the virtue of humble confidence: what's a faithmap?

tim challies criticizes the premium that the emerging church puts on doubt, uncertainty, and mystery.

i do believe balance is necessary. i tried to address this in a brief article I wrote several years ago - "What is a faithmap?" - text below:

-----------------

A faithmap highlights known reference points on the terrain, but it does not detail every particular. And - most importantly - a faithmap is designed to be used while going somewhere.

One of the critiques of a modernized evangelicalism is that it has collapsed theology to mere information. Our use of the metaphor "faithmap" reflects our desire to make three statements about Christian theology and praxis.

1 - "A faithmap...does not detail every particular."

It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out.

Proverbs 25:2 (all references are in English Standard Version)

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 29:29

The modern program is that man can discern everything and is the arbiter of truth. We are suggesting that perhaps this has influenced evangelicals by moving us to desire to answer every question about God and to believe that our theological formulations are exhaustive. Postmodern thinkers help us to understand that we frame reality in paradigm and that language symbolically represents reality. Similarly, a map cannot possibly detail every aspect of the land to which it refers. A faithmap does not pretend to completely plumb the depths of the knowledge of God. It leaves room for mystery and exploration.

2 - "A faithmap highlights known reference points on the terrain"

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

2 Timothy 1:13, 14

So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

2 Thessalonians 2:15


Nevertheless, just because the boundaries of paradigm and language limit what we know, the inability to know exhaustively should not be confused with the inability to know reliably. God has given us language and has revealed information about Himself. This information is reliable and certain. It is certain not because of the omnicompetence of our minds but because of God's ability and character. To understate: He is a reliable source of information. Similarly on a map there are known reference points that help the traveler make her way. A faithmap marks for us known reference points - markers we can know.

3 - "a faithmap is designed to be used while going somewhere."

8For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Eph. 2:8-10

When someone asked Jesus, "which is the greatest commandment in the Law" He replied

"`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.'
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)

Note Jesus' last comment.

"The Law and the Prophets" was a technical term Jesus used to represent the Bible as it existed in His day, the Old Testament. Jesus affirms that the very foundation of the Scriptures was to love God with everything within and to love one's neighbor as oneself. All the information we can garner about God from the Scriptures is for the purpose of loving God and others. And if our accumulation of knowledge does not result in these activities then we are wasting our time and not using the Scriptures as they were designed to be used. A map is used for going somewhere. A faithmap is used to guide us as we travel from one instantiation of love to another.

So a faithmap marks certain things we know, leaves much for future exploration, and is used for traveling.

One does not study a map just to have a better understanding of a map. In the same way a faithmap is useless if it's not teleological.

---------------------------------------------------

The need for humble confidence was also addressed by the great Reformed exegete John Murray in a quote I mentioned in Are there Emerging Church Shibboleths?

Here's the quote:

"However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this danger, on the one hand, as to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other."

Murray continues, "When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation.... A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology that relies on the past evades the demands of the present"

(emphasis mine, from his article "Systematic Theology" - see Looking Beyond the Facade of Modernity, Part 2).

JI Packer on Francis Schaeffer

Kevin Cawley posts Packer's thoughts on Francis Schaeffer and his legacy.

from Reflections on Francis Schaeffer

more on the declining cost of information...

...and how that transforms society.

Keith Drury explores how the internet is changing denominations.

we've commented on the declining cost of info and leadership formation here.

ht: brad boyston

Mike Frost Audio

resonate has completed the posting of all 6 mike frost talks with sessions 5 and 6.

frost rocks.

ht: rick meigs

The Centrality of the Gospel and the Balance of Social Justice and Gospel Concerns

It's been justly affirmed that following Jesus is more than just making sure that we and those around us go to heaven when we die. This seems obvious just by reading the four gospels and observing our Lord's behavior. Jesus was forever responding to the physical needs of those around Him, in addition to directing folks to throw off their addiction to the temporal.

It is, however, an imbalance to suggest that we should "get over" the fact that Jesus died for our sins - or for those of our neighbors. We are creatures; He is the Creator and we ever need Him.

Luke records in cp 10 of his history:

1After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. 2And he said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

Luke 10:1,2 (ESV)

Luke continues

17The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!" 18And he said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

vss 17-20


In Luke 10, the 72 are excited about the effectiveness of their personal ministries. Jesus redirects the vision of his listeners away from the spiritual power that's around them and toward their own personal relationship with the God who built a home for them where He is.

In other words, it is God's love manifested through the Gospel that is to drive the 72 in all they do.

Paul speaks in similar fashion in his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth:

4For the love of the Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all, then all have died;

15and he died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and has been raised

2 Corinthians 5:14,15 (Darby Translation, emphasis mine)

We are never meant to mature beyond a fascination with the fact that God loves us and that we are saved.

To be thrilled with the Gospel and our salvation is not a sign of adolescent spirituality. The persistent, enduring joy of God's love for us manifested in the cross is rather a sign of our spiritual maturity.

This joy gives us the psychological and spiritual freedom to be concerned for all of our neighbors' needs.

Since our Lord Himself enjoins us (also in Luke 10 as above) to love our neighbors as ourselves (vss. 27,28), we want our neighbors to have the same joy we have. And so we also wish for them to know the joy of having their names written in heaven. This creates no dichotomy between our concern for their physical well-being and our concern for their eternal destiny, for love defeats this false antithesis.

If we are hungry, we love ourselves with food. If our neighbors are hungry, we love them with food as we love ourselves.

When we come to the realization that we are lost, we love ourselves enough to receive God's free gift of Jesus Christ. When our neighbors are lost, we love them as we love ourselves and also wish for them to receive this free gift and escape judgment.

Is one more important than the other? Of course, it is.

It's better to die of starvation and have your name written in heaven. But yet we aren't so "spiritual" that we don't feed ourselves and - similarly - our hungry neighbor won't be terribly impressed with our love or interested in our gospel message if we don't give him a slice of bread.

We should never move beyond our fascination and gratitude for God's love for us. And our appreciation for that overwhelming love drives us towards others and whatever needs they have.

Don't Waste Your Trial

I had heard about the article that John Piper wrote on the eve of his Prostate Surgery called Don't Waste Your Cancer. I read it tonight and found it helpful to consider for any type of threatening trial.

I found Piper's emphasis on God's sovereignty very helpful.

Robert Webber has Cancer

Please pray for Robert Webber.

ht: scot mcknight

bock on the emerging church

darrell bock is going to begin blogging on the emerging church and invites emerger response.

on friendships

“Everyone must try to make friendship his own utopian country in which no inequalities exist,
where the coin of the realm is imaginative sympathy,
all competition and rivalrous feelings are strictly outlawed,
the oxygen is considerate talk,
and the blood circulates best when stimulated by the constant exercise of thoughtfulness, generous impulse, and kindness. The earnest practice of friendship, in short, requires us to be rather better than most of the time we really are.”

