Mark Oestreicher is...

...blogging again!

Free Tim Keller Sermons!

Justin Taylor reports:

"Redeemer’s Sermon Ministry has been faithfully recording, cataloging and reproducing all of our sermons for the past 20 years. To celebrate all 20 years of our history, and to meet the growing demand for our church’s teaching in New York City and around the world, we have created this resource of 150 sermons and lectures covering a broad array of topics, completely free to download and share.

The recordings chosen for the Free Sermon Resource were culled from classic sermon series as well as lectures and seminar addresses delivered to various Redeemer ministry gatherings, and are intended to present to the listener the full scope of teachings they would receive over several years of active involvement at Redeemer."

Free sermons are avail here.

Mark Oestreicher is Leaving Youth Specialities

Read the Zondervan Press Release here.

Mark's a friend and I was sad to hear this. However, I feel confident that he will soon find a new platform for his kingdom service.

Toward More Effective Leadership Teams: The Necessity of Open Disagreement

Cross posting a link here to something I just posted on OrgImpact on this subject.

The Objective and Subjective Nature of Morality

Author Joseph Myers asks:

"Morality is relative. It is seen as a circumstantial stewardship of good instead of a constant set of settled rules...good or bad...thoughts?"

I definitely believe in moral absolutes (e.g. adultery is always wrong) but there's a particular scenario that I've been thinking about that makes me think sometimes there might be relatives. I would love to hear responses to this:

If I find a Salmon P. Chase $10,000 bill (which has not been printed since 1946) then I think it's morally incumbent on me to make some attempt to find the rare bill's owner.

But if I see a penny on the ground, I think nothing of simply picking it up and walking away.

OrgImpact and Shelby Foote's The Civil War

I'm not abandoning the faithmaps blog, but I have started a new Organizational Development and Leadership Blog entitled OrgImpact. Today I posted some thoughts about Shelby Foote's The Civil War.

Please Pray for Rick Meigs

Please keep Rick Meigs in prayer. I just learned that he was riding his motorcycle when he was hit by a truck that crossed the double-yellow line and then drove off. He is in the hospital in critical condition in Boise, ID. He has two broken rips, a broken arm, two collapsed lungs and a ruptured speen.

Rick blogs at The Blind Beggar and has been a critical voice in the missional church conversation through Friend of Missional, a very important networking and content site in that movement.

Looks like Brother Maynard is doing a good job with updates.

A CRITICAL TV ALERT

If you with me are one of the 16 of us that religiously watched Pushing Daisies, the last three episodes of the series are showing tonight at 10 PM ET/9 PM CT and then on the next 2 Sats at the same time. Fire up your DVRs!

My Favorite Copyright Notice

Loraine Boettner's 1932 notice for his The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination:

"Any one is at liberty to use material from this book with or without credit. In preparing this book the writer has received help from many sources, some acknowledged and many unacknowledged. He believes the material herein set forth to be a true statement of Scripture teaching, and his desire is to further, not to restrict its use."

New Susan Boyle

"More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time"

Wow - this is kind of surprising.

Tony Morgan Leaves New Spring

However, yesterday afternoon we (Tony, myself and the rest of our leadership team at NewSpring) all came to the incredibly difficult and painful conclusion that Tony should no longer be a part of the staff at NewSpring Church. It was not a decision that was made in the moment; in fact, lots of prayer and discussion has taken place over the past several months leading up to this…and everyone knows that though it was not an easy choice, it was the right choice.

- read the rest of the announcement from Perry Noble's blog

Are you a Dragon?

"When attacked by a dragon, do not become one." Marshall Shelley

Great quote posted by Paul Littleton.

The Death of Perspective?

Today, Editor & Publisher, the newspaper trade publication that I read regularly to keep up with the industry I was a part of for 20 years, reports

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest metros continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation -- now at a record rate.

According to ABC, for 395 newspapers reporting this spring, daily circulation fell 7% to 34,439,713 copies, compared with the same March period in 2008. On Sunday, for 557 newspapers, circulation was down 5.3% to 42,082,707 [link added].

The Wall Street Journal just launched an interactive site that documents current circulation and negative events for major newspapers in the United States since 2006.

Meanwhile, online media continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.

