Another friend blogging…

Just after posting about my friends who blog, I found out that another good friend of mine just started a blog. Her name is Jenna, and she is a friend from Ecclesia. She also participated in “the Experiment.” She is an elementary school teacher. I am looking forward to her blog because she has a good sense of humor that I enjoy. Check it out: Herding cats…

Friends Who Blog

Because I am currently in a slow season here on the blog, it felt like a good time to tell you about some of my friends who blog so you can check them out. They are all over the map as far as style and perspective, but they are all my friends.

Matt

Matt is a very good friend of mine from Ecclesia. He and I have been in a small group together for the last few years. He is an engineer who works with robots. He recently started blogging (again). So far, he is writing about all sorts of things, from personal finance to exploited workers in the third world to the effects of living together before marriage. He applies a focused analytical mind to everything he does, but he is one of the more authentically caring people I know.

Joe

Joe, likewise, is a friend from Ecclesia. Joe’s blog, from the looks of it, started as his thoughts while studying in England. I didn’t know Joe then, so I can’t tell you much about that. Recently, I found his blog and saw that he is posting again. I mentioned before that Joe made a couple of posts about N. T. Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said. Hopefully, he will continue sharing his thoughts, because they are worth hearing. A while back, I posted some thoughts after a class that he taught in Ecclesia about holiness. Joe is sharp, funny, and a solid guy.

Dan

Dan grew up in the same church as me. Both my wife and I knew him when we were younger, as he was a leader for us in Sunday school and the youth group. But that was a while ago. He has gone on to study theology at some significant schools, under some important theologians, amassing some impressive degrees. His blog is covers issues in politics, theology, poetry, and music. On the surface, he and I may seem to have fairly different political and theological outlooks. However, if you can read between the lines, there are some fundamental theological positions we share. For that reason I find his blog stimulating and fun. Of course, I would recommend the blog simply because he has good taste in music and because he is a friend.

Dahvede

Dahvede was a student of mine in junior high and high school. He is currently a missionary in New Zealand, working with YWAM. He blogs about his thoughts and experiences while doing this. I don’t know if he would use these terms for himself, but I’d characterize him as missional, reformed, and charismatic. In my book, that is a good combination. He is a man who is passionate about following Jesus wherever he leads.

Michelle (My Wife)

I saved the best for last. My wife, Michelle, has started a blog. It is impossible to be unbiased about your wife, but I think that even if I was not in love with her, I would recommend that you read her blog. She is both intelligent and wise. She is a high school English teacher. I’m not sure all that she is planning to write about, but I imagine she will write about faith, justice, simple living, family life, literature, and whatever amusing thoughts she has.

Also, check out my other friend’s blogs on the sidebar. Steve and Brian have good tumblelogs of interesting stuff they have found on the web. Kiley has some good recipes. Bryant and Dean have some good music. Chris is one of my pastors. Brett and Sam are former students. Jacob and Emily are friends from college. Wes, Jaemey, and Alison are friends from Ecclesia.

Also, don’t forget to check out my tumblelog as well. I post there more often than here.

Here is my recommendation. If you are not using a feed reader, get one. (I use GoogleReader.) Then, subscribe to these blogs.

Religion in the News and Public Discussion

I want to recommend to you two blogs/columns that are incredibly fascinating when it comes to religion in the news and American life. If you don’t read them, you should.

Get Religion is basically news about religious news. It examines how major media and news sources cover different religious issues. It does a great job pointing out the story behind the stories, as well as poking at the assumptions and misunderstandings of the media when it comes to religion. They are fair, insightful, and they point out things most of us miss when we read the news.

On Faith is fairly new, I think, but is fascinating. It is sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek. From a missional perspective, this is one of the best sources of input about the religious opinions of the American public. The column poses a question about faith in America each week and a panel of famous religious leaders responds, giving their opinion from a wide variety of religious perspectives. Look at the list of contributers. It is a stacked group. Some of my favorite people read include Miroslav Volf, Brian McLaren, R. Albert Mohler, Richard Mouw, Luis Palau, Desmond Tutu, Rick Warren, Jim Wallis, Elie Wiesel, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan. (Even when I don’t agree with them.) There are Christians, Jews, pagans, Muslims, atheists, and others. It is very, very interesting. I almost never have time to read them all, but I think it gives a great window into the world of religion in America. From a missional perspective, it is invaluable. This week’s question about whether America is a Christian nation is very interesting. Other questions cover topics such as conversation between people of different religions, interfaith marriages, Christian and Muslim relations, and religious fundamentalism. It is fascinating.

The Prestige

The Prestige was awesome! Very intriguing. Good twists. Good study of the nature of obsession. Probably one of my top 5 favorite movies. Go see it.