- Joseph Epstein in Friendship: An Expose.

Scot McKnight offers a wonderful post on friendships

2 Books on Katrina

I'm mostly done withTulane professor Douglas Brinkley's massive treatment of Katrina - The Great Deluge. His menu of stories is well-worth reading, if a bit all over the place.











Tim Challies also brings our attention to a new Marvin Olasky work called The Politics of Disaster and provides a fine summary.

A Great Quote by Kyle Lake

I just saw this:

"Here is what I think God is saying to each of us, 'Abandon your plans of escape. And Be where you are. '"

Kyle Lake (1972 - 2005).

Kyle was electrocuted while conducting a baptism last year.

jen lemen is...

...back after a long online hiatus.

ht: bob carlton

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

This is just too fun. No computer effects. Low budget. Just creative.

andrew jackson on tim challies upcoming book...

...or, rather, on the fact that there is an upcoming tim challies book. andrew's brief comments illustrate the declining cost of information.

we've discussed elsewhere that as the cost of information declines, society changes.

$.50 English Standard Version New Testaments

We'll probably buy a bunch of these for KatrinaGrace.

I really love this translation.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams Reported to have Changed Positions on Homosexuals and the Anglican Church

"The archbishop of Canterbury has told homosexuals that they need to change their behaviour if they are to be welcomed into the church, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Rowan Williams has distanced himself from his one-time liberal support of gay relationships and stressed that the tradition and teaching of the Church has in no way been altered by the Anglican Communion's consecration of its first openly homosexual bishop.

The declaration by the archbishop - rebutting the idea that homosexuals should be included in the church unconditionally - marks a significant development in the church's crisis over homosexuals. According to liberal and homosexual campaigners, it confirmed their fears that the archbishop has become increasingly conservative - and sparked accusations that he has performed an "astonishing" U-turn over the homosexual issue."

- the telegraph (uk)

michael spencer...

...was bitten 2x and lives to blog ab it here: toward a Christian approach to homosexuals and homosexuality.

the sometimes two-dimensionalization of media coverage

daniel pulliam of the excellent get religion blog revisits the recent story where a pastor fired a long-time sunday school teacher who was a woman.

sometimes it's easy for a media outlet to collapse a story down to a simple binary instead of exploring its complexity.

An Around the Room On The Emerging Church

Justin Taylor, the English Standard Version Bible Project Manager at Crossway , has written a primer on the emerging church.

taylor's primer is featured in a recent 9Marks newsletter on the emerging church, which also features:

• Pastor's and Theologian's Forum on the Emerging Church with contributions from
  
  
• D. A. Carson
• Mark Driscoll
• Michael Horton
• Mike McKinley
• Daniel Montgomery
• Brent Thomas
• Carl Trueman
• Jonathan Leeman
  
  
• The Emerging Consequences of Ideas with summaries of the contributions of
  
  
• Walter Brueggeman
• Hans Georg Gadamer
• Stan Grenz
• John Franke
• Stanley Hauerwas
• George A Lindbeck
• Jurgen Moltmann
• Nancey Murphy
• Miroslav Volv
• NT Wright

I'm looking forward to reviewing this.

unusual stories of direct encounters

a friend of mine and I are discussing the idea of relying on experience overmuch. i don't know what to tell you about this story.

it reminds me of a what a charismatic catholic blind date told me one evening. she said that she was praying to mary when mary said to her, "what are talking to me for? talk to Jesus!"

it reminds me of a story a seminary prof told me of a man who was preaching one day and suddenly interrupted himself with, "There he is! He's beautiful! He's beautiful!" and then dropped dead.

for your consideration.

kudos to the rev john stevens

"Twelve-year-old Joe recently asked Jesus to live in his heart.

Yet the church where Joe accepted his Savior not even two weeks before will no longer allow the biracial boy to enter.

On Aug. 6, during its scheduled Sunday night business meeting, Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo voted not to accept blacks within the church. More specifically, the congregation also voted Joe out and said he could not return.

That evening Fellowship Baptist did not just say goodbye to Joe and an entire race of humans. With that decision the church's pastor, the Rev. John Stevens, resigned....

That evening Fellowship Baptist did not just say goodbye to Joe and an entire race of humans. With that decision the church's pastor, the Rev. John Stevens, resigned..."

- entire story

ht: jesus outside the box

UPDATE: "After the Daily Journal contacted Fellowship Baptist members, they gathered Aug. 17 to form a response. Mike Dillard, who acted as spokesperson for the church, said the congregation "categorically denies" accusations that the church took such a vote and feels the charge is an attempt by a party to do them harm."

- link to updated story

It'll be interesting to see if this piece gets picked up and investigated by a larger media outlet.

Hands from the Past

from Wikipedia:

"The hand paintings seen here at the Cueva de las Manos in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina were created between 13,000 and 9,300 years ago using bone-made pipes for spraying the paint on the wall. Most of the hands are left hands, which suggests that painters held the spraying pipe with their dexterous hand. The cave is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site."

Seeking A Fresh View of Jesus

I am really wanting to get a fresh view of Jesus.

I find that I tend to get lost in religious busyness and theological and ecclesial blah blah blah. It's not that I don't think the latter has its place - it does. It's just that I think it can't be the core of religious experience - the experience of a real and daily relationship with God. I want more. I want my walk with God to be transpropositional (which - of course - includes the propositional). David Brainard used to talk about people who talked about the shell rather than talking about the nut. That's what I'm talking about; I'm tired of all shell all the time. And I'm talking about myself.

To that end, today I made a couple of decisions (I'm only sharing some of them).

I plan to read each Gospel again while reading at least one excellent commentary for each one. I like Luke for its apologetic value and so I'm going to begin there. I just ordered the 1st volume of Darrell Bock's set on Luke. I'll be using DA Carson's excellent little volume on best NT commentaries and other sources to guide me as I choose commentaries. I'll probably hit Donald Guthrie and Luke itself of course while I wait for Bock's volume to arrive.

Bock recently blogged on commentaries he recommends.

I wonder if we might convince Scot McKnight, who edited the excellent Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, to do the same?

bloggers i would like to meet f2f one day

inspired by pernell goodyear:

• scot mcknight
• andrew jones
• jordon cooper
• justin taylor
• michael spencer
• ted olsen
• steve mccoy
  

Update: Please don't assume my list is exhaustive! :)

A Change of Season: The End of the Faithmaps Discussion Group

Yesterday, I announced to the faithmaps discussion group that I had decided to end the group sometime on Friday 1 Sept. Here is some of what I wrote in the announcement:

------------------

It is with sadness that I let you know that after five years of moderating the faithmaps discussion group, I've decided to end the group.

