if you're looking for online resources for bible study...

...and, specifically, word studies, look no further than the comments on this Scot McKnight post.

Reviews on A Heretics Guide to Eternity

rick meigs links to a number of reviews of spencer burke's recent controversial book.

kudos to beth

I'm married to a wonderful woman. On Sat 7 October 2006, Beth biked 100 miles in a Nor'Easter in the Seagull Century. She was riding with Team in Training to raise money for leukemia and lymphoma cancer research. Team in Training raised over $800,000 for cancer research in this event.

The girls and I met Beth @ Assateague Island, 60 miles into her trek (pics). Beth wore ribbons to represent cancer victims - white ribbons represented those who've passed (including Beth's dad when she was 12 and then her step-dad when she was 17) and purple for those who have beaten cancer (including my first cousin, Robert Thompson and my aunt, Peggy Edwards).

I'm so proud of her I could bust! She did a great job.

The History and Significance of Next Wave

A-List Emerging Church Blogger Andrew Jones pronounces that

Next-Wave "is possibly the greatest emerging church online publication ever."

The founder and publisher of Next-Wave - Charlie Wear - provides a brief history of the zine.

andy rowell has no regard whatsoever...

...for your spending your free time in any kind of balanced way.

:)

Find a veritable smorgasbord of ipod food courtesy of andy here and here.

Next Wave: What's a faithmap?

Charlie Wear announces the October 2006 edition of Next-Wave and that Bob Hyatt is the online zine's new editor.

I had never published a piece explaining the definition of "faithmap" outside of my sites. Bob runs "What's a faithmap?" in this issue.

jason clark reviews spencer's burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity

"I was sent this book by the publishers, and avoided blogging on it, mainly because I usually only review books I find helpful, and I wondered what purpose reviewing is unfavorably would serve. Then I read this post on Tony Jones blog, about whether Emergent was moving beyond the orthodox, and that got me thinking about where the boundaries are for our discussions."

- full review

They've also sent me a copy and I do intend to review it. It's in the queue.

Daniel B Wallace on Inerrancy

An interesting take in inerrancy

ht: andrew jones

"Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son metier."

bob carlton has a wonderful post that speaks to some of the admiration and amazement that I've felt in the last few days regarding the amish response to the recent horrible killing of their children.

in just one of many stories on the amish response and perspective, the ny times ran a story about how dozens of amish attended the killer's funeral.

- other stories

the new third place and the declining cost of information

UPDATE: I had already linked to it below, but I just wanted to especially highlight that Tim Keller and Tony Jones interact with each other and Scot McKnight and others within DJ's blog in comments. Not to be missed.

as dj chuang pointed out, we had a great time at lunch yesterday. dj and i hadn't seen each other since the hard times emerging church cohort confab over a year ago.

I asked dj if he had ever heard of a blogger hack that allows you to set up the same option you see on jesus creed so that when you leave a comment, you can opt into getting emails whenever anyone else comments on the same blogpost. he said that he didn't but told me about cocomment which allows you to sign up and follow all the posts on which you comment. now while that's undeniably cool, and I might use it, I'd like to set something up on this blog that serves my readers and doesn't force them elsewhere. I'll either wait for blogger to add it or switch to WordPress (comments or alternative suggestions welcome).

this has become more important to me since I shut down the faithmaps discussion group. i finding i'm more interested in comment here and will probably pay attention to it more. And whereas in the past, there seemed to be more interest in discussion groups, nowadays folks seem to be doing more of their online discussion in blogs.

In fact - and more significantly - blogs seem to be the new third place where various ideological streams can co-mingle and interact. we've seen this recently with the somewhat amiable collision (here and here) between the new reformers and emergent precipitated by the just completed Desiring God 2006 Conference entitled Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World and in the even more amiable very minor collision between an emerging church reformer and a new reformer within the conference itself.

while I do have a dog in the fight (that I may post later), here i'm just commenting on the discussion itself. it's quite notable as an illustration of our new information situation:

A conference occurs and the sessions are posted quickly for all to hear. within one session, one presenter makes mildly critical comments of another (in the context of criticizing himself). this leads to much online discussion and then one the presenters emails the other to demonstrate relational unity and then the conversation is posted after permission for the world to see. controversy begun and ended in record time.

meanwhile, tony jones reveals that piper's comments on the emergent church at the conference didn't occur outside of a relational context and invites more discussion with tim keller which begins in the comments of tony's blog (with keller commenting further here).

i've heard more than one major leader complain about blogs and surely they can be maddening. anyone in the developed world with a little financial means can basically broadcast whatever they think in completely unexpurgated fashion to anyone.

but i have to say that I find all this conversation between different theological perspectives a wonderful thing. while there is absolutely no question that tony is correct to value the wider sensory bandwidth that came with his interaction with piper and would come with his desired meeting with keller, the immediacy of online interaction does not limit the conversation to the severe time, coordination, and financial constraints involved in having to be in the same room at the same time.

the bottom line is that with the lowered cost of information afforded us by blogs, discussion groups, audio downloads, etc. we can move more quickly in coming to mutual understanding. If we want to.

