The Episcopal Church USA has now decided that promoting homosexuals as Bishops isn’t quite enough to get God good and upset with ‘em. Apparently, some of them have resorted to worshipping pagan dieties.

Phillip – the PCA awaits your membership transfer… :P

Less than a week, and Victor Davis Hanson is pulling out all the stops, and telling it like it is

What do you tell your kids about Halloween and other holidays?

After all, the argument often put forward about Halloween apply more or less to any other holiday we celebrate. All of them are either based in part on pagan rituals or created by Hallmark. The recent Maher article reminded me of how many times I’ve heard people talk about how parents often treat God as they do Santa or the Easter Bunny, and some get very, very worried that kids will reject God as they learn to reject Santa and the Easter Bunny.

One of my daughters asked me last night again whether fairies are real. My wife’s answer was, “We just don’t worry about questions like that, because they spoil the fun.” My answer was, “Nope, but it’s fun to pretend they are, isn’t it?” That’s pretty much the same policy we have had about Christmas/Santa, Easter/The Bunny, and so on down the road. I know some people are convinced that I’ve robbed my children of a certain special kind of joy by explaining that Santa Claus has been dead for hundreds of years, but I note that my kids are extremely excited about Halloween already, and delight in playing fairy-games and so on just like (or maybe even more than) other kids.

What say you?

Geek Question: OK… Here’s a question for the local geeks.

Where I work, we’re looking into search engines for our website. I mean enterprise-level stuff. We’re looking at the Google Appliance, MondoSearch, Verity Ultraseek, Atomz, and Panoptic. Have any of you guys ever had experience with this kind of stuff? Do you have any recommendations, especially based on security?

Thanks!

On Halloween: I spent a lot of my life fearing October 31. I grew up in a home heavily influenced by every wind o’ doctrine, and believed, at age 5 or 6, that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Halloween, and Thorvald the Thanksgiving Theonomis were all tools of Satan designed to trick me into dragging me kicking and screaming into the Pits of Hell using toys, colorful painted eggs, and lots of candy. Even as an adult, I refused to participate in giving kids candy because I wanted to prove my good Christianness by not handing out “Snickers”.

Then it hit me.

It took me a while, and I really looked through scripture, and looked and looked for evidence as to the evils of Halloween. And you know what? I have yet to find a single scripture that says “Thou shalt not dress up as a ghost, a witch, or a popular figure from an animated program and collect candy on October 31. Nor shalt thou distribute candy to those children. For October 31 belongeth to Satan, and thou shalt hide thyself in thy home, clutching thy bat and thy copy of the Hoodee-Spitit Men’s Student’s Devotional SuperBible, lest the Devil come and take thee by candy. However, thou mayst distribute Chick Tracts, so that the children know how evil they are, and how they shalt go to Hell for participating in the Devil’s Birthday, October 31, which shall forever be evil. Except that one time with Martin Luther… BUT ONLY THEN!”

Nope. Never found it.

So, a couple of years ago, I tried something daring: I handed out candy to kids on Halloween. Since I’d never done it before, I had many, many repeat visitors who were gathering around the fat guy handing out huge handfulls of caramel cremes and Hershey’s Kisses. And you know what – it was fun. Last year, I went all out, answering the door as Martin Luther and handing out smaller handfuls of candy. This year, I’m going to buy a dozen donuts, smear my face with Chee-tos, put on my ballcap, and grab my VHS video camera (I’m going as Michael Moore) for work, and then doing the Martin Luther thing for my church.

Whee!!!!

The downside is that there’s a lot of my fellow Christians who look at me funny. They’re so addicted to the line that Halloween is evil, that they’ve forgotten the most basic premise of Scriptural Calendaring: This is the day that the Lord has made. God gave us October 31, and if we want to spend it handing out Mary Janes and Peanut Butter Kisses, then daggoneit, we should do it with a joyful heart. Which shows the love of Christ more: hiding in terror from a day that a known liar and idiot called the Devil’s Birthday, or bringing joy to children who couldn’t care less about Satan and who couldn’t care more about rotting their teeth out of their head?