I have come to the conclusion that my current life situation and calling is such that I no longer feel that I can give moderating this group the time that it needs and deserves.

What's true now that wasn't when we started in May of 2001:

* Beth and I co-lead KatrinaGrace which just decided to branch out into working with Habitat for Humanity in Slidell, LA in addition to continuing the work we're doing with Compassion Ministries just north of NO. By God's grace we're planning on sending a team a month between October 2006 and Nov 2007 to New Orleans' North Shore. Our church's Sunday 27 Aug service is entirely dedicated to KatrinaRelief. We are very excited about this work. 60 folks on 8 Teams have so far gone down and we're hoping to send a lot more.

* Since April of 2005 I've been serving on my local church's Leadership Development Team and just a few weeks ago we launched our mentor/protege - workshop based process. I'm one of the Workshop Facilitators. We've been able to implement a lot of the transpropositional approaches we've developed and discussed here.

* [I've been getting professional writing jobs with a national Christian organization].

* I continue to post to my blog almost daily.

* And, as I've mentioned, three years ago I executed a major life change and intentionally began devoting less time to my online activities and more time to the four most important people in my life.

* And then there's the whole full-time job with USA TODAY thing which really cuts into my free time. ;)


And so, sometime on Friday 1 September, I plan to turn the group off. I do not plan to delete the group. Archives will still be searchable and accessible to the public as always. There is such a rich treasure store of posts here that I would hate to see lost.

One day I may start another group or restart this one. But I don't know if that will happen.

I don't intend not to participate in groups, just not to moderate one. So you'll probably see me around.

It's my hope that the community and discussions that began here will continue in some context. And so one reason I wanted to give several day notice was to invite those on this list with other groups - or those on this list that wish to start new groups - to feel perfectly free to solicit members here during the next 9 days.

But it is a change and it is a loss and I will miss the group that is faithmaps. I know there is more to say but I can't put it all into words. Maybe I'll be able to betw now and 1 Sept.

Thank you all for all you've given me here. I'm very grateful. I have made mistakes as a moderator and you've been patient and gracious to me

This, of course, isn't goodbye. It's just a change of season.

--------------------------------

The driving force in my decision was the amount of time that I could dedicate to the group. Our environment was unique because there were only two criteria of participation: interest in "theology, leadership, & praxis in the emerging church" and respect. Anyone could join and this led to some rather interesting discussion! I had come to the conclusion that the group needed more constant attention than I could give it and rather than setting up a team of moderators - which I thought might still take a lot of my time and effort - I decided to let folks explore other options.

It was not an easy decision and one that I make with some sadness.

I gained so much from this community. The faithstory online small groups that we've iteratively offered were wonderful. I made some great friends thru the group. But I felt that for me it was time to move on.

faithmaps.org, however, will continue...as will this blog.

katrina: where did the money go?

Someone commented to our earlier post about Katrina stats one year later:

" My heart goes out to those rebuilding their lives!

Are there any sound sources that have tracked where all the money has gone? Is this even possible?"

Charity Navigator - a great place to go when you're evaluating charities - has posted a "One Year Later" series of articles analyzing how the philantropic response went.

katrina by the numbers, part 2: 1 year later

USA TODAY poll in today's paper:

• 16% - those who say that their lives are back to normal one year later
• 56% - those with kids under 18 who say that their kids have been negatively affected by the storm
• 25% - those who have not moved back
• 20% - number of those who have moved back but believe they may need to move out again
• 14% - those currently unemployed
  
• "those who say they are experiencing a great deal or quite a bit of"
• anxiety - 27%
• trouble sleeping - 26%
• depression - 23%
• "difficulties in marriage or other family relationships" - 18%
• Top 5 Most Difficult Things to Deal with Since Katrina:
1. damaged property
2. financial problems
3. mental or emotional sate
4. "getting our lives back on track"
5. "no longer having a job"
• Top 5 Types of Help Most Desired to Recover from Katrina
1. $
2. help with damage or contractors
3. more FEMA help
4. "a place to stay"
5. a job

- USA TODAY related story.

- katrina by the numbers, part 1: the impact of the storm

Office 2007 Beta 2: MS Word

I had been working on an article and the editor asked me to use track changes in Word. My Office 2000 Word Track Changes functionality didn't seem terribly robust, and so I downloaded Office 2007 Beta 2.

I really like it and it seems to be a major upgrade. I've only been using it a few days but already I've very much appreciated the rich Review functionality. Redmond has also moved away from menu based options toward what they call "The Ribbon." The wikipedia article puts it well:

"These applications have been selected for the UI overhaul, because those applications center around document authoring and present a multitude of options to the same regard."

You can now blog from within Word, though that functionality has been available as an add-in for a while now.

It costs $1.50 to download Office 2007 Beta 2 and the product will cease functioning on 1 Feb 2007.

I definitely intend to upgrade.

seth godin's advice for authors

here

ht: steve addison

The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan

"What makes Rolling Thunder and the Gospel Years unique, however, is that it is the only project of its kind to explore the years during which Dylan was scandalizing the pop-culture world with recordings and performances that proclaimed Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation.

"A lot of Dylan fans are not understanding or tolerant of Dylan's gospel period or the music," Gilbert told WORLD. "But they really should love that period. That's why I was happy to delve into the subject and help give an honest appraisal."

- World Magazine Cover Story on Rolling Thunder and the Gospel Years - a documentary that delves into Dylan's publicly Christian period.

ht: andrew jackson

a great quote from john wimber

"Don’t be afraid of pain. All my life I’ve been afraid of pain. But pain’s not so bad. I’ve been in the valley and it’s not so bad. In fact the view is wonderful. You never get to see Jesus quite as well as you do in the valley.

It isn’t prosperity that gives you the complete, the indepth, the intimate view of Jesus. It’s pain. It’s in the midst of pain, it’s in the midst of heartbreak, it’s in the midst of the rendering of relationships, its in the midst of tragic circumstances that you get the heart of God revealed to you.

So don’t be afraid of pain. If God’s allowed it he’ll have purpose in it. . . I love and know my Savior today more than I have ever known him. And I am now 31 years in the Lord. I’m so grateful for cancer. I’m so grateful that I went through it. Because I could never have known Jesus the way I now know him. And frankly I could never have known my wife the way I now know her."

