Christian Data Resources

The Sunday Assembly is a non-religious gathering co-founded by stand-up comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans in January 2013 in London, England.  The gathering is mostly for non-religious people who want a similar communal experience to a religious church, though religious people are also welcome.

The Public Charter for the Sunday Assembly includes the following:

– The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrates life.  Our motto: live better, help often, wonder more.  Our mission: to help everyone find and fulfill their full potential.  Our vision: a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.

– We are here for everyone who wants to: 

— Live Better.  We aim to provide inspiring, thought-provoking and practical ideas that help people to live the lives they want to lead and be the people they want to be. 

— Help Often.  Assemblies are communities of action building lives of purpose, encouraging us all to help anyone who needs it to support each other. 

— Wonder More.  Hearing talks, singing as one, listening to readings and even playing games helps us to connect with each other and the awesome world we live in.

– The Sunday Assembly
1. Is 100% celebration of life.  We are born from nothing and go to nothing. Let’s enjoy it together. 
2. Has no doctrine.  We have no set texts so we can make use of wisdom from all sources. 
3. Has no deity.  We don’t do supernatural but we also won’t tell you you’re wrong if you do. 
4. Is radically inclusive.  Everyone is welcome, regardless of their beliefs – this is a place of love that is open and accepting. 
5. Is free to attend, not-for-profit and volunteer run.  We ask for donations to cover our costs and support our community work. 
6. Has a community mission.  Through our Action Heroes (you!), we will be a force for good. 
7. Is independent.  We do not accept sponsorship or promote outside businesses, organizations or services. 
8. Is here to stay.  With your involvement, The Sunday Assembly will make the world a better place. 
9. We won’t tell you how to live, but will try to help you do it as well as you can. 
10. And remember point 1… The Sunday Assembly is a celebration of the one life we know we have. 

What should you expect from a Sunday Assembly event?

Just by being with us you should be energized, vitalized, restored, repaired, refreshed and recharged.  No matter what the subject of the Assembly, it will solace worries, provoke kindness and inject a touch of transcendence into the everyday. 

But life can be tough…  It is.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people, we have moments of weakness or life just isn’t fair.  We want The Sunday Assembly to be a house of love and compassion, where, no matter what your situation, you are welcomed, accepted and loved. 

Most of all, have fun, be nice and join in. 

Unfortunately, this is not much different than many churches.  For a moment, put yourself in the mindset of what most churches advertise.  Now, let’s read back through the above, removing only the (three) parts not claimed by most churches:

– The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrates life.  Our motto: live better, help often, wonder more.  Our mission: to help everyone find and fulfill their full potential.  Our vision: a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.

– We are here for everyone who wants to: 

— Live Better.  We aim to provide inspiring, thought-provoking and practical ideas that help people to live the lives they want to lead and be the people they want to be. 

— Help Often.  Assemblies are communities of action building lives of purpose, encouraging us all to help anyone who needs it to support each other. 

— Wonder More.  Hearing talks, singing as one, listening to readings and even playing games helps us to connect with each other and the awesome world we live in.

– The Sunday Assembly
1. Is 100% celebration of life.  We are born from nothing and go to nothing. Let’s enjoy it together. 
2. Has no doctrine (unfortunately, true of many churches).  We have no set texts so we can make use of wisdom from all sources. 
3. Has no deity.  We don’t do supernatural but we also won’t tell you you’re wrong if you do. 
4. Is radically inclusive. Everyone is welcome, regardless of their beliefs – this is a place of love that is open and accepting. 
5. Is free to attend, not-for-profit and volunteer run.  We ask for donations to cover our costs and support our community work. 
6. Has a community mission.  Through our Action Heroes (you!), we will be a force for good. 
7. Is independent.  We do not accept sponsorship or promote outside businesses, organizations or services. 
8. Is here to stay.  With your involvement, The Sunday Assembly will make the world a better place. 
9. We won’t tell you how to live, but will try to help you do it as well as you can. 
10. And remember point 1… The Sunday Assembly is a celebration of the one life we know we have. 

