Hi guys
Yes, Covlass I believe you are so right. You'll be pleased to note that if you google 'Struthers memorial church' just now, we're still top of the first page! (Rock ON!)
I was reading up on JP Struthers (for whom the church is named) and, would you believe it - JP Struthers was a theologian. Yes he studied theology at Glasgow and even won a few prizes.
So here we have a dilemma do we not? Struthers leaders don't believe that they need to have any theological qualifications to be preachers and yet the guy for whom they named the church (presumably because they follow his line of teaching, or at least subscribe to it) was a well qualified theologian and presbyterian minister. Hmmm.... food for thought?
I also found a rather amusing blog-post on the BBC blog...
Quote
Chris (75) : At the age of 17, and just about to leave school, I couldn't resist the temptation - having been specifically invited to do so - to tangle with my headmaster on matters of theology in a public discussion at the end of my final term.
Our (now late) school Rector, Hugh Black, was, though I didn't know it at the time, the head of the Pentecostal Church in Scotland. I just knew him then as head of the Struthers Memorial Church which I'd stopped going to a couple of years before.
He'd spent most of that lunch hour, batting back perfectly sound logical and rational questions from the floor - each time using this-or-that esoteric quotation from The Bible. I was losing patience with the lack of logical answer; but I knew he knew The Bible a lot better than I did.
So I stuck to what I knew: "Sir, you're answering every question with a quote from the Bible, being careful to stress every single word's exact meaning. But the English version you're quoting from is a translation of a translation of someone's interpretation... etc ... how can you know that what we have today is what was actually meant?"
He glared at me for several very long seconds, hooded his little glittering eyes, and spoke in a strange voice that owed more to The Exorcist than to Greenock:
"Young lady... come the Day of Judgement ... I would not like to be in your shoes."
Game set and match. To me! By being a bully, he'd handed me the popular vote - for the first time in six years at that awful school. Utterly confusing but I knew I hadn't lost anything.
I do hope he's nice and warm now.
I don't know about you guys but I found this hilarious coz I could just see old Totty Black getting hot under the collar about being sassed by a youngster in this way. And the final statement is just so typical of SMC mentality... if you can't win the fight, predict hell fire and brimstone on the head of the quesitoner.!! LOL :-)
I just had to share that one with you all although the comment doesn't come from anyone posting on this site (at least I don't think they are posting here) - it's actually from a discussion on terrorism on one of the BBC blogs, where they are also discussing mind control tactics used to incite young people to commit terrorist acts......
strange the places you find references to Hugh Black and SMC, innit?
As always
Biiiiig love and huge huggggggs to all.
God bless xxxx