- wikipedia on john wimber

ht: steve addison

"Getting Things Done"

This book by David Allen is rockin my world. I'm still wrapping my brain around it but it's already making a difference. Definitely get the book, but the wikipedia summary is good and here's the whole process in a few simple graphs (pick one).

here's another nice summary.

also see

- the 43 folders wiki
- lifehack
- a Wired News story on the cultesque status of this movement

- for a summary of various software options for implementing GTD, see Getting Things Done Software Systems, part 1 and part 2 by downloadsquad.

the gospel, justice and culture

i've been really enjoying and benefiting from listening to some of the talks given at the May 2006 Reform and Resurgence Conference. ed stetzer gave two really helpful talks on culture - one more visionary and one more practical. and tim keller's talk on the gospel and his talk on social justice were both very good. audio and video links are avail at the conference site.

these talks are highly recommended.

stetzer also pointed everyone to a very helpful demographic resource peoplegroups.

Darrell Bock on Getting Started with the New Perspective on Paul

Bock suggests some bibliographical starting points for studying the NPP.

fred peatross...

...has ended his summer sabbatical and has restarted Abductive Columns.

a seed of hope

"When he was told a Jewish man was the donor, Elias was confused, the doctor said.

"There is a war between Israelis and Arabs on the one hand, and he is getting the cornea of a Jewish man, who was killed by an Arab missile," Rehany said."

- ABC news link

dissertation on emerging church blogs

bryan murley is writing a scholarly paper on the top 50 emerging church blogs as defined by technorati.

should be an interesting read.

Breaking News: Cease Fire Agreed to for Monday

-link

let's hope it sticks.

paper clips

Almost every Friday night, Beth, Michaela (10), Skye (8), and Alia (6), and I have "Family Movie Night." Tonight we decided to watch Paper Clips, a movie about what happened when in 1998 a Whitwell, TN middle school decided to collect one paper clip for every one of the six million souls that lost their lives in the Holocaust. This exclusively Protestant and almost entirely white community wished to learn about tolerance and diversity.

In October of 2001, the school was able to put 11 million paperclips (now including other groups killed by the Third Reich) in a railcar that they had found and arranged to have shipped to the US that became part of a memorial at the school.

The material was too old for Li-Li and a challenge for Skye, but Chaela and I sat thru the whole thing (Beth left with Alia).

It's a wonderful, wonderful deeply moving documentary and I highly recommend it.

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders

In the faithmaps discussion group, I recently asked one of our participants, Earl Creps - who is Associate Professor of Leadership and Spiritual Renewal at AGTS, to say a few worlds about his new book.

"My book is called Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders. I wrote it really out of my own shortcomings, so the supply of raw material was ample. Over some years in ministry, and especially after being in relationship with a number of younger leaders I noticed a disturbing trend: almost everything that God was doing to shape my life seemed to be happening outside the "official" list of spiritual disciplines (at least as understood by a used-to-be-a-Lutheran Pentecostal like me). So I began pulling together some of my experiences an came up with 12 "off-road" disciplines, spiritually formative experiences that we encounter, well, off-road, complete with all the dust, bumps, and bruises that go with leaving the pavement. After the fact, these practices seemed to fall into 6 personal (e.g., reverse mentoring) and 6 organizational (e.g., passing the baton).

I talked about some of these ideas at a conference in California last year. The talk went so badly that about 1/2 the audience left before it was over, but one of the people who stayed was an editor for Jossey-Bass. So J-B and Leadership Network have partnered to publish the book."

Endorsements:

Len Sweet:

“This is one of the most exciting books I have read in years. It shifts our focus from doing church to being church, and promises to be a standard reference in all future discussions of missional leadership.”

Todd Hunter:

“If you are trying to figure out what is going on in contemporary culture you’ve got to read Off-road Disciplines. Creps not only knows what is going on today, he teaches us how to engage today’s people as well. The chapter on “reverse mentoring” is worth the price of the book. No one can be effective in ministry today without the skills and attitudes associated with listening and conversation. Off-Road Disciplines gives us the map and points us in the right direction.”

Ed Stetzer:

“Earl Creps has written a deeply personal and challenging book--one that caused me to think about my own spiritual journey. Too many of us have made spiritual formation a series of activities and programs; Earl takes us off the map of common practice and into the places where the Spirit is at work. It reminds us that true spiritual formation pervades our lives and the ministries we serve, providing a helpful balance of being

and doing. It will be a great encouragement to all who read it.”

geekesque: From Dell to HP

Ok, so I had blogged earlier that I ordered a Dell E1505. Then I read gregg caruso's post about them blowing up and the terrible customer service he received.

Then I decided to upgrade my warranty to change it from the standard 1 year mail-in to 2 years on-site. When I bought my last Dell Inspiron 6 years ago, I had a 3 year on-site warranty and I ended up using it 2x

It took 4 or 5 calls over the course of 90 minutes before they told me that I could not do that over the phone. What I had to do was to cancel the order by phone, then go back online and reorder the box with the better warranty. And so I did.

Until now, I had always had superb service from Dell. The last two boxes I've gotten have been from Dell. So this runaround was pretty disappointing and sobering particularly since I was calling to give them more money.

But then when I read that the keyboard was a bit stiff, because I have repetitive stress issues with my hands, I decided to walk into some stores, find some notebooks with keyboards I like, and then check the CNET Reviews. I finally landed on HP's dv2000t. CNET likes it and, less importantly, it's one of the most beautiful laptops I'ver ever seen.

I called Dell again, cancelled my order, ordered the HP box online so that I could trick it out and get a really nice printer for only $20. Should be here in about 10 days or so.


image from notebook review

on writing well

from Leadership Journal:

Use action verbs
Forms of the verb “to be”—is, was, were, etc., make for dead writing. In every possible case, pick forceful verbs.

Use anecdotes
Each point in a Leadership article needs a carefully chosen illustration, colorfully written. By basing principles in specific experiences, we show how to minister effectively amid the complexity and ambiguity of real life.

Use short sentences whenever possible
Variety of length, of course, contributes to good style, but writers err more often with too many long sentences than short ones.

Use long words only when necessary
Some critics claim scholars and professionals purposely write to obfuscate meaning, to cover fuzzy thinking, or to sound intellectual. Of this Leadership writers will never be guilty!

Assume your reader bores easily
Remember, if he flips the page from lack of interest, you’ve lost! Keep asking yourself, “What grabs my attention? An illustration? A fresh insight? A well-turned phrase?” Keep the reader with you by introducing a constant stream of interesting material.

After writing your manuscript, go through it and see how many action verbs you have. Mark each noun you can taste, hear, see, smell, or feel. You can see hubcaps, handkerchiefs, coffee mugs, and lightning bugs. Good writers fill their prose with objects you literally see in your mind’s eye. Be as specific as possible. For instance, “Toyota” is better than “car” for conjuring up an image.

ht: Steve Addison

please pray for bob robinson and...