Richard: I confess. I’ve been caring. I watched the last inning of the series with Anaheim. And it still turned out ok. I don’t get Fox, so I didn’t watch any of the ALCS, but I listened to much of the last two games on the radio, and it still turned out ok. I’ve listened to all of the games that I’ve had time for in the world series, and it is still turning out ok. I am going to a friend’s house to watch the game tonight. Curse or no curse, fate or no fate, I am going to watch the Sox win the World Series, if they do, and if I’m still alive.

Let me say this extremely slowly and clearly:

Neither my children, nor myself, nor anyone else’s children that I’ve ever met, are celebrating an occultic holiday on Oct 31. They are celebrating an American holiday, that has no spiritual significance whatsoever. In fact, the entire meaning of Halloween is to have fun. (Sorry, Christians. Bummer, I know.) If you want to have reformation Day, or All Souls Eve or anything else, fine. Do it. If you want to kill a goat and incant, OK. Leave me out. We’re collecting candy from the neighbors and scaring the neighbor’s kids.

I resent- highly- being told by well-meaning, but clearly brain-washed people, that the pumpkin on my desk is a sign of involvment in occultism. I am fully aware of all the Celtic, Druid roots of some Halloween symbols and practices. As I said in the comments, I am aware that the days of the week are named from Norse and Roman Mythological Gods. I am aware that I live in a “melting pot” culture, and there are lots of previous meanings behind all kinds of things we do in public ceremonies, weddings, funerals, holidays and cultural rituals. The meaning of Halloween in America is “Let the kids have fun.” That there is someone somewhere with a different meaning doesn’t matter to me AT ALL. That someone thinks I am unaware of these cultural nuances is ignorance. This is the same logic that has taken down Christmas trees. Can’t we just be Puritans and say “No Holidays. God doesn’t like it?” That’s simpler.

Face it, people. All of evangelicalism got punk’d by Mike Warnke. Get over it.

Somehow Mr. Wilson believes that it’s ok to syncretize “the public square” and Christianity, but not “the public square” and Islam? Or is he saying that Mr. Bush as a political leader has the power to syncretize Christianity with Islam and Shintoism? What happens if we someday elect a Buddhist to office (military implications aside)?

I don’t believe Mr. Bush is worshipping in other religious forms as much as he’s honoring the beliefs and traditions of his constituency. He has a responsibility to the Shintoists that voted for him, as well as those who didn’t vote for him.

Wow… the Red Sox about to break the curse. Now if only Cincy could do the same thing. Maybe we need to rebury Marge Schott.

Michael, bravo, well stated.

I’ve often wanted to say (so I’ll go ahead and say it) that if you come to a Tavern expecting that anything (anything = Calvinism, Lutheranism, Bushism, Kerryism, Republicanism, Democratism, Libertarianism, etc..) other than Beer be served you’ve come to the wrong place.

I worked for a company a couple of years ago that used email extensively. I’d archived everything in Outlook and when I left I counted my messages both in and out. Over the period of just under a year I’d sent and received just over 17,000 email messages, a ridiculous amount of communication.

That said, I learned something about cyber communication during that time, I learned that it’s a lot like doing suicide assessments over the phone; you’re handicapped by the lack of visual cues. I don’t know how many times I’d see some sort of personality conflagration take place and at the end the sender would say “that’s not what I said”, and the recipient would say “I thought that’s what you meant”.

We add smiley faces, winks, JNs and SWs to our messages, but even though these cues have agreed upon meanings they still have different connotations to different people.

I used to get a bit lit whenever Phillip used the word “amusing”. Finally I figured out that he really meant “funny”. ;-}

HWS is suddenly entertaining (read the comments), as ELCA guy Clint defends himself from my favorite former discussion topic: heretical churches vs non-heretical churches. I salute John for clarifying the central issue

One other crucial point is that no-one is saying that the boundaries of the church are coterminous with those of the Missouri Synod.