What should you expect from a Sunday Assembly event? 

Just by being with us you should be energized, vitalized, restored, repaired, refreshed and recharged.  No matter what the subject of the Assembly, it will solace worries, provoke kindness and inject a touch of transcendence into the everyday. 

But life can be tough…  It is.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people, we have moments of weakness or life just isn’t fair.  We want The Sunday Assembly to be a house of love and compassion, where, no matter what your situation, you are welcomed, accepted and loved. 

Most of all, have fun, be nice and join in. 

It’s difficult to tell this atheist church from most churches in Christendom.

I enjoyed The Sopranos, but Tony Soprano had a warped view of Christianity.  Unfortunately, much of Christendom shares his worldview:

– When Christopher got shot, Tony said, “How could this happen?”  He never considered the consequences that one’s actions bring upon himself.  He was more than willing to be a thug and a gangster, but he didn’t understand how he could be forced to deal with the likely outcome.

– In praying for Christopher when he got shot, Carmella said, “Help us carry on in service to you.”  What was she thinking?  That while she was a partner in crime with Tony, and living the good life on his stolen money, that she was somehow simultaneously in the Lord’s service because she considered herself to be a good person and she sometimes had good intentions?

– Tony, expressed that the kind of people who go to hell are:  “The worst people; the twisted and demented psychos who kill for pleasure; the cannibals; people who molest and torture little kids; kill babies; the Hitlers.  The evil deserve to die.”  He never considered his own sins of bribery, extortion, and murder of being just as deserving of hell.  Of course the truth is that the kind of person who goes to hell is the one who rejects the saving faith of Christ Jesus who died for his sins–regardless of the degree or sin or evil.  To God, sin is anything that misses the mark of His perfect righteousness.  Yet the prevailing worldview (especially expressed in Tony’s Catholicism) is that some sins are worse than others and we can each decide which ones are deserving of hell, and we can set the failing boundary just below what we have personally done.

Tony considered himself to be a soldier–a Mafia soldier–and soldiers don’t go to hell.  It’s just business.  His Mafia family had order and codes that weren’t to be broken.  He was deserving of heaven because of his code of honor, his loyalty, his family (although with no loyalty to them), and his guts.

Tony, on Chris’s death, “He was just starting his life.”  Actually, he was about half-way through a normal life expectancy.  In another episode, he virtually condoned abortion–a death that truly is just at the beginning of life.

Tony:  “Life is a series of distractions until you die.”

Tony’s psychiatrist:  “Who knows where you’d be without medication.” (Would he have been better or worse off without it?)

Tony:  I try to do what’s right.  I’m not perfect, but I do right by my family.

A rival mafia boss:  All of a sudden, holding your kids, my grandkids in my lap is very important to me.  (How touching, for a professional gangster and murderer.)

Tony:  It’s against our principles–a sin.

In his book, “Why Jesus?” Ravi Zacharias makes some startling observations about our churches:

– Churches that do justice to the message of Christ and his claim upon our lives are rare.
“Churches,” said one critic to me, “are country clubs for the nice people … they’re really
not so nice to everyone else.”  I have to admit that I’ve personally sat through some large
gatherings of Christians after which I have walked out and wondered what I would have thought of Christianity if that was what I had heard before I came to Christ.  For the most part there is a huge gap between the preaching and worship of today and what faith in Christ and the worship of God were intended to be.

– I am afraid that the forms and the programs have commandeered the message of Jesus into a kind of show and entertainment mold, where the congregants are merely spectators who have come to watch a show.

– The legalism of the Church has disenfranchised so many that the Church has found itself speaking to just the handful who still agree with its castigations and have lost the many who need its healing message of love.

– Our individuality is suppressed.  People are forced to think collectively.  Christianity teaches a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being.

– We have moved from silence (quietness, solitude, and meditation) to noise.

– The institutionalization of Church made it vulnerable to all of the abuses we now see.

– (Churches falsely and) simply yield to the large majority and the prevailing worldview.