...his heart.

more on spencer burke's new book

scot mcknight completes his series:

- part 1

- part 2

- part 3

- part 4

I had earlier posted excerpts form parts 1 and 2.

Here are excerpts from part 4:

"

1. He doesn’t believe God is a “person” (195): “I’m not sure I believe in God exclusively as a person anymore either…. The truth is that seeing God as spirit more than person doesn’t destroy my faith” (195).

Instead, he is a panentheist — which means that “God is ‘in all,’ alongside my creedal view of God as Father, Son, and Spirit” (195). He emphasizes immanence, “radical connectedness” and “relational theology.” [Again, this is flat-out wrong: “panentheism” is not the view that God is in all but that all is in God, and there’s a big diference.]

[I will confess to you when I read that God is not a person, my blood boiled. To deny personhood to God, the hypostasis or “person”hood, denies the essence of Christian orthodoxy and the sole foundation for our personhood and the essence both of what the gospel is — restoring cracked (person-ed) Eikons to God, who is person — and what redemption is. This genuinely is what theologians have always called “heresy.” When he says he accepts the creedal view of Father, Son, and Spirit and then says he doesn’t believe God is “person” but “spirit” — frankly, this last statement completely undermines the former. What are the FAther, Son, and Spirit but the persons of the Godhead?]"

mcknight concludes:

"But, I have a responsibility before God to be faithful to the gospel, so I have to say the following — and I don’t do so with anything but sadness.

... I want to express my dismay today over what I think is crossing the boundaries. I will have to be frank; but I have to be fair. Here’s how I see this book’s theology as a Christian theologian. The more I ponder what Spencer does in this book, the more direct I have become — be glad I don’t have any more posts about this book.

Is Spencer a “heretic”? He says he is, and I see no reason to think he believes in the Trinity from reading this book. That’s what heresy means to me. Denial of God’s personhood flies in the face of everything orthodox. To say that you believe in the creedal view of God as Father, Son, and Spirit and deny “person” is to deny the Trinitarian concept of God.

Is Spencer a “Christian”? He says he is. What is a Christian? Is it not one who finds redemption through faith in Christ, the one who died and who was raised? If so, I see nothing in this book that makes me think that God’s grace comes to us through the death and resurrection of Christ. Grace seems to be what each person is “born into” in Spencer’s theses in this book. That means that I see no reason in this book to think Spencer believes in the gospel as the NT defines gospel (grace as the gift of God through Christ by faith).

I must say this: Spencer told me on the phone that he thinks all are included in God’s grace from the start solely because of Jesus’ death and resurrection; why not write that in this book?

Spencer, you’re a good guy. But I have to say this to you: Go back to church. Go back to the gospel of Jesus — crucified and raised. Let the whole Bible shape all of your theology. Listen to your critics. Integrate a robust Christology, a robust death-and-resurrection gospel, and a full Trinitarian theology back into your guide to eternity."

there's going to be a new Star Trek movie...

...enjoy infinite speculation here.

Mars Hill Audio...

launches a podcast!

ht: brad boydston

we had commented some time ago on how very, very helpful mars hill audio is.

on writing: why i love the chicago manual of style

When you're writing for hire, you think twice about things you typically do while writing that you now realize will garner an editor's scrutiny. For me, one of those things was beginning sentences with "but," which historically I've done with wanton abandon. Some time ago I invested in the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style to assist me with such projects. Feeling a growing sense of angst over my predisposition to begin sentences with conjunctions, this morning I flipped to my index and eventually found words I might have crafted in a daydream:

"There is a widespread belief - one with no historical or grammatical foundation - that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. Charles Allen Lloyd's 1938 words fairly sum up the situation as it stands even today: 'Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most wide-spread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with 'but' or 'and.' As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctine ever read any English themselves'"(pp. 193,194).

I'm not making this up.

"Sweet freedom whispered in my ears and I fly away."

books on the book

brother maynard does an around the room of those who make commentary recommendations. very helpful.

andy stanley visits an emergent cohort

per Adam Cleaveland via Brother Maynard

flaming laptops!

a couple of hours ago, I purchased Dell Inspiron E1505 Laptop and then read gregg caruso's post about flaming Dell laptops (with pictures) and his comment:

"I'm not a big fan of Dell computers. Last year I went through three replacement computers on a new purchase and finally switched to Mac. Both the service and the quality were extremely poor and I eventually needed to file a claim with the better business bureau."

This was the third Dell we've purchased since 2000 and so far I've been delighted with them. But we'll see!

a great john owens quote

"Every act of sin is a fruit of being weary of God."

ht: justin taylor via david wayne.

- the writings of john owens

help from anne lamott

i'm working on a first draft for a very long article i've been hired to write and I'm watching bad sentence after bad sentence pouring through my fingers onto the screen. i just read somewhere that anne lamott said something about the necessity of bad first drafts and googled her name and "first draft" and found a wonderful excerpt of her Bird by Bird:

"People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts."

- full excerpt which does not read as if it were a first draft

ok, posting that made me feel better. back to my bad writing!

watch this spot!

my friend, carmen c dicello, author of Dangerous Blessing and a contributor to the New Dictionary of Apologetics has launched a blog.

objective news sources on hezbollah and israel

some folks in response to earlier posts have been commenting with preferred news sources for the coverage of the conflict.

please feel free to comment here with the news sites you have found to be the most reliable.

thanks,

emergent village's new website

has officially been launched

with

their board of directors

and

their coordinating group

and

a weblog

and

a podcast.

israel, lebanon, and hezbollah

jordon serves up a helpful around-the-room of christian comment on the current middle east crisis.

scot mcknight reviews spencer burke's new book

excerpts:

"What I most like about this book is that Spencer is committed to Jesus. Here are his words:

“Do I remain personally committed to Jesus and his teachings as found in the Bible? I do” (11)."

but

"Spencer’s operative definition of love, though never stated, is tolerance, niceness, relational network, non-condemning, and respect of others. Fine — but that is not how Jesus defined it or practiced it. No matter how hard it is for us, Matthew 23 and chps. 5-7 have to be wedged into our definition of love if we want to “follow Jesus” in his teachings. To use Jesus’ term love to defend the inclusiveness found in Heretic’s Guide is to surrender what Jesus meant by it. I don’t know how Spencer can say Jesus “didn’t condemn” (139)."

and

"John 14:6 comes up twice in these chapters. Here’s what Spencer says:

1. Christianity didn’t exist as a religion when Jesus wrote these words. (If he means “institutional church,” he’s right. I don’t see any connection to John 14:6 in this point: it has to do with following Jesus rather than joining a religion.)
2. No one recorded the words of Jesus. (Probable, but Bob Gundry’s dissertation argued otherwise; others have contended the oral tradition was strong enough that what Jesus said was remembered.)
3. So we have no proof these are his words. (Spencer, don’t play that game unless you know what you are talking about.)
4. He spoke in Aramaic, therefore we can’t take anything literally. (Spencer, you’ve got to be kidding me; this flies in the face of all translation theory.)"

