The latest issue of The Wittenburg Door Newsletter...

Your FREE bi-weekly foray into the wild, wacky, wonderful world of disorganized religion! We hope you'll enjoy our latest little missive ... and will consider forwarding us to a similarly discerning friend. Hey! In case you've been away on vacation in Samoa recently, the now-notorious issue #205 mailed two weeks ago. It's not too late to subscribe, incidentally. Still undecided? Check out the following features from that issue:

• The article that started the brouhaha mentioned above: "East-West Social Justice Turf War"
• An interview with the multi-talented, multi-tasking, multi-vegetable Eric Metaxas
• Forget DaVinci! You'll be stunned by "Dogs Playing Poker Code"
• Remember Victoria Osteen? Joel's pampered princess? Check out her delicious devotional
• Ole admits in his latest Last Word that he can't help himself
• Need a smile? Check out our bodacious back cover art by Tim Nyberg
• Finally, here's a gratuitous plug for Becky Garrison's highly praised first book, Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church

Read more!

For Mother’s Day – a tribute to my mother!

Charlotte Jane Axton Burgan has been married to that same man, Joseph H. Burgan, Sr., for over 50 years. She has raised three children, me, my brother, Tim and my sister, Joy. Mom and Dad live in the same house that we were raised in which they built in 1959. Mom raised us in the days of innocence. We could walk down the road and out to Null’s Market, almost a mile away without fear of anything happening to us – no abductions, no molesting, nothing.

Every morning that I can remember, my mom got up before the sunrise and would wake us up to get ready for school. Every morning for 21 years, she prepared breakfast for each of us kids and my dad. I can remember going out to the kitchen and listening to Jack Boget on KDKA radio while mom packed my lunch. She says that I was the only one with whom she could talk in the morning because all the others were still asleep even though they were eating their breakfast. So we would chat over breakfast. Then I would pack my stuff and head off to school.

As I got older, I would work in the evenings after school. No matter how late I got home, Mom would have dinner waiting for me. I loved it when she would make chili and leave the pot on the stove to cool before putting it in the fridge. That was when it tasted the best!

Mom made bread and buns at home while I was growing up. There was nothing better that coming into the house after working outside on a cool fall in Pennsylvania and sitting down to a dinner of navy bean soup and home-made bread. The bread would be fresh and hot and sliced about one inch thick. The butter would melt as you spread it on. I hope they are going to serve that kind of bread at the marriage supper of the Lamb. They can ask my mom for the recipe.

The holidays always had a cornucopia of home-made goodies. Chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, pumpkin pie, sugar cookies in the shape of Santa’s face, Christmas trees or stockings which we would decorate with icing and sprinkles of all kinds. The dinners always had turkey and ham, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and potato salad, corn and green beans, stuffing and gravy, fresh vegetables and cranberry sauce. Of course, no dinner was complete if you didn’t have the horseradish!

It would be impossible to calculate the number of hours that mom spent preparing these meals, nor can I fathom the energy she spent to provide us a safe and comfortable place to call home. In the winter, after playing outside in the snow, mom would get us into dry clothes, give us some hot chocolate then we would lay down in front of a heater vent to get warm and fall asleep, content, without a fear or care in the world.

Those days of innocence are long gone along with too much of my hair but I will always be grateful to the Father of a mom who provided for my brother, my sister and me a safe place to call home.

Read more!

For Mother’s Day – a tribute to my wife!

A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies. Prov. 31:10 NIV

My wife, Erica, the mother of our two children, Cody age 11 and Alissa age 9, is a rare and wonderful creation. She chose to marry me and begin our adventure together rather than pursue a career or attend college even though she graduated 2nd in her class from a private school and had a grade point average over 4.0. She has, faithfully, followed after the heart of the Father in times of plenty and times of want. Her love for me has never wavered; her devotion never waned as we walked through the deserts or rejoiced on the mountains.

Erica has persevered in loving our children and remained steadfast in her commit to teach them by home schooling. She has laid down her life for them and for me. Even when all others seemed to abandon us, she remained faithful to the call of God placed on our lives. In times of despair and loneliness, we clung to each other and prayed, seeking the face and heart of God.

I am eternally grateful to the Father for choosing her for me and me for her. I have the blessing and privilege of being married to my best friend.