Twitter, the online service that allows users to post updates on whatever they wish in Wired reports that in that same month, US users doubled to 9.3 million bringing the number of users worldwide to 19 million. Significant growth continues. Web 2.0 Journal estimates that 1.2 million people have joined Twitter since Oprah featured the service on her show on Friday 17 April. Though blogs are far from dead, Twitter is the new blog and extends the popular media trend that combines truncated content with heightened immediacy.

Closely related to the Twittering phenomenon is the growing popularity of Facebook updates. On Wed 8 April, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the online site had crested the 200 million user mark. A significant portion of this growth is now comprised of those over the coveted demographic of the 18-35 set. Carmen Musick of the Kingsport Times News reports, "Between June 2008 and January 2009 the number of Facebook members between the ages of 35 and 54 nearly quadripled - increasing 276 percent- and members older than 55 tripled...."

Only the most anachronistic Luddite would depreciate the enormous benefit that online media brings to the developed world. But, at the same time, this type of growth is coming at a cost:

I am concerned that the ubiquity and immediacy of information can precipitate a loss of perspective.

For example, there used to be a typical news cycle for most journalistic organizations that allowed for reflection when considering the events of the day. This enabled writers and editors to bring perspective into their coverage of news events. The 24-hour news cycle, on the other hand, tends to erase this advantage. Media observers such as Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their book Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media Culture note that journalists have gravitated toward "sensationalism, entertainment, and opinion" and have moved away from "verification, proportion, relevance, depth, and quality of interpretation" (see 24-hour news cycle).

Francis McInerney and Sean White, authors of FutureWealth: Investing in the Second Great Wave of Technology, might characterize this trend as another example of how society changes as the cost of information declines.

But I do not believe this trend is permanent.

I do believe that the natural desire for wisdom means that, despite the current upheaval in media, new (or, perhaps, renewed) journalistic voices that balance breaking news with relevant perspective will rise through new media. Sensationalist fare can only satiate the superficial palate.

Until then, those who desire reflective perspective will have to search a little harder for it, listening carefully through the din for the more discerning voices that can still be found.

Analagously, I believe that those of us who participate in online expressions of spiritual community - whether through blogs, twitter, facebook, or what have you - need to be cautious that we don't lapse into religious superficiality. Loving and following God takes time. Deepening spiritual friendship and community takes loads of time. Working through differences of opinion cannot generally be done via blogger or twitter. Nearly by definition, meditation can't be done quickly!

I love online media. I enjoy blogging, facebook, twitter, online community, all of it. But from time to time we need to remind ourselves that this new form of communication is not omnicompetent.

The Origins Project

Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, Scot McKnight, and the good folks at the Origin Project have relaunched their site as they launch their organization. This is a group I'm very excited about. I see them as working to capture the best of the emerging church conversation while staying tied to Christian orthodoxy through their commitment to the Lausanne Covenant and other historic creeds. You can read more about this new group here.

• Their blog is here.
• You can sign-up to get updates on the group here.
• Keep up with upcoming events here.
• Participate in their online community here.
  

"Father tried to sell 'Slumdog Millionaire' girl"

so sad.

What Does War Have to Teach Us?

For a while, I've been searching for a good single volume history of what was known as The Great War. I'm mostly through Barbara Tuchman's celebrated The Guns of August (1962) and am finding it helpful, detailed, and insightful. The book was so influential in its day in its description of how one decision leading to another leading to another can result in a conflagration such as that of WWI, that JFK had his staff read it during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it only focuses on the year 1914 and I have been looking for something more comprehensive. I believe that I have found that volume in GJ Meyer's A World Undone - The Story of the Great War, 1914 - 1918.

The drama that was the Second World War has eclipsed the memory of WWI in the modern mind. This is too bad as we have much to learn from this first great European outbreak. The results of that first war were staggering. Death estimates of military and civilian deaths in the WWI range from 9 to 16 million. The percentage of European populations lost was devastating. 3 out of every 4 Russion soldiers, for example, were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing. 10% of the Britain Expeditionary Force was killed. Nearly 45% of the Rumanian force died during the war.

At the same time I'm reading these 2 books on WWI, I'm also working my way through Shelby Foote's very engaging three volume The Civil War: A Narrative.

This is a new kind of reading to me as long-time readers of this blog know that I've focused my reading on historical biography, which I read for lessons of leadership. But studying these wars is giving me a better context to evaluate individual performance in these crises.

More to come.

Thank you God!

Skye does not have reflux!

