The World According To Chris Brewer

Many of you know my utter disdain for televangelists — especially ones like Todd Bentley that have no formal Biblical training. Well, as we have come to find out, ABC News’ Nightline traveled to the Todd Bentley circus in Lakeland, Florida and they filed a major report. Watch it below:

Part 1

Part 2

If you check the Florida Outpouring website’s blog, and scroll down a bit, you can read an article entitled “Todd Takes A Break.” Here’s part of it:

Eli Miller, a senior leader of Fresh Fire Ministries and a long time associate of Todd Bentley announced today that Todd Bentley, leader of the Florida Outpouring, will be taking some time off. “We are grateful for our partnership with GOD TV that has allowed this revival to go around the world”, Miller said. While the revival will continue, the leaders of Fresh Fire believe it is important for Todd to take some time to re-fresh and to rest.

“Refresh and rest,” as in, oh crap, Nightline caught me and I need some major time to conjure up some more stuff, ya know, to make this circus a bit more believable.

I don’t know who is dumber, Bentley or the people who follow him. What is really sad is that once these televangelists fall, they fall hard — but they somehow come back and the same people end up following them.

God is not mocked, folks. Don’t join in the mocking by participating in what Bentley and his cronies have to offer.

View my personal photo gallery of Obama’s visit today HERE.

Today was a very long work day for many of us media types around Springfield, as we covered Barack Obama’s visit to Springfield — and then Lebanon, on his way to Rolla and points east for the day.

I don’t want to estimate the crowd size at Glendale High School’s gymnasium, but it was packed and the folks there showed exactly why Obama is treated like a rockstar. They wildly applauded many of his points, and he even sounded a lot more accessible than I have heard a lot of politicians sound. That kind of accessibility is going to win major points with voters in this upcoming election, simply because folks in Washington have lost touch with the common man.

After his speech in Springfield, Obama’s entourage headed east to Rolla — but made a stop at Bell’s Cafe in Lebanon, where he and Sen. Claire McCaskill greeted folks at the restaurant and chatted with them for a bit. You can imagine it was a bit of a media circus, and even though the folks there were a bit surprised, you could definitely tell the folks in that rural community enjoyed a visit from someone who could potentially be our next president. I personally thought Obama stopping in Lebanon was a better highlight of the day than the forum here in Springfield, for many reasons I may explain later.

At any rate, this event was well-organized and Obama’s press folks made it very easy for us all to do our job. I have some links to pass along from an interesting day here in Springtucky.

- I linked to it above, but just to hit on it again, here’s a photo gallery of what I shot on my personal camera today. (Please note that these images are copyrighted and are my intellectual property, so please contact me if you wish to request an image for your personal use. Requests for external media to use these images will not be granted.)

- Chad Livengood had a good one-on-one chat with Obama backstage after the forum. This alone is well worth watching.

- Forgive the quality of this because we streamed it and this is the Flash video feed from the event, but here’s the majority of Obama’s speech plus questions and answers from the crowd.

- David Catanese has some good coverage and video at the KY3 Political Notebook. Big win for KY3 as they secured the only one-on-one TV interview with Obama in Springfield. Also big win for Dave with the Drudge Report motif on his blog.

I promise to post on something else tomorrow, but seeing as how this event took up 13 work hours of my day, yeah…it’s pretty important stuff. God bless and let me know your thoughts on everything.

A whole host of media, including myself, are LIVE right now at the Barack Obama forum at Glendale High. It will begin at 10 AM…and you can watch the whole thing live at news-leader.com/livevideo.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will be speaking from Glendale High School tomorrow morning at 10 AM, and I will be representing the News-Leader’s video department there. We will have live video of the event, so check that out at news-leader.com/livevideo around 9:55 tomorrow morning.

For now, I’m off to bed because we media types have to be there EARLY.

If this isn’t faith in action, I’m honestly not sure what is.

There are pockets of folks throughout the nation who have started movements called “Pray at the Pump,” and if you’ve been around a gas station recently you know good and well why they’re praying.

Check this out, courtesy of the Washington Post:

Some people might think that’s funny, but I find it really neat that groups of people are willing to pray for the Lord to intervene in an issue in which many people are making tough financial choices.

I think we could all do good to have their faith!

I woke up this morning at 8:15 — fifteen minutes earlier than I normally do on a Sunday morning — and prepared a bit early to go to church. I took the extra 15 minutes to pray and read the Word, and get ready for a good day.

By 9:05 AM, I was out the door, ready to go with a new black shirt, jeans, nice shoes, and everything I needed for the day in hand.

So I pull out of the driveway, turn on some music on my iPhone, drive for a bit and then I feel a bit of a pull on the right side of my car — and the unmistakable noise of a flat tire.

Great. Just after I prayed to the Lord, “Your will be done in my life,” this happens. Guess you better be careful what you pray for to start your day.