• part 1
  
• part 2

greg gilbert on greg boyd and politics in the pulpit

"Life and Marriage have been swept up into our national politics in the last thirty years. Both of them are undeniably “political issues” now. But long before they became that, they were issues about which God spoke to us in Scripture, and that doesn’t change just because the nation has developed an interest in them. It’s true that the church should never become just a wing of any political party. But the church has to speak where Scripture speaks, and Scripture most definitely speaks about abortion and marriage. Whether one political party or another decides to agree with us is beside the point."

- link
- Greg Boyd in the NY Times

scot mcknight knocks off andrew jones

from the throne of technorati's emerging church tag. andrew was unavailable for comment but holds both the 2nd and 3rd slots!

bryan murley is doing his dissertation on the top 50.

(emergesque stands at 25th, or 24th if you exclude carla)

emergent village's new coordinating group

has been posted here. Among others we see

• jamie arpin-ricci
  
  
• jordon cooper
  
  
• john r franke
  
  
• steve knight
  
  
• scot mcknight
  
  
• will samson

resonating with mike todd regarding the silence over lebanon and israel

Today I read in my Washington Post the article "A Refuge that Became a Place of Death":

"Cradled in his arms was the 27th victim pulled from a partially buried room that had sheltered 63 people in the southern Lebanese village of Qana. The victim's name was Abbas Hashem, and he was 1 year old. His blue pacifier still dangled from his green tank top

...

Twelve-year-old Hussein Hashem was removed, curled in a fetal position, his mouth covered in dirt. He was rushed to an ambulance, the jostling making him look lifelike.

...

Then Abbas Hashem, the baby, emerged, his frail body held above the crowd. A purple bruise covered his forehead, his tongue hung out. He was coated in dust. At one point, a rescue worker gingerly wiped the dirt off his cheek."

One of my co-workers is Lebanese - a 1st generation American born in DC. I asked her this AM if she had any people there. She said that she did but that - for now - they're ok. I told her that I would pray for them.

I posted a few days ago on the morality of modern war. Not one comment. I was surprised when the post hardly received any traffic, compared to other posts.

I really resonate with mike todd's complaint as to the church's silence on this issue.

kudos, however, to Christianity Today who has been posting a variety of viewpoints on the situation.

I repeat, I don't believe our response to this is just to debate just war theory versus pacifism. One of the things that made me proud of the American (and Canadian) church had been her response to Katrina - I think I am only aware of one church that didn't send someone down to practically help. So surely there are some practical steps we can take to address this situation, including blogging about it as mike has done. I would love to see a discussion break out about what those steps are and then see some of us taking those steps. I'm open to suggestions. Please make suggestions.

With regards to the Israel-Lebanon conflict, there seems to me to be some no-brainer ethical violations going on here on both sides of the conflict. Israel is our ally (US) so I think we have the most influence with them to work very hard to protect innocents. I was encouraged to read about the 48 hour cease fire, even if it was limited - though now it seems that's not going to happen (reports seem confused). But I fully realize that Hezbollah needs to be held accountable too.

What do you think?

Darrell Bock on Gospel Commentaries

Dr. Darrell Bock, Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, has been blogging on the best commentaries for the Gospels. He's posted on

• Matthew
  
  
• Mark
  
  
• Luke
  
  
• John
  

Kyle's Film is Done

Josh Franer announces that the DVD has finally been shipped off for replication.

- more on Kyle, the film, and his death.

Is this Real?

My Dad forwarded me an email with this picture - called a Fire Rainbow - that had been forwarded a zillion times. My experience has been that 49x out of 50 when I get an email like this it's a hoax. So I simply googled "fire rainbow" and hoax and discovered...

...that it's real!

from Snopes.com:

"This is a real photograph of an atmospheric phenomenon known as a circumhorizon(tal) arc, the example shown above was captured on camera as it hung for about an hour across a several-hundred square mile area of sky above northern Idaho (near the Washington border) on 3 June 2006.

In general, a circumhorizontal arc (or "fire rainbow") appears when the sun is high in the sky (i.e., higher than 58° above the horizon), and its light passes through diaphanous, high-altitude cirrus clouds made up of hexagonal plate crystals. Sunlight entering the crystals' vertical side faces and leaving through their bottom faces is refracted (as through a prism) and separated into an array of visible colors. When the plate crystals in cirrus clouds are aligned optimally (i.e., with their faces parallel to the ground), the resulting display is a brilliant spectrum of colors reminiscent of a rainbow. "

Katrina By The Numbers

We're coming up on the anniversary of Katrina and it's truly amazing how much work still needs to be done. But when the scope of the storm's damage is surveyed, it becomes less surprising that the recovery will take years.

While we were in Covington, LA in June with KatrinaGrace, I picked up Tulane University's Professor of History Douglas Brinkley's The Great Deluge where he chronicles events surrounding Hurricane Katrina from Saturday 27 August (Katrina hit LA and MS on the Monday 29 August) to Saturday 3 September 2005. As I've been reading, I've been jotting down some of the numbers (some of these numbers are from other sources as noted, primarily the wikipeida article on Katrina):

• 90,000 - the number of square miles declared a federal disaster - this is almost the size of Great Britain
• 1836 - estimated deaths
• 705 - number of still people missing as of 19 May, 2006
• 460,000 - the population of New Orleans before the storm
• 230,000 - estimated population of New Orleans in June 2006 [from Reuters via Wikipedia]
• 125 miles per hour - top sustained winds when Katrina hit the Louisiana coast
  
• 150 miles - the number of miles inland Katrina traveled before she lost hurricane strength
• 2,430 - number of children separated from their parents
• 112,000 - the number of New Orleans residents who didn't own cars
• 1,500,000 - the number of folks who requested FEMA assistance after the storm
  
• 27.9% - percentage of New Orleans' population below the poverty line before the storm
  
• 11.7% - percentage of New Orleans' population 65 or older before the storm
  
• 181 square miles - size of New Orleans
• 50,000,000 cubic yards - estimated amount of Gulf Coast debris (equivalent to 400 football fields stacked 50 feet high)
• 350,000 - number of automobiles destroyed in New Orleans by Katrina
• 35,000 - number of boats destroyed in New Orleans by Katrina
• 230,000 - number of Katrina evacuees who went to Texas
• over $150 billion - possible total economic impact

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at Goddard Space Flight Center

Former Bush Speechwriter and Advisor Michael Gerson on Christians in the Public Square

"I think there are lots and lots of young people, in their 20s to 40s, who are very impatient with older models of social engagement like those used by the Religious Right. They understand the importance of the life issues and the family issues, but they know the concern for justice has to be broader and global. At least a good portion of the evangelical movement is looking for leaders who have a broader conception of social justice."