Thanks to those of you who prayed!!!

prayer request for skye-baby

At 2 PM today, Skye's going to take the rather uncomfortable VCUG test which will let us know if her October 2008 surgery was successful. Please pray that the test will reveal no outstanding problems in her remaining kidney (or the nonfunctioning one that she still has). Please also pray our dear one will be as comfortable as possible. Thanks.

Background:

• 7 Oct 2008 update
  
  
• 27 Sept 2008 update
  
  
• 13 Aug 2008 update
  
  
• Big Picture History Update posted on 4 Apr 2008
  

I guarantee that this...

...will make you smile.

A Wonderful Easter Morning Surprise

Our alarm clock went off at 4:45 AM. A couple of years ago we discovered a sunrise service at nearby Sugarloaf Mountain and I figured we'd leave 75 mins before the 6:15 AM start just to play it safe. But the announcer on our alarm clock informed us that the temperature would be in the 30's so Beth said, "Forget it; that's too cold" and in a very un-spiritual manner, I happily rolled over to continue my slumber.

But Beth couldn't go back to sleep and immediately started wondering if she would regret her decision. She loves Easter Sunrise Services and we always go. So at 5:15 she says,

"Let's get up and go."

"But honey, none of us [5 of us] have gotten up and to get there right on time we'd have to leave immediately."

"Oh, we'll be little late; let's go!"

[with some sullenness] "Ok."

We didn't get out the door until 5:45 AM and I figured we'd get to the service about the time it was wrapping up. Beth asked for my opinion as to our timeliness and I revealed my thinking. She asked for my Blackberry and started struggling through pages not optimized for mobile viewing looking for a closer alternative sunrise service. We exited Interstate 70 to head to Damascas, MD where we had seen an incomplete page indicating that there might be a sunrise service there.

Then we saw a little sign on a country road advertising a nearby sunrise service. We couldn't believe our "luck."

It's about 6:10 AM. We drive a couple of miles and notice that to our left is a beautiful vista of rolling hills where the Sun was scheduled to crack the eastern horizon at 6:36 AM. We come upon a small group of mostly elderly folks standing right by the road immediately in front of a small and quite lovely United Methodist Church. Happily, we had stumbled upon Howard Chapel, a 149 years old church community in Mt. Airy, MD.

The congregants were quite dressed up; we're not. Nevertheless, I whip our van into their parking lot and we quietly make our way to join the gathering of maybe 30 or 35 folks. After a few remarks, the Sun beautifully rose and, after pausing to observe this, we step into the building, which was built in 1880 and hear a rousing brief meditation from the woman who apparently was their pastor.

Beth and I attend a megachurch in the Baltimore suburbs. I think they had 7 Easter services today. The production values are high. But there was something refreshing about walking back into a church culture I stopped experiencing on a weekly basis thirty years ago. And I don't mean to imply that high production makes a worship service insincere. But our experience this AM was raw, relatively unprocessed, and felt real. I was struck by how the fact of Jesus' rising from the dead transcends culture.

He is risen!

It was a marveolous and serendipitous Easter Morning surprise that we will not soon forget.

Ten Books

from Jesus Outside the Box:

"This can be a quick one! Don't take too long to think about it! Ten books you've read that will always stick with you! First ten you can recall in no more than 15 minutes! Then tag ten others!"

My 10 Books

Fallen Angel

This new film about Larry Norman, who passed away about a year ago, looks very interesting.

Jon Reid reviews the new movie here.

Michael Newnham has an interview with the Canadian documentary filmmaker David Di Sabatino behind the film here.

Related: Metapost - Larry Norman Goes Home

ht: Andrew Jones

Taylor Redux

Kenny Sheppard has posted some more helpful links on Charles Taylor.

On Charles Taylor

For a couple of years now, Kenny has been encouraging me to read Charles Taylor. At his suggestion some time ago I purchased Taylor's A Secular Age. Publisher's Weekly summarizes Taylor's philosophical tome in this manner:

In his characteristically erudite yet engaging fashion, Taylor, winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize, takes up where he left off in his magnificent Sources of the Self (1989) as he brilliantly traces the emergence of secularity and the processes of secularization in the modern age.

In the first paragraph of A Secular Age's first chapter, Taylor himself asks,

One way to put the question that I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?

Kenny's about to finish his course work at Johns Hopkins here in Charm City and if I don't finish the book soon, I'll lose my most valued interlocutor.

Towards the end of completing Secular Age, I've begun reading through this helpful overview that Kenny suggested.