I limped back to the parking spot in front of my apartment and began putting the spare on. I initially put it on wrong as it stuck out past the body of the Acura, but then I re-jacked it up and flipped it around…and it was all good.

By the time I finished putting on the spare, it was 10:20 and there was no getting to church for me this morning, especially needing to put on a new tire. So I called around to a few places and made a 1 PM appointment to get a new tire. It set me back a fair amount, which disappointed me a bit, but for some reason I didn’t get angry at all.

Looking back, I didn’t get angry through the entire saga. Considering the flat occurred basically in my driveway and not on Hwy 65, that is a blessing in and of itself. And seeing as how I’ve been through much worse — certain situations in Iraq come to mind — I really was thankful that this was peanuts compared to that. And what if this was God’s way of saving me from disaster? Who knows if I may have been involved in an accident on my way to church?

The really neat thing is that I freelanced last weekend for a local golf entertainer, and the money I earned from an extra day of work got me through this situation. The Lord knew what was up.

At any rate, my car is fixed and the only things I really suffer from now is a thinner wallet and missing physically being at church this morning. I still had a pretty productive day — after my tire was fixed, I hung out with some friends, went to the Conservation Center and shot some photos. Enjoy the gallery.

Here’s the intro of the parody version of “The Office” intro that I created for a going-away video for Kary Booher, our now-former Cardinals reporter at the Springfield News-Leader.

If you’re a Springfieldian, you’ll understand the first four shots of the montage…

Actually, I should say I used it this morning, as I went to Commercial Street and walked the Jefferson Street Footbridge. I experimented with some night shots on the camera…let me tell you, holy cow, the Canon EOS 400D is awesome.

Lemme direct your attention to the small photo gallery I shot, and we’ll catch you tomorrow after I visit my mother in Republic.

I am politically apathetic, and last night was prime evidence of why. If you’re a Republican in the state of Missouri, I feel sorry for you.

VERY sorry.

You have no good choice for governor, if last night’s debate at KY3 was any indication.

Aside from criticizing Missy Shelton and Dave Catanese, whom I can say are neat people after I met them last week — Vincent David Jericho hit pretty hard on his radio show this morning when he pretty much said the KY3 debate between Kenny Hulshof and Sarah Steelman sucked.

Audio below (click the play button), and the first five minutes are the most interesting:
[audio:http://www.ksgf.com/Portals/67/KSGF%20Audio/This%20week/KSGF_072408_Hr1a-%20POCAST-%20Gov%20Debate.mp3]

I had to watch the debate for work purposes and this is what I took from it:

Steve Grant, KY3: “Opening statements from each candidate, please.”
Sarah Steelman: “I don’t suck even though I’m not a good public speaker.”
Kenny Hulshof: “I really don’t suck even though I am a smooth talker.”
Steve Grant: “Now a question from the panelist.”
Panelist (take your pick): (insert pointed question here)
Hulshof: “Sarah Steelman sucks, blah blah blah blah Steelman sucks.”
Steelman: “Well, Kenny sucks worse, blah blah mork bork bork bork.”
Panelists: “Why does the other one suck?”
Hulshof: “Steelman sucks because, well, she sucks.”
Steelman: “Hulshof sucks because, well, he sucks worse.”
Grant: “Closing statements now from each candidate.”
Steelman: “Vote for me. I don’t offer anything but vote anyway.”
Hulshof: “Sarah Steelman is not invited to my birthday party.”

Cut and paste all the italicized text above, and you have the gist of politics in America. It makes me want to kiss my ivory friend who resides in the bathroom.

Speaking about the content of the debate, VDJ is absolutely correct. The debate was a horrible tragedy for all to see, and I personally thought it was a train wreck from both candidates. There was no love lost between the two candidates and they made that more well-known than the issues they stood for.

In the rare case that the candidates did offer a question without attacking their opponent, they didn’t even make their stances very clear. The KY3 website has some snippets from the debate, and if you can watch it through without cringing, you have a gut of steel.

Why am I droning on about this? Because I am one voter who is sick and tired of my taxpayer dollars being spent by incompetent politicians from both political parties whose interests do not lie in the common man or woman they are supposed to represent. As long as the Democratic and Republican parties are allowed to run this nation, we will be held hostage to the banality of bureaucracy…and our forefathers will continue to roll in their graves.

About the debate, though, I should have watched the Mariners lose yet again to Boston. That would have been much more entertaining.

Is there a better place to be in Springfield than catching some good baseball on a warm summer night than Hammons Field? I’m up here in the press box right now and we’re watching a 1-0 pitchers duel that has the Arkansas Travelers leading Springfield right now in the top of the 6th. Considering this game started at 7:10, they’re motoring through it pretty quickly.

Oh…my camera arrives tomorrow. Life is good.