My two cents on the “Mary ever virgin” discussion: The Church Fathers were right on a lot, but wrong about some things having to do with sex. They were in an atmosphere where defending the humainity/divinity of Christ was a real, everyday, blood on the floor argument. The reverberations of Augustinian errors about sex stayed with the church a long time. The legacy of that era has dominated much of Christianity. It needs to be said that despite what many of those Fathers and later Reformers thought, the doctrine of perpetual virginity is wrong. I’m not insulting those guys or saying we are smarter. I’m saying they get to be wrong sometimes and they were clearly wrong on that one. If you want to say it’s one of those neutral, either/or matters…fine. But it is a doctrine that grows entirely out of a wrong view of humanity, sexuality, the transfer of sin, etc. and can’t be defended with clear, unambiguous and consistent exegesis. The problem with Roman Catholicism is that it has no “reverse gear” for errors passed down. Instead, errors must be defended or tolerated because they came from the Fathers. Thankfully, sola scriptura frees us from having to put ANY authority on a list on names who believed something. Like Luther, we can say that it doesn’t matter what the resume of a doctrine is if it’s not taught in scripture and by evident reason.

Bill, it’s more fun if you care. I love this!!! One more win to go… But if they lose this one maybe I’ll start believing in The Curse.

Good Morning, Matthew :-)

Blogging is sometimes sad. You believe you’ve made friends. It turns out you haven’t.

The people on the BHT- especially those who have been here most of the time- are looking for Christian community. They are putting up with a complete and total lack of perfection in that search. They are choosing an on-line community with full knowledge that it might be boring, or irritating or redundant. They understand an extended community conversation isn’t what everyone wants. They accept the fact that some topics may never interest them, but the overall idea of community does.

I really wish those who criticize this blog could understand what we are trying to do. We need the conversation, and we need the community. If what we try to do- imperfectly and with full evidence of our depravity- doesn’t work for an individual member, then that’s fine. There are a million blogs out there that are just one person talking to a few occasional commenters. This is different. And I’ll brag. Our experiment works. It works on a serious level. It works on an unserious level. It works on the level of simple human companionship on the journey. Most people on this blog have their own sites, but they stay with this. This is a conversation….in a bar…and that’s what it sounds, looks and feels like. It succeeded in being as little and as much as it ever claimed to be.

We aren’t trying to prove our church is the only true church. We aren’t all about Bush. We aren’t all about Calvin. We aren’t all about anything. We are all different, and we pull this off. If someone comes and goes because we are all different, and we CAN talk to one another, intelligently and vigorously, about lots of things, then I am sad, but I don’t feel like the BHT failed at all.

It’s sad when you read that you have an “explosive… personality”....and you can’t find the explosion on any posts. It’s sad to talk about a topic, and then find that you- as a person- have been described to the world as if you attacked someone personally, when in fact, all you did was debate an idea. No personalities involved or mentioned. No attacks anywhere. It just underlines my belief that the medium of computer conversation presents the challenge to not supply a fictitious personality to the words on the screen. All of us have the tendency to “hear” these typed words with a whole emotional accompaniment that may or may not be present.

I appreciate the BHT posters who work out the rough edges and stay with it. The BHT rules are pretty straight-forward about this experience, and I know that whatever success we have is because of the great people on the BHT. I know any of you could say a lot about me or other people on here or on your own blogs, and I’m grateful when you’ve shown me some mercy and grace. Hopefully, I’ve gotten better as a person and as a moderator.

And let me just say, that if I had known that asking about a dogcatcher for Mayberry was going to cause this much trouble, I would have skipped it. Sorry for the wreckage.

Homestar Runner and a pumpkin.

Homestar’s Halloween party!

Why not one more.

Doug Wilson on why he won’t be voting for Bush.

But here, in summary, is the reason I cannot vote for him. George Bush is far more likely than any liberal Democrat to get evangelical Christians to justify and go along with a public square religious syncretism. As a matter of settled policy, Bush has observed Ramadan in the White House, conducted a polytheistic worship service in the National Cathedral, offered reverence in a Shinto shrine in Japan, and so on. Many of these things, if done by a liberal Democrat, would (rightly) have had Christians up in arms. But with Bush, they go along.