The current nearly monolithic secular culture, when viewed from at least a prima facie perspective, is fascinating to me and I'm looking forward to learning Taylor's perspective on how this has come about.

In Search of the Quinessential Baltimore Diner, Continued

I believe that this is Year 3 in which I have partnered with Kenny Sheppard (Prolegomena) in search of the Perfect Baltimore Diner. Since our first breakfast we've visited:

• The Double T,
  
• The Paper Moon,
  
• Overlea Diner,
  
• Golden West Cafe,
  
• Two Sisters Grill,
  
• Pete's Diner,
  
• & Frank's Diner

(Kenny, is this list complete?)

On Saturday, Kenny, who's working on his Ph.D at Johns Hopkins on atheism and the intellectual history of 17th century England, and I visited the Silver Moon Diner. It was great! The food was fantastic; Kenny's even become a Scrapple aficionado. But best of all was the great conversation with my good friend.

Kenny took the picture above and a few others which can be found here. (For reasons beyond my capacity to imagine, we have not taken pictures on every single visit).

Is the Recent Resurgence of Calvinism Changing the World?

It is according to Time Magazine.

ht: justin taylor

if you want to understand what happened to our economy...

....just click here.

Economic Recovery, Media Coverage, and Hope

Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize in economics a few years back for his work in Prospect Theory. One of Dr. Kahneman's revolutionary findings was that when individuals make economic decisions, those decisions are 70% emotional. Previous to Kahneman's discovery, economists would theorize that people make their decisions based on their best rational analysis as to what course of action will result in their keeping or acquiring the most money. But that's not the way it works most of the time.

I thought about Dr. Kahneman on Friday when I was having an interesting discussion with an economist about the troubled United States economy and media coverage. She agreed with me that negative media coverage does inhibit economic recovery. When I thought about Dr. Kahneman, I realized why.

We spend because we have a hope that our spending is a good decision. We invest on hope. If media coverage underlines the doom and gloom, then spending and investing will be suppressed.

This line of thinking reminded me of FDR and how optimism and hope was such a crucial aspect of his leadership. Through both the Depression and World War II, FDR always communicated that America would eventually triumph over all obstacles. Obama was communicating a similar optimism this past Saturday when he said, "We will get through this."

Colin Powell has said that optimism is a force multiplier. This is true for the economy and for many - if not all - areas of human endeavor. Dr. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, details the positive results of optimism in his book Learned Optimism. Malcolm Gladwell, in his most recent book Outliers, similarly explains how individuals work longer and harder through difficulties when they believe that the result of their extra effort will be positive. Their hope then drives them to superior accomplishment.

Jesus followers have a firm basis for optimism in a God who loves us and has all power. He alone can give us a peace which "transcends all understanding" (Phil. 4:4-7). In the midst of financial tsunamies, health crises, relational heartbreak, etc., sometimes our only psychological basement - at times the only foundation for our peace - is our knowledge of the character of God.

ESV Study Bible Online Now Available to All

until the end of this month:

link

This is a very valuable resource that's worth checking out!

Three Questions

A few days ago, a dear friend of mine shared with me three questions that a mutual friend used to center herself. I was talking to Beth about this, but couldn't remember two of the three questions. I did recall that one dealt with being present. Beth and I formulated three questions of our own that I've been using the last several days. They've been helpful. They are:

• Am I At Peace? Do I trust God with all my worries and with my soul (Matthew 6:25-34, Philippians 4:6-7). Beth shared with me the image of a pebble being dropped into a calm pond. The pond responds perfectly to the pebble - or the boulder - and then returns to its previous calm. When we are at peace with God, our responses to trouble can be measured and appropriate. If we do not have that peace, then we are absorbed with self and our precarious situation. If we do not have that peace, then the best that we can come up with another is either a deceived calm or an act.
  
  
• Am I Present? Having peace from and with God, I am then in a position of strength. With that strength, I can afford to focus wholly on either the person in front of me or on the task that is serving the person who is not present. The vertical must enable the horizontal. The past is gone or is covered by Christ's cross. The future I can trust to God, for I cannot control it now. But I have been given the gift of being able to focus on the right now.
  
  
• Am I Purposed? Since we are both at peace and present for the other or for the task, we can be intentional in the moment. We are able to move most fully out of our love for God and for the other (Matthew 22:37-39). God's love purifies and focuses us.