Free Derek Webb CD

FreeDerekWebb.com

A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

This is great: A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

See also the CT interview with Bob Webber, one of the framers of the document: Together in the Jesus Story

Two Great Musical Finds

So, I stole one of my student's iPod this week, and as I perused the music on it, I found some great stuff. Two artists, I want to pass on to you:

• Mat Kearney
• Phil Wickham

It has been a while since I have been excited about any Christian artists. I've been listening to these two guys non-stop since Sunday, and it makes me not want to give the iPod back. (Sorry, Sam.)

iMonk on the God-Shaped Void

I enjoyed this article by the Internet Monk: A God-Shaped Void? Maybe Not. It was food for thought.

Two Weeks Back

Like a lot of other youth pastors, I’m sure, I am finding this blog to be very interesting: Two Weeks Back.

A youth pastor decided to go back to high school for two weeks and blog his experiences. His observations and experiences are funny and interesting. I recommend it for anybody who works with youth.

Sinclair Ferguson’s 10 Commandments of Preaching

While reading the Ref21 blog today, I stumbled upon some articles on the Reformation 21 main website. I really appreciated these two articles by Sinclair Ferguson on preaching. I hope I can embody these principles more and more as I grow in my preaching:

A Preacher’s Decalogue (Part 1)
A Preacher’s Decalogue (Part 2)

Keller blog…sort of…

Rember how I said in the last post that the only thing that could compare to a Driscoll blog would be a Keller blog? Well, today I found that Tim Keller’s kids have a blog: Name Pending. They are posting excerpts of Tim Keller’s new book, as well as a good number of sermons. Good enough for me.

Driscoll’s Blog

Well, it happened. Mark Driscoll has entered blog-land. I’m very excited about it, too. Just three posts into his blog, things are looking good. His post on Schuller is excellent. His thoughts on the emerging church are great, and I look forward to more. The only thing better than a Driscoll blog would be a Keller blog…one day maybe…check it out: Resurgence

Back from the Big Easy

I’m back from Louisiana. I’m going to blog about that tommorow, but I’ll just say that it’s really bad. I know that it is probably obvious, but there the reality doesn’t really hit you at a certain level until you see it for yourself.

I finished The Connecting Church on the plane. It was excellent! I’ll write more about this also. The short response is that I have not longed for very many things more than I long to have the kind of community in this book. Other than being united with Michelle in marriage and seeing Jesus recreate the world as its King, I have never felt a craving for anything quite as strong as this. My soul aches for the type of community described in the book.

When I got back, I found out, sadly that John Piper has cancer. We should pray for the Pipers and Bethlehem. My church has seen the challenges when cancer and serious illness hits leaders in the church. They will need prayer. It does sound, thankfully, like it is not going to be severe in the long run.

When using the bathroom at my inlaw’s house, I had a chance to read some CT (thanks to my father-in-law putting a recent edition on the back of the toilet.) There was an interesting editorial by Andy Crouch about how Christians influence culture. I thought it made some good distinctions about how people go about infulencing culture for Christ. When looking up this article online, I also found a good one he did about C. S. Lewis and Harry Potter. As a fan of both, I found it interesting.

Also, I let it slip this morning in my sermon to the youth group that I had a blog of my own (beyond the one on our youth group website). Some of the students may search for me. I don’t know if they will find me. If you guys do stumble across the blog, welcome. You’ll find that I speak pretty freely here. I hope you fill find, like we talked about this morning, that I am promoting community, and not slandering or gossiping about people here. (Dad, I know you’ll find me. Welcome. Feel free to comment. A little online father-son debate could break out, who knows? It’ll be fun. Once you set up your blog, we can comment on each other’s stuff. I’ll add a link to your blog on my sidebar, once you set it up too.)

I’m taking the day off tommorow, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to blog.

Russell Moore’s Kingdom of Christ Lectures

On the Sundays around Christmas and New Years, our church does not have Sunday School classes or youth group activities, instead, we simply have corporate worship. That means that the next two weeks, I do not have to prepare any lessons for the youth group. Other than spending time with my family, I am using this break to prepare for my Spring series of lessons called, “The Story,” in which I will preach through all the major points of the Bible, drawing the whole plot and main themes together. We’ll cover creation, fall, covenant, exodus, law, land, kingship, temple, exile, the Messiah, the Kingdom, the death and resurrection, the church, and the new heavens and the new earth. I’m really looking forward to it. I am also taking time to clean out our youth building, which is not only a fire hazard and a tinder box, is also ridiculously unorganized and messy. I thought I would try and work on both of these tasks at once. So, while I cleaned the youth building (which still has a long way to go), I chose to listen to a series of messages that smerickson recommended on Biblical theology. The were the Russell Moore lectures on the Kingdom of Christ.

