Jerry Klemm

Redeemed Sinner. Eternal Son. Blessed Husband. Proud Dad. Thrilled Father-in-Law. Grateful Pastor.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@_BenRatliff So sad to hear this, Ben. Our son’s BMT included Total Body Irradiation too. These kinds of conversations with the Doctors are a gut punch. Praying for you, your wife, and Maggie.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

Praying daily for Maggie and @_BenRatliff. Our 16 month old granddaughter has also been diagnosed with failing bone marrow and is suffering with a disease similar to Maggie’s. Our youngest son and DIL are investigating which hospital to go to for the BMT. Surreal for us as 32 years ago we were going through a BMT with our oldest son for a genetic disease. Sigh. 😢😢

[F. A. Hayek Quotes @FAHayekSays]

George Orwell, reviewing The Road to Serfdom in 1944:

“Professor Hayek’s thesis is that Socialism inevitably leads to despotism, and that in Germany the Nazis were able to succeed because the Socialists had already done most of their work for them, especially the intellectual work of weakening the desire for liberty.

By bringing the whole of life under the control of the State, Socialism necessarily gives power to an inner ring of bureaucrats, who in almost every case will be men who want power for its own sake and will stick at nothing in order to retain it.

Britain, he says, is now going the same road as Germany, with the left-wing intelligentsia in the van and the Tory Party a good second. The only salvation lies in returning to an unplanned economy, free competition, and emphasis on liberty rather than on security.”

[GA Famous @GA_Famous]

WELCOME BROTHER: Unknown, first time commissioner delivers floor speech against forming an AI study committee. #pcaga

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant was dying of throat cancer and was dead broke.

His money was wiped out by a swindler who stole his fortune.

Desperate to leave something for his wife, he agreed to write his Civil War memoirs and was close to signing a contract for a meager 10% royalty.

Mark Twain stepped in, called the deal robbery and offered Grant 70% of the profits through his own publishing company.

Grant raced death to finish the book, completing it just days before he died in July 1885.

It became one of the greatest memoirs ever written.

The royalties left his widow nearly half a million dollars, about $16 million today, and the book has never gone out of print.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@johnandrewwords Well said!

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@CalRumRedivivus @sdesocio @Danielfwells @EWErickson @ZacharyGarris Per BCO 42-6, the original court may suspend him from all ministerial duties while his appeal is underway. I’m not sure of the Presbytery did this or not but would think with a censure of Indefinite Suspension that they would.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽

My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.

I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.

Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.

We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!

Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."

Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.

When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.

People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.

Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.

We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."

[🌋🌋 Deep₿lueCrypto 🌋🌋 @DeepBlueCrypto]

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

[La Sagrada Família @sagradafamilia]

We see the tower of Jesus Christ illuminated for the first time!
The light show, starting from the base up to the illumination of the cross, culminated with a composition of lights guided by drones that traced the figure of Gaudí and the phrase “first love, then technique”.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@CPresbyterian73 @ZGroff @ZacharyGarris Not even close to being true. You continue to speak erroneously and dismiss the testimony of the numerous eyewitnesses of his sin.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@johnandrewwords Nailed it.

[John Reasnor @johnandrewwords]

Kinism, Korean Presbyteries, and Black Outreach

Kinism claims racial separation is God’s design and that Christians have a moral duty, to one degree or another, to maintain racial distinctions. This could be as extreme as believing interracial marriage is sin or supporting segregated churches, or it could play out in less extreme ways such as thinking that interracial marriage is “relatively sinful”(Wolfe) and that what’s best for society is racially homogeneous communities.

This is an evil doctrine for many reasons, but most centrally it’s a doctrinal error that explicitly cuts against the unity we have in Christ. It’s, necessarily, a divisive false teaching that pits believers against one another and baptizes sinful racial partiality as a virtue.

Korean presbyteries and Black outreach exist precisely because the church failed to embody the unity God designed. Now, the existence of Korean presbyteries, Spanish speaking churches, Black outreach programs, and most global missions assumes that there are differences. Sometimes in need but also sometimes in culture, history, and language. Distinctions are being made.

However, these types of missiological endeavors are the furthest thing from kinism.

The equation of ethnic-specific outreach programs with kinism is like calling women’s shelters “sexist.” It’s like saying a wheelchair ramp is unfair and divisive because everyone doesn’t need a ramp. It’s like saying mercy ministries that help the poor are unjust because the wealthy in the church don’t receive financial gifts. It’s like saying driving the elderly to church is “ageism” because it’s “unequal weights and measures” to not give everyone a free ride to worship.

All of these ministries and efforts are aimed at filling gaps where legitimate needs aren’t being met or when communities have a real need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

All people are created equal and all are created in the image of God. There’s very much a sinful type of partiality, but there’s another type of partiality that is simply using common sense and wisdom to notice distinctions in need. This is the Biblical model. God, repeatedly, called his people to take a special care for securing justice for the widow, orphan, and sojourner. This does not mean the married, those with family, or the native-born are second-class citizens or are due any lesser form of justice. Instead, it simply means that some people are less able to secure equal justice while others often have the means to regularly receive justice.

Today, there’s a gospel need for Korean-language churches and Presbyteries, Spanish-language churches, and deliberate efforts to reach the Black community in some cities (among many other focused efforts). Sometimes these efforts will focus on particular people groups and sometimes those people groups will be an ethnicity or, at least, largely overlap with a particular ethnicity. These are good, normal, and everyday missiological realities.

Meanwhile, to remind readers, Kinism also sees distinctions. But that’s where the similarity stops. Kinism sees a moral imperative in keeping different people groups separate while our ministry efforts are aimed at greater unity in Christ.

We can reasonably disagree about particular wording, emphasis, or wisdom. That’s perfectly acceptable and likely a helpful conversation. But to equate something like a Gospel project to the Black community or Korean presbyteries to kinism is absurd. It’s to equate giving a glass of water to your neighbor with rejecting your neighbor. Both distinguish the neighbor as a neighbor, but the moral implications are immense. Making the mistake in thinking they’re essentially the same either speaks to a significant degree of ignorance or moral bankruptcy.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

I understand the concerns about schisms when they are unwarranted. I took your question in the spirit you offered it (I think). For the last 9 months or so I have been pondering a similar question: we plant churches and, hopefully, Presbyteries for strategic reasons so why not plant a denomination for strategic reasons?

[J.P. Hovey @jhovey34]

Honestly was not expecting Eric Church to give one of the best commencement speeches of all time.

Chief CRUSHED this 🫡

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@bustarymez96 Numerous great suggestions already which I would "Amen". For a short, punchy and practical suggestion, I recommend Church Planting Landmines by Tom Nebel and Gary Rohrmayer.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

Toward Recovering the Confessional - Missional Center of the PCA https://t.co/HXwjhVXgot

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@TheCornDog @ajaugenstein @JRWOrlando Thanks for the encouragement Jason. It’s been intense down here for some time.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@CWadeBaker @_mattesrj Yes, there are PCA TEs who serve out of bounds in our Presbytery who worship there.

[Jerry Klemm @jerryklemm]

@stevemarusich @ajaugenstein @sassiterian Yes