There are those who do not believe that God has chosen a specific “help meet” for each of us. To those I present this challenge. Do you not believe that the Father has established all your days before any one of them existed? Can you not recognize that each of us was created with specific talents, giftings and abilities from in our mother’s womb for a specific calling? Are you unaware that even your physical makeup, your skeletal structure was determined by God? Read Psalm 139.

You might say that it was just chance DNA. Then you would be a fool to believe in chance. I choose to believe in divine intervention. It is called procreation or perhaps it should more appropriately be named “co-creation” in that we are participating with God in the creation of a unique, living, eternal being.

From before the foundations of the earth, God, our Father, chose for Erica and me to walk this journey together.

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Gen 2:18 NIV

Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Gen 2:22-25 NIV

Do not think it chance or “dumb luck” to choose a person with whom you shall be one flesh, a union symbolizing, typifying the union between Christ and His church.

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. Eph 5:31-32 NIV

Erica was and is the will of God for me and for my children now, even after almost 24 years, and until we finish our course. For that, I thank God daily!

Read more!

Interesting Quote

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Read more!

The Radical Humility of Sunday Adelaja

Fire In My Bones
by J. Lee Grady

Ukrainian pastor Sunday Adelaja fears that some American preachers are spreading a deadly virus.

He is one of the most successful pastors in the world. The church he started in Ukraine in 1994 has grown to 25,000 people—to become the largest Christian congregation in Europe. A prolific author, he has sold half a million books—all in Russian—in the last decade.

But on the day I met with pastor Sunday Adelaja in his office at his Embassy of God church in Kiev, our discussion did not focus on success or how it is defined. Adelaja wanted to know why American preachers are so focused on money and fame.

“It seems everyone who has a big church thinks they are supposed to be president for life,” Adelaja told me. “They never move on.”

At the moment, Adelaja is thinking about moving on. His main church in Kiev will celebrate its 12th anniversary later this month with a large conference. But the 38-year-old pastor, a Nigerian who earned a degree in journalism from a Russian university, is thinking of how he can work himself out of a job so he can plant more churches.

“I have given all I have,” Adelaja said. “I have reproduced myself. I want the younger ones to go farther than I have.”

Adelaja is not cut out of the same mold as the prosperity preachers who air their television programs here from the United States. Although he dresses tastefully, his lifestyle is not that different from the average Ukrainian. His Nigerian wife, Bose, and their three children live in a three-bedroom apartment that Adelaja bought for $40,000. He drives a 2002 Dodge Caravan.

When Adelaja hears about the glamorous lifestyles of some American ministers, he gets a puzzled look on his face. “Is this a virus?” he asks. Then he laughs hysterically, stands up and walks across the room with his arm raised. He smacks me with a big high-five.

Then he tells of one American minister who recently sent word that he must stay in the presidential suite in the most expensive hotel in Kiev when he visits. Adelaja frowns as he relates this story. He can’t understand why ministers of God need to be pampered like rock stars.

“Everybody is busy building a big church. Let’s build the kingdom,” he says.

Read more!

Latino Catholics Increasingly Drawn To Pentecostalism

Shift Among Immigrants Could Affect Politics

By Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2006; A03

LOS ANGELES -- When Fabiola Briones entered a Pentecostal church for the first time, she was in crisis, recently divorced and bitter from abuse she suffered as a child. A Mexican-American Catholic, she had never seen anyone fall to the ground while praising God or speak in tongues, which is common at Pentecostal services.

But she liked the church and she went back. On an Easter Sunday two months later, she was transformed.

"A hand went inside of me, and I felt God was pulling out roots," she said from the pew of a Pentecostal service here last week. "I know now that they were the roots of bitterness. I forgave my ex-husband, and I was healed from the abuse."

Briones is one of thousands of Latino immigrants who have left behind the ritual and perceived formality of the Roman Catholic Church for the personal experiences and boisterous services of Pentecostalism. The mass migration of Latinos to charismatic Christian movements, such as Pentecostalism, is more than a religious transformation. It also could have strong political ramifications.

Democrats once counted on lockstep support from Latino voters, but the GOP has been making inroads, and analysts say that Latino voters who switch religion tend to be more conservative.

National surveys show that Latino Catholics are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republicans. The reverse is true for Latino evangelicals, including Pentecostals.

Read more!