by the fires of Rome, simply because I follow what the Bible teaches and practice the mode of baptism that says a person MUST BELIEVE first before receiving the ordinance?

So driving back from the city today, I was thinking about this. Being burned alive would really stink: physically and literally. But it's also horrifically wasteful of a perfectly good body. I think what I'd ask the Pope would be this: "Look, I don't intend to recant, or in any way ever acknowledge the episcopacy of the cultish Roman Catholic church, so, obviously, your wicked satanic practices direct that I need to be destroyed by burning. But instead of just burning me, how about this: just quickly lop off my head, and then collect the 2 gallons of blood in my body and give it to Gulf Coast Regional so they can use it for someone else. Then muy pronto, put my body on ice, ship it off to the lab and donate every bit and piece of me that you can to help others: be it eyes, spleen, heart, lungs, tonsils, whatever. Burning me up would be a waste, as I'm in pretty good shape, and I'm willing to be a martyr, but at least help some other people out in the process."

The papal magistrates might comply with this, and at least it would be a semi-useful termination. I mean, it would still stink to be martyred by the grotesque, bloated, corrupted perversion of Rome, but at least the medical industry could put my blood and organs to use somewhere.