Is it a panacea of theological formulation?

Of course not, because while the conversation is easier to have, the maturity that's required for such a conversation is still very difficult to come by (which I've discussed here and here).

Our humility and character will still dictate whether or not we'll all be able to strengthen the church within our new information situation. But if those are in place, we do now have the ability to have our own perspectives adjusted, widened, or sharpened more quickly.

penal substitution: andrew jones posts an around the room...

....summarizing some of the current and recent discussion on the issue.

If you need a primer on the topic and current state of discussion, here's a good place to start with links to some of the primary folks talking about this recently.

James Sire on NT Wright's "Simply Christian"

James Sire commends and reviews the recent book by NT Wright's entitled Simply Christian.

emergent's tony jones, john piper, and tim keller

Tony Jones reports on his recent lunch with John Piper and also responds to Tim Keller's recent comments about emergent.

ht: justin taylor

I expect that Keller will reach out to Jones for a conversation.

UPDATE (thanks to dj chuang in comments below): Tim Keller has briefly responded to Tony in comments to Tony's post above.

Summaries of the Supremacy of Christ in the Postmodern World Conference

Roger Overton does a good job at briefly summarizing the major talks of this Desiring God 2006 Conference. He also helpfully links to other summaries covered.

I'm now listening to the messages which are downloadable here.

piper and driscoll aren't fighting

mark driscoll posts their email exchange after piper made some critical (yet also self-depreciating) remarks at a recent Desiring God conference.

- ht: steve mccoy

andrew jones on his history with "the emerging church"

"A little more history of my love-hate relationship with what is now called “Emerging Church”. Put this account with other histories to get a fuller version of what has happened in the last two decades in the church of North America and around the Western world.

I should start by saying that what happened in USA twenty years ago was not called “emerging church” nor “missional church”. In fact, it wasn't even recognized as a movement or trend or even a 'conversation' until many years later. Here is the beginning of my history - at least from my viewpoint."

- the rest of part 1

to the best of my remembrance, andrew and i have never met, but I have seen him. Several years ago at Cedar Ridge (which Brian McLaren founded and I attended from 1988 until 2001), Andrew Jones, Brian, John Franke, and Mark Driscoll participated in a small conference. I remember a tall guy on the panel. I don't think at that time I had ever read his blog. Now, of course, Andrew's an emerging church household name. :)

twice in the last week, i've asked beth if she'd like to move to australia...

...with me of course!

...because i'm finding so much resonance with their flavor of emerging church.

tim keller on the future of emergent

the following is an excerpt of a justin taylor interview of
tim keller:

JT: Tim, is the emergent church going to be a footnote or a chapter in the history of the church?

TK: If you define evangelicalism in a John Stott kind of way, the seeker movement is inside evangelicalism. The emergent church is moving away from orthodoxy. In places like Yale, there is a post-liberal emphasis on the text that shows a distinction from old liberalism. This emergent group is really much like this group. Emergent will never really grow as they will not plant churches or build colleges. They may produce some writers… but that is probably about all.

JT: Is emergent growing?

TK: It is producing pundits, but not community and institutions.

- full interview captured by Paul W Martin

Not sure if keller is collapsing emergent and the emerging church into the same entity; it would seem to be that he's not as many emerging churches are new churches.

I think that all of us - irrespective of idealogical stripe - need to view keller's words as a cautionary. It is so easy to be lost in words instead of lost in Jesus. And to be lost in Jesus is to alternate between meditation and execution.

ht: jordon

witherington on porn

Ben Witherington has a wonderfully sane and helpful post on pornography.

different currents in the emerging church river

I just finished reading andrew hamilton's wonderful four part blogpost series on da carson's recent visit to Baptist Theological College of Western Australia where he participated in conversations with

• andrew hamilton
  
  
• geoff westlake
  
  
• brian harris

The entire series is worth reading and provides more than a passing glance into the emerging church situation in Australia.

• 1st Post
  
  
• 2nd Post
  
  
• 3rd Post
  
  
• 4th Post
  
  
• 5th Post

According to Andrew Hamilton, the emerging church in Australia (which some there call "the emerging missional church") is somewhat different from the most famous current in the emerging church river in the United States. The article also provides more evidence that Steve Taylor is correct that to lose the distinction between the emerging church and emergent is to collapse the international discussion down to one current in the larger river.

ht: brother maynard