Holy Cow! They were unreal! I loved every minute of them. I couldn’t stop listening,. I listen for three hours straight. They are a must listen! I think they are phenomenal in several ways. First of all, the lectures give a unifying framework that helps interpret the message Scripture in a coherent way. Second, they hit on nearly all of the major problems that have been rattling in my head and heart about contemporary Christianity. Both intellectually stimulating and emotionally stirring. I would highlight a few points, there were too many good ones to narrow it down. These messages were great. I think I’ll be looking into his book.

You can find them here: Kingdom of Christ Lectures

There are a couple of things I want to point out (which do not detract from the overall brilliance of his messages). He commits two strawman errors:

• Especially in the first lecture, he tends to misunderstand good Covenant Theology, which in many ways he is embracing in these talks. He is essentially expressing a form of Covenant Theology that Baptist could embrace. I think a good Presbyterian or Reformed theologian, while disagreeing a few points, would on the whole agree with Moore. Perhaps I have not run into enough bad or extreme Covenant theology, and Moore is right, but it seemed a little bit of a strawman. He may have done a little of the same with dispensationalists, but frankly, I think he painted old school dispensationalists fairly accurately.
• In a comment in the third leacture, he does not paint a fair picture of the Emergent Church in his comment in the last message. At first I thought he was going to give a fair assessment of the movement, even in his rejection of it. Instead he made the far too common mistake of equating the views of the Emergent Church with relativism, pluralism, and old classical liberalism. While there are those who fall off the deep end, and these are a serious sign of unhealth in the Emergent Church, I think that many would agree with Moore’s presentation of the Kingdom. I think a lot of what he says dovetails very nicely with what many people are learning from N. T. Wright’s studies of Jesus. I could be wrong in understanding the situation. I would say that Moore sees accurately the motivation of many Emergent-types, including myself, in running from the Baby-boomer church. I think he answers that motivation superbly and with one of the best answers I have heard.

These are very minor points, and I only felt like I should address them because I consider myself loosely a part of both of these groups, and I did not want someone to walk away thinking poorly of them because minor mistakes in these otherwise unbelievably good lectures.

Cellular Church Article

Whatever you think of Rick Warren or mega-churches (I like the former for the most part, but dislike the latter on the whole), you’ll have to admit that this is a facinating read: Cellular Church. It’s an article by Malcolm Gladwell, who is a very interesting writer. (I’ve recommended him here before.) I thought the sociological analysis of small groups was interesting, as well as the comparision with Spurgeon. I also admire Warren very much for what he did by giving back his income to Saddleback. I think that is a powerful example and something the Christian community needs more of.

Response to Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

Searching for God Knows What

Here is my reaction to Donald Miller’s Searching for God Knows What.

My overall assessment of the book (and I hear the groans coming from smerickson already) is that I really liked it. I love both Miller’s style and heart.

Here are the things I liked about the book:

1. From strictly the standpoint of writing, I think he is brilliant and I could read his writing continually. I read his entire book in the course of five hours in the car going to and from Pennsylvania last week. I hardly needed a break, except to savor a few particularly good sections. He is hilarious, clever, and reads like people talk. His opening chapter about a Christian writer’s seminar was hilarious, as was his chapter about the circus and junior high. I wish I could write like him, but I’m happy just to read his stuff.
2. His main point in this book is to shift the emphasis of Christian spirituality away form easy formulas and mere cognitive belief to a more relational orientation. In lamer terms than Miller uses, he is moving from simply knowing about God to knowing God. I think he would also say he is moving from simplistic and formulaic ways of being a Christian to a more dynamic and relational way of approaching God. On the whole, I think he is right to see the point of Christianity as a relationship between God and people. That is the heart of the faith, knowing God, and that cannot be reduced merely to a list of facts of steps. It is much bigger than that.
3. His other main point is about how humans, separated from the love and life of the Trinity, search for our security in things other than God, namely other people. In Miller’s terms, he says that a fundamental trait of human beings is that we are constantly comparing ourselves to other people. Even in small things, we look for approval from others. The example that hit home for me was the simple one of when someone disagrees with your movie or music preferences. Often times you feel hurt or insulted by it. It elicits an emotional reaction that is stronger than the comment really deserves. Why? Because we put a lot of weight in the opinions of others and where we rank in their evaluation. Miller points to this as a fundamental result of the fall that happens because we no longer draw our life and worth from God. If we knew God’s joy and glory, we would not worry about the assessment of others. As it stands, however, we are constantly trying to “redeem ourselves” to others by earning their approval of our messed up lives. Instead of trusting in God’s approval found in Christ’s righteousness, we look to others approval based on our accomplishments. If we drew our life from God, we would no longer play this stupid ranking/hierarchy game and be able to start loving people, instead of worrying about how we stood in their opinions. I liked that. It feels like a petty high school issue, I know, but let’s face it: We are all unbelievably insecure! All of us. He also uses the example of teaching in front of a group of people. When we do this, we always think, “Do they think I’m interesting? Am I funny to them? Will they approve of what I am saying? Do they think I’m insightful?” We even think, if we are honest, “Do they think I look good today? Am I dressed funny?” I know I think these things every week. We would be a lot more free in our lives if we stopped doing this and started finding our approval in God, not looking to it from man.
4. I also liked his assessment of Romeo & Juliet. I hated that play until I read his analysis of the balcony scene. He draws out the Christian imagery that Shakespeare used to describe the love story, and he makes a convincing case that there is an underlying motif of Christ’s love for the church embedded in the play. He even draws out some of the theology of Calvin from Juliet’s lips, which I like.
5. I like how he undergirds his understanding of morality with a relationship with God. Morality is not simply arbitrary rules set up by God, but are based in the nature of his relationship with man.
6. I liked that he made God the gospel, not the benefits of knowing God. He repeatedly says that the point of knowing God is knowing God. That is the great benefit of being a Christian. It is not all of the other nice things that go along with that. They are good, but the center, source and point of it all is knowing God.
7. I absolutely loved how he explained the love of the Christians for each other as being drawn up into the life of the Trinity loving each other. That is my heartbeat.
8. I like how he emphasized union with Christ. I thought that was great.
9. I like how he illustrated the fact that we often present the “gospel” in our modern presentations without even mentioning Christ. We can give a convincing “gospel presentation” without ever specifically bringing up the heart of the Gospel: Jesus. Miller effectively shows how we miss the Gospel, thinking we know what it is. It was a condemning chapter for a lot of our preaching, I would say.
10. I was happy to see that Miller does claim propitiation as part of his theology of the atonement in his afterward. This is not always a given among people in emergent circles.

My concerns about Miller’s ideas:

1. I felt like he made the mistake that so often is made by contemporary Christians…and perhaps Christians throughout the ages. He made a false dichotomy between head and heart, propositional truth and relational truth, thinking and relating, knowing and feeling. I love, love, love the emphasis on relationship with God, the emotional, and the experiential. That is great. However, it is a mistake to emphasize this as an alternative to theology. It is not a either/or. It is a both/and. I’m sure Miller knows this. He admits it at the end. He writes in the afterward that he likes theology, doesn’t want to minimize it, and thinks it is important. He knew that would be an objection to his ideas and mentions it. But still, the overwhelming impression left by the book is that theology is bad. At best, Miller makes a straw man out of theology. He paints all theology and cognive exercise as cold and mechanical. He always talks about lists, charts, and graphs. (Who uses graphs in theology anyway?) He acts as if it is lifeless and dull. Of course, sometimes this happens. But, why package all theology in this description? Let us reclaim the Puritan ideal of light and heat. Let’s not pit these two aspects of our faith against each other. Theology and spirituality are deeply wed, and let us not divorce them. Miller’s picture is far too strong for a one page disclaimer at the end of the book to effectively undo. I think this is the big mistake of the book.
2. Either he or his publisher needs to do some proof reading. He misspelled the word “inerrancy” as “inherency.”

Things I am still processing:

1. Miller makes a pretty strong condemnation of the political agenda of the conservative church. I don’t like the methodology of the Christian right a lot of the time. I tended to agree with Miller more than I would have liked. I’m have yet to figure out my political views in much detail since college. I tend to dislike it, but I have been more and more convinced that I need to think this through well.

So, overall, I give the book 4 stars out 5. I would recommend the book to anyone, but I think Blue Like Jazz is better. As you read it, please keep in mind that theology is good. Thinking is good. Savor the heart, but don’t neglect your head.

This looks exciting…

Confessions of a Reformission Rev. by Mark Driscoll

Spanglish

Michelle and I just watched the movie, Spanglish, at the recommendation of my parents. I highly recommend it. It deals with themes of cultural differences, the affects of affluence, family…I know all that is real vague, but trust me, its a worthwhile flick. The characters are well developed, and I actually cared what happened to them. It got me thinking, and it was funny…in a quirky, not quite right out there sort of way…the kind of funny that I like. Not much to complain about. (Rating: A-…or 3 1/4 stars)

The Greatest Bounty Hunter of All Time

You need to see this. It is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long
time. Make sure you watch the intro and that you have the sound on.
Listen to the words:

Dog the Bounty Hunter

After that, check out his bio. (Its in the bottom right corner. Click on the picture of Dog.) Aparently, this guy is a Christian. I love it! Lorenzo Lamas eat your heart out.