I do not blame him that syncretism is pervasive in the federal government. A good man might not be able to remove all the high places. Reformations sometimes take time. But participating in worship at the high places is another thing entirely.

American Conservative magazine has a forum of conservative endorsements of the various Presidential candidates. A different writer for each option. Well done.

Feminists in the ECUSA go well beyond the left field fence....into outright idolatry.

CT’s Halloween page.

Do any of you have any experience with collaberative private blogs? I’m mostly concerned about security, but I’m brainstorming solutions to communication issues that I believe may be solvable with a form of blogging. Any input/ideas would be appreciated.

I’m going to yell something really loud, in lieu of a long and uselessly whiney entry.

BHT Rule 7

Michael: I object to the Martin Luther jab—I’m dressing up as Martin Luther and wearing my costume to church. My wife, on the other hand, announced that there will be no Sunday School this Sunday, because the teacher (that’s her) is staying home to take the kids out trick-or-treating. I was torn—wear a Halloween costume to church, or skip church for trick-or-treating—but since this is my pastor’s last Sunday, I’m going.

Other than that, good on ya, mate!

Well friends….BOOOO!

It’s that time of year again. Time to taunt my baby-boomer evangelical peers for their ninnified views on a harmless holiday- Halloween.

First, before you open up your pie hole and start in on me, you must read the entire Cornerstone series on Mike Warnke. If you haven’t read it, I’m not going to talk to you. You see, it’s important that you know that the entire disruption of this innocent American holiday was caused by a man who is probably the worst serial liar ever to suck the money out of church offering plates. A man who found out YOU, my baby boomer friends, were gullible enough to buy his crapola unquestioned. And you did so, and took Halloween away from your children. He lied. No….don’t start. He lied. And you bought it.

Second, you must read my award-winning essay, “The Great Pumpkin Proposes A Toast,” to remind you of what morons we are for throwing out the entire world of the imagination just because a few parasites in Christian publishing wanted to sell their garbage to us. We threw out one of the greatest gifts ever given to us….the capacity to imagine evil and good,wonder and amazement. We threw it out, because of people who thought the Smurfs were dangerous.

Third, read the Snopes.com Halloween page, just to clear out the bullxxxx you’ve accumulated since last year.

Now….I taunt you.

Remember all the fun YOU had as a kid? One day God is going to ask you why your kids didn’t have fun on October 31? Why you went door to door getting candy, dressed like a Pickle or a monster, and it was so exciting you couldn’t wait for it. You prepared for weeks. You went to parties. Your public school went all out. There were contests and pumpkins everywhere. Ghosts and witches and goblins….all pretend, all fun, all a great part of childhood. What awesome memories! But whoa to the Christian with a pumpkin on the porch this Oct 31. Who knows what evil influences are being invited into the home of a person who is daring to play with Druid and Celtic witchcraft in all its dark forms and powers.

Blah blah blah.

My church went all out! We had haunted houses and haunted hayrides and scary movies. This was the fundy church that wouldn’t let us do anything normal! But we could have Halloween. Of course, this was all before Mike Warnke told us we were a bunch of ritual Satanists, and just didn’t know it. We had so much fun as kids. Admit it. We had a blast. I dressed up like a scarecrow every year. It was great. Can’t do it anymore, though. Can’t even show Don Knotts in “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.” God only knows what demonic forces that might unleash.

And now your kids are stuck at church (again), dressed as Bible characters (again), pretending to enjoy themselves (again) as you act out the book of Ruth. How could you do this? How could you believe all this nonsense? How could you buy what has to be the greatest collection of urban legends ever foisted upon a group of people? What kind of person suddenly believes that a simple American tradition is a boiling pot of Satanic ritual, and that we must hide and say our prayers, or at the least go to the church and have some deacon dressed like Martin Luther read the 95 Theses to us?