- full CT interview

The Full Obit on Leon Morris

can be found here.

I actually can't remember when I didn't own his Commentary on John.

ht: brother maynard

scot mcknight remembers leon morris

"I once wrote Leon a long letter, explaining to him how grateful I was to him for his writing. I explained to him that I began atonement studies with his Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, which I have read three times. The book truly was seminal, and many to this day use it to construct a penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. In seminary I read his commentary on John, and when I began teaching at TEDS I read his New Testament Theology. I simply told him that he had a big influence on my life.

He graciously wrote me back, I stuck his letter in one of his books on my shelf, and occasionally I have opened the book to have the letter fall to the floor. Today I pulled it out and read it again, and I gave thanks to God for who he was."

link

jordon: how many scot mcknights are there??

scot answers.

dependence

it made me feel so dumb.

on sunday i was running the same path i've run near our house for a decade when suddenly i tripped on a sidewalk block that was a bit higher than its neighbor. i think i then took one more step and then landed on my knee, hands, left shoulder, and - most significantly - my head right on the sidewalk in approximately that order.

i lay there for a while self-assessing and then sat up with a bloody cartoonesque bump growing over my left eye. a kind elderly gentleman slowed his car, backed up, rolled down his window and asked, "are you alright?" honestly not sure, I responded, "am i?" "you don't look so good," he informed me. i walked up to his car and looked in his mirror. he was right.

he graciously drove me home and dropped me off. at that moment, beth drove up, looked at me and said, "we're going to the emergency room." we got there, they signed me in and let me know that i was going to get a cat scan. my knee was also banged up so they xrayed that. 3.5 hours later i left seriously bruised, bleeding and banged up but now with word that there was no concussion, no bleeding in the brain, and no broken bones. but i felt (and feel) that i had been hit by a truck and look just a bit like frankenstein (now with a black eye to boot). and - being diabetic - it's done a number on my blood sugar and i'm having to make adjustments to drive that back down.

it's been very humbling and instructive.

we are so dependent.

i went walking today for an hour over the same path i ran and noticed how many sidewalk blocks are higher than their neighbor. after a decade of running i just happened to hit one higher block just right. and i tumbled down.

it's been otherwise a humbing year. we had to put down our dog after it bit someone working on our house (and it wasn't the first time sage had bitten someone). she was the first dog i had ever really bonded with. and - far more significantly - i recently lost one of my best friends, maybe forever - i really don't know.

these and other things have really driven me toward god.

i realized i was doing it again - living by myself - gliding by on strength and passion and gift and intention and busyness and needs and wants and desires and work and projects and fun and fear. some things good - some things bad. but not living by Him, with Him, for Him, to Him. not doing any of that.

and so I turn.


















photo courtesy of jesper markward olsen on stock xchng

Leon Morris

Justin Taylor announces that the great New Testament scholar passed away on Monday 24 July. He was 92.

- wikipedia entry

note: because wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia and article are generally editable at any time, its articles can sometimes be unreliable.

rick warren has...

...started a blog.

ht: The Blogging Church

so long, organic church

right on the heals of missional baptist, organic church says, "good night."

The Morality of Modern War: Noncombatants

"How should I respond to my seven-year-old daughter when she is terrified by the news and images of destruction in my country? The bombing of bridges we recently traveled upon, the demolition of our only airport, where my daughter was happily running around just a few weeks ago. What should I say to her when a house was destroyed and 11 people in it killed in one air strike? What should I say to her when a two-year-old child was literally cut in half in a vicious air strike?"

- Riad Kassis from West Bekaa, Lebanon in Christianity Today

"They say they're hitting Hezbollah, but they're hitting the people. They're hitting the children," said Hussein Yaacoub, who fled his border village of Houla on Saturday. He grabbed the shoulder of his 5-year-old son, Mohammed. "Is he Hezbollah?"

-"Residents of Besieged City Feel 'Just Left Here to Die'", Washington Post, Friday 21 July 2006

"The road returns to Tyre, where the city prepared to inter in a temporary grave 81 corpses collected from the villages of southern Lebanon. Once the fighting subsided and the roads were safe again, their families would bury them in their own towns. ...

"This is so inhuman," said Rabia Abu Khashb, 28, as he surveyed the coffins, 15 sized in half for children.

"God protect them," he said softly. "God awaits them." ...

Down the row were the coffins of two children from the same family: Qassem Mohammed Ghannam and Zeinab Mohammed Ghannam.

A women in black sobbed. "My sweetheart, yesterday you were playing with me. Who will I play with tomorrow?"

- Road Through a Landscape of Death, Washington Post, Sat 22 July

"During the 1930s, when the Spanish town of Guernica was bombed and the Japanese used similar tactics on Chinese cities, the world responded with moral outrage. In 1939, after the Nazi bombings of civilian populations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that:

'The ruthless bombings form the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population...has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity.... I am therefore addressing this urgent appeal to every government which may be engaged in hostilities publically to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and in no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities.'

In 1940 Winston Churchill also denounced air bombardment of cities as 'a new and odious form of attack.'

The British Foreign Office stated:

'His Majesty's Government have made it clear that it is no part of their policy to bomb non-military objectives, no matter what the policy of ht German Government may be. In spite of the wanton and repeated attacks of the German Air Force on undefended towns in Poland, Norway, France, Holland, and Belgium, His Majesty's Government steadily adhere to this policy.'

Later in the same year in response to Luftwaffe attacks on British cities the Royal Air Force began to raid German industrial cities. In 1942 the British started a policy of ' obliteration bombing' intended to terrorize the German people and reduce their 'will to resist.' By 1943 the United States Air Force joined the English in obliteration bombing. On August 3, 1943 after Hamburg had been pounded by ten days of concentrated air raids, 60,000 acres of the city caught fire and turned in what was to be called a 'fire storm.' This meant that the entire city began to function as a huge furnace. those who had taken refuge in shelters were gradually roasted alive as the temperatures mounted, and others who tried to escape the inferno were carried back into its center by high winds. The effect at Hamburg was unintended, but the obliteration bombing of Dresden in 1945 was deliberately planned. The city was crowded with refugees and, despite later claims that it was the center of poison=gas production, in reality it was of slight military importance. Waves of British bombers laid a fire storm over eleven square miles of the city. Temperatures soared to 1000 degrees centigrade and hurricane-strength winds swept people and objects into the core of the city. The number o bodies was so enormous that it took weeks to dispose of them and estimates of the dead vary between one hundred thousand and a quarter of a million."

from Robert G. Clouse's War: Four Christian Views (featuring Herman A. Hoyt, Myron S. Augsburger, Arthur F. Holmes, and Harold OJ Brown), pp. 189-191 of Clouse's Postscript (emphases mine)

The recent quotes above are about the dead in Lebanon. I could easily find similar quotes about innocent dead in Israel.