– (Churches don’t teach the truth because they are afraid of being called exclusive.)  Jesus proclaims the truth–that is why it must exclude all that is contrary to it.  Worldviews begin by definitions.  Definitions create boundaries.  Violations of those boundaries elicit condemnation.  That condemnation itself excludes.  It is impossible to sustain truth without excluding falsehood.  All religions are exclusive.  What else can be expected but exclusivity when truth claims are expressed?  All religions are exclusive.  Truth by definition excludes.  Truth excludes the denial of what it asserts.  All designations exclude something else–one’s ethnicity, language, or education.  (Churches don’ want) to preach a destiny that excludes anyone else, so we reserve the description of evil for only the most heinous.

What we need concerning Trump’s tax plan are the details.  I’m less concerned with how many jobs he thinks it will create and what incentives, write-offs, and loopholes he’ll provide for corporations, small businesses, and billionaires than I am about what my individual rates will be.  He campaigned on a tax plan that would have married couples paying 0% tax on their first $50k and only 10% on the next $50k–only $5K (5%) on the first $100K.  Then their rate would jump to only 20%, and 25% was the most it would ever be.  However, it sounds like he has already backed off on that:  The new hype is doubling the standard deduction, which would give couples 0% tax on only the first $24K, and taking away some deductions (local taxes, etc.).

In addition to the rates, I want to know when it would be effective.  For tax year 2017 (the next time I file), or not.

If I were a protester, my chant would be:  “What do we want?  Rates and Dates.  When do we want it?  Now.”

The results of a web search for “children killed” includes articles such as “The 14 Teens Killed by Police Since Michael Brown.”  Most of the children in this article were 18-year-olds.  I found the use of the word “children” a little puzzling here.  Some of us would include 18-year-olds as children, and some of us wouldn’t.  The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines “child,” in general, as “a human being below the age of 18 years.”  The killing of these teens by police seems even more tragic when we consider them as children.  How horrific for police officers to kill children, even if they weren’t all so poor and innocent.

But what’s even worse than cops killing 14 children, at least some of whom were probably innocent?  That would be the killing of one million unborn babies each year in this country through abortion.  The arguments for this conclusion include the following:

1) The sheer number of deaths by abortion is thousands of times larger than deaths by police.

2) While some of these teens were not innocent, all of those killed by abortion are, in fact, completely innocent.  There’s no doubt that they have done NO wrong.

3) At least we have laws against the unlawful killing of these teens by police officers.  However, this slaughter by abortion is completely legal.

4) At least these teens were able to live out about 20% of their lives, which were cut short by some 60 or 70 years.  The babies killed by abortion are denied their whole self-sustaining lives on this earth–even their first breath.  Their lives are cut short by some 70 to 80 years.

The most important verse in the Bible for unbelievers is John 3:16:  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”  The most important verse in the Bible for believers is 1 John 1:9:  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Once a believer has entered into eternal fellowship with God by believing in Christ (John 3:16), he soon realized that he still has the flesh (the old sin nature).  So, he must maintain his temporal fellowship with God through regular confession of all known sins (1 John 1:9).  Only then, through the fellowship and power of the Holy Spirit, can he produce divine good through the successful exercising of his spiritual gifts.

I learned this from Dr. John Danish.  This is why I lovingly like to refer to this latter verse as 1 John Danish 1:9.

I voted for President Trump, but I think he’s being played by China.  During his campaign, he was very aggressive and tough with China, but now that he’s president, he’s backing off.  Here’s what I think happened:

China heard Trump’s campaign rhetoric, and when he got elected, they had to figure out how to make him back down.  President Xi Jinping traveled to Florida to play golf with President Trump, so that Jinping would appear to be buddies with Trump.  So, Trump backed off of his economic demands of China.

Then, since China is so tight with North Korea, Jinping (privately) had North Korean President Kim Jong-un perform some missile tests, knowing that this would stir up President Trump.  This allowed Trump to appear tough by moving some ships to the North Korea region.

Now China will (publicly) have Kim Jong-un back down.  This will boost Trump’s ego even more and make him feel like he got the best of China, so he’ll be even more lenient in future negotiations with them.