I vote for a full-blown return to Halloween as a great American Holiday where we dress up, have fun, make light of the dark side, and assert the victory of Jesus by simply enjoying ourselves. I want children to have Halloween back! I want my entire generation to apologize for believing this blather. Yes…that means you back there with your books and tapes.

There…you’ve been taunted by the best. Now go have a drink.

UPDATE: Oh c’mon people. Find your sense of humor. You’ve still got it somewhere. Look in the closet. If you think I am attempting serious analysis….BOO!!! Gotcha again.

Congrats to Real Live Preacher on this CT interview. I’ll channel my jealousy into Santa Clausish prayers that soon I will be discovered, and become a wealthy, well known internet personality. (“Lord….he uses the “F-word.” How could you let him get famous? How long, O Lord?”)

You know what? Reading this really makes me angry. I’d like to be one of those offended Christians. Call Dobson. Call Roy Moore.

But you know what? I’m worse than him. Lots worse. I stand on the shadow of the cross and spit on all that it means….all the while saying I believe it, and that it’s what my life is all about.

I know Jesus and still live like this guy lives most of the time. My heart has the same cynicism and cruelty towards God. I know what the Gospel means, and most of the time I act like I don’t care. Some of the time, I don’t feel like I do care. My heart, mind and emotions ought to be saturated, filled, overflowing and satisfied with Jesus. But I still drink from the cisterns of the world, as if there were no fountain flowing freely from the throne. I look at the cross, and am moved no more than Bill Maher.

God became man for Bill Maher. God died for Bill Maher. All that stuff in The Passion that made me want to puke? For Bill Maher. And even more outrageous….for me. Far more outrageous that it’s for scum like me.

Take a glimpse at what we would be be were it not for the grace of our creator, and remember his bloody sacrifice for this man, for you and for a world much worse. Take a moment and worship such a God.

Bill: At various times throughout history, there has been a point to suggestions related to Mary’s virginity, but most of them have been related to trying to say that Jesus wasn’t fully human. Certainly the idea of a pain-free delivery seems to rob Jesus of a bit of his humanity, but then that’s my own way of looking at things. After all, others clearly think that giving birth robs someone of their virginity. I don’t care one way or the other, but it is a judgment call, I guess.

If you put together various theories, though, you end up with a girl who was herself born without original sin (though apparently, still passed through her mother’s birth canal and so on—I think that this is wacky), who then conceived a child without intercourse (and on this part I agree that Scripture supports this belief), carried the child to term without having sex (sure), delivered the child by abnormal means (uh, wha?), remained a virgin her entire life (hard to believe, honestly, but technically possible from Scripture), and now in heaven is in a unique role to get Jesus to pay attention to us (gross damnable false doctrine). Why this veneration of Mary?

I suggest that perhaps a failure or refusal to comprehend the magnificence of the concept that we can boldly approach the Father’s throne of grace in Christ leads people to imagine obstacles in our way, and to elevate those who overcome those obstacles.

Me, I don’t need Mary interceding on my behalf – Jesus is my propitiation, the Holy Spirit makes intercession for me, and the Father’s wrath was poured poured out on Christ already.

Y’all head over to J.S.’s site, as he tears into “Christian” cinema a bit.

This is some previously unknown definition of the word “virgin” that I’ve never heard before. To be perfectly blunt, it sounds asinine. A virgin is someone who hasn’t had intercourse. Is someone going to say that a girl with a broken hymen from an accident or medical procedure isn’t a virgin? To suggest that Joseph and Mary didn’t have sex after Jesus was born is ridiculous enough, but to suggest that Jesus did the Casper the Ghost thing when it was time to be born just strains credulity to the breaking point. What is the point? I mean what is the bloody point? (those last two sentences are to be read while imagining John Cleese’s voice)

I mentioned this a while back, but just uploaded the snapshot to flickr today: Post-Modern Worship

People who sit around and speculate about Mary’s cherry have too much time on their hands.