I think that we in the church need to have a conversation that transcends Just War versus Pacifism.

That conversation needs to be about "collateral damage" or the seeming disregard of combatants from the injury and death of innocents during wartime. It seems to now be an accepted part of warfare, but Roosevelt and Churchill's comments above show that has not always been the case.

We need to decide what's right (I think I know) and then we need to use our voice.

- resources on the current Middle East conflict

More Background on Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon

I've built out a faithmaps page on the Middle East with background information on Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon and the current conflict.

If you're aware of a good resource, please let me know in comments.

summaries of many fine books

by David Mays including

• The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren
• The DNA of Relationships by Gary Smalley
• The Fred Factor by Fred Sanborn
• Revolution by George Barna

and many, many more.

ht: Steve Addison

educating yourself on hezbollah, lebanon, and israel

jordon points us to a good place to get started here.

it's stories like...

....this one that make me think we need to be careful not to go too hog-pig wild about postmodernism!

ht: jordon

a great ec cartoon

courtesy of dave walker

ht: jonny baker

"Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon"

- link

"Martin Accad is the academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon. He was teaching at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, last week and is now unable to return home."

Christianity Today writes:

"When covering international crises, such as the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Christianity Today takes care to listen to evangelical Christian leaders in the places most affected. We may find their views corrective, provocative, or even abhorrent at times, but in each case we learn about areas where we stand together and areas where we disagree. In the case of this submission from Martin Accad, academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, there are many areas where we strongly agree, and there are some areas (particularly his characterization of Israel's history and U.S. diplomacy) where we strongly disagree. We present it here to illuminate at least one Lebanese Christian leader's perspective."

Missional Baptist Goes Dark

Steve McCoy, one of the most influential blogger-pastors serving at the nexus of the Southern Baptists and the Emerging Church Conversation, has decided that Missional Baptist has served its purpose.

""Because of this blog I'm often introduced as "Steve McCoy...the blogger." I've even been recognized as "THE Steve McCoy," which I suppose is better than "A Steve McCoy." I'm looking forward to the day when I'm recognized as "Pastor Steve McCoy, the guy with that church that is changing the world."

Steve, however, will continue his online missional adventure on Reformissionary.

Dr Rikk E Watts on the Gospel of Judas

"So yes GJu is a new and interesting discovery for students of an aberrant and marginal second century group. But I suspect that once the circus has left town, more sober minds will see the present media brouhaha for what it is: a great deal of overblown fuss about a mildly interesting curiosity. Perhaps the more interesting question, at least for me as a member of the academy, is why do scholars who really ought to know better behave in this way? Would you buy a used car from them?"

link

• suggested resources on the gospel of judas
  
  
• suggested resources on the da vinci code
  

a heart-rending letter from lebanon

"What should I respond to my seven year-old daughter when she is terrified with the news and images of destruction of nearby bridges where we were traveling on hours ago, the demolishing and burning of our only airport that she was running happily in a few weeks ago? What should I say to her when a house and eleven people in it were all killed in one air strike? What should I say to her when a two-year old child was literally cut in two halves in a vicious air strike?"

link

ht: Mike Todd

KatrinaGrace Team VII Pics and Update

For those of you interested in our work with Katrina Survivors in the New Orleans Metro area, we've just gotten pictures from our 7th Team that returned a couple of weeks ago. They can be found here. You can get just an idea of how much work still needs to be done.

When I went down in May/June, I was particularly struck by how much damage there still was in the Lower 9th Ward.

We've just learned that Habitat for Humanity in Slidell, LA (pics from May-June in Slidell) wants to build 100 homes in a year and very much need volunteers. We are just beginning planning to send teams there. Our host church when we are in Covington - Trinity - just agreed to let us stay there while we work in Slidell. We'll be doing the work under their auspices.

The 8 Teams we've sent so far have been

• Work Teams - gutting out houses, clearing out trees, etc
• Compassion Teams - meeting with those who need pastoral care
• Cooking Teams - cooking for the Work Teams
• Planning Teams (quick and small) - we did one of these to map out 2006

Trinity has asked for more Compassion Teams and it looks like we might be sending some Building Teams. We expect to be visiting the area well into 2007 if not beyond. Though it's not in the news as much as it was, the amount of devastation still in the area is difficult to comprehend.

There are at least three good things rising out of the devastation:

1. I personally have only heard of one or two churches that aren't sending people to the area to help. The response of Christ's church has been wonderful.
   
   
2. The people that we've met have a very high opinion of the church in the light of all the folks working to help.
   
   
3. Most importantly, as Katrina has been a major paradigm shifting event, people in the area are seeking and finding God.
   

making blogger better

jordon gives us some good thoughts.

cs lewis on being a better writer

justin taylor quotes a letter from lewis on how to be a better writer.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association has announced...

...their 2006 Christian Book Award Winners here.

Beginner's Guides to Podcasting and Vlogging

I don't do either but good friends of mine are considering getting into the fray (and I'm toying with the idea).

And so I asked the very knowledgeable and extremely wired DJ Chuang if he might recommend some good introductory sites/articles.

6.3 seconds later, he responded with

• Audio Podcasting
  
  
• Make Your First Podcast
• How to Podcast
• How to Podcast
• Beginners Guide to Podcasts and Podcasting
• How to Create Your Own Podcast: A Step-by-Step Tutorial
  
  
• Video Podcasting (aka Video Blogging, Vlogging, Vodcast)
  
  
• freevlog
• How to Vodcast
• What is Vlogging (and How to Get Started)

If you're saying to yourself, "He should have listed..." then please by all means educate me in the comments and I'll add the site.

frappr: where are my friends?

a dear friend introduced me to frappr and then one or two of the 'mappers got into it. it's a pretty cool way to graphically represent where your online friends live. frappr also has a widget that lets you automatically garner all your friends email addresses from hotmail, gmail, yahoo, or aol and then select which ones you'd like to invite to your map. i've found it a great way to get back in touch with old friends who i hadn't emailed in ages.

emergesque readers are free to add themselves to my map!