And speaking of Ashlee Simpson, she was on the Today show to plead her case to Katie Couric. She claims that she had acid reflux the other night and it affected her voice, so her dad and her doctor insisted she sing along with (not lip-synch, mind you!) a backing vocal track. She claims she has never done that before in her life, by the way. When it came time to do her second song, her drummer pushed the “wrong button” and it started the first song again, complete with her pre-recorded vocals! Here’s the problem: I’ve had acid reflux before, too, and it didn’t affect my voice at all. It was just painful as hell, and I felt like I was having a heart attack. She didn’t look like she was in too much pain the other night. Sorry, Ashlee, you’re busted!!

Having just read a book on Orthodox marioplogy, I feel somewhat qualified to answer on this whole virgo intacta thing. Here’s the deal: Mary was a virgin before Jesus was born. This means that she was physically a virgin, with intact hymen and everything. When Jesus was born, this would normally break the hymen and thus destroy her virginity, dirtying her purity, and making Jesus an agent of sin. This is impossible, therefore Jesus must have been born supernaturally, without disturbing Mary’s virginity.

It’s actually quite logical, except for the first step. I don’t think virginity can be identified solely with the physical hymen, which is what the argument requires. Otherwise, it’s pretty straightforward.

Kent: It may interest you to know that there is some evidence that few, if any, in the early church believe that Mary ever had sex. Those siblings we hear about? Joseph’s from a previous marriage. And so on.

Anyway, considering the Christ’s own disciples fell into doctrinal error repeatedly, I’m not 100% convinced even by the claim that the early church believed X, but it does count for something in favor of X, where X in this case is Mary’s perpetual virginity.

As an American, of course, I’m tempted to make crude sexual jokes involving Mary in order to annoy a sacred cow, but really, aren’t there more important issues than some people’s hangups about sex?

The worst ghetto we partake of as believers is the age-ghetto, it deprives the youth of the elderly and the elderly of the youth. The youth need wise minds in their lives and the elderly need stong backs. I’m grateful to all in the body who work to tear down the walls of this ghetto.

I’d noticed the Here We Stand post too, I have them on my bloglines list but they usually lose me. What’s up with the desire of some to elevate virginity? I cannot think of any higher calling than for a woman to be a mother and a wife, nor can I think of a higher calling for a man than to be a father and a husband. Sexuality is a part of both roles, sexuality didn’t fall any further than the rest of creation. Is this part of the “Catholic Distortion” (Os Guinness in The Call)? The idea that there’s a “perfect life” and a “permitted life”?

This is the kind of the residual dark ages stuff that the church dredges up that has more to do with 16th century mores (or possibly pagan temple virginity) than the reality of Jesus’ life. When I read scripture I see that in addition to being a Messiah he was a son and a big brother.

What’s wrong with a trip down a birth canal? It’s traumatic but survivable, most of us have made the same journey.

Got an IM message from “Infomdd” last night, but didn’t get to answer. So here you go, dude.

The “What I Believe Page” is an insurance policy. It exists to protect me if some statement on the web site becomes controversial to the authorities at my current ministry. That page allows me to say, “At the same site, I clearly say….” and use their familiar revivalist language to express myself. If they can’t understand what I mean elsewhere, I will speak their language for a moment. It also exists to keep me from being fired for being a Calvinist. (When I wrote it, I was being grilled for preaching on I Thess 1:4, and I was in some danger of being shown the door.) The founder of our school was a Calvinist, and I like to keep that handy. And the last paragraph is about my relationship with the church where I preach, because some folks are upset that a guy employed at a Baptist school is preaching for Presbyterians. So it’s not exactly the ideal Internet Monk “beliefs” page, but hopefully you get the drift. Normally, I prefer to survive to fight another day, rather than be a martyr. After my son graduates, I’ll probably be more willing to say “Here I Stand…”

If you like CCM occasionally, there is a big variety at the WVIL link on the sidebar. (Best startup is IE)

If you haven’t watched what happened to pop tart Ashlee Simpson on SNL (first clip) the other night, it’s hilarious. Her blatant lie at the end of the show wasn’t hilarious, but pathetic. I wish we could get past this phase of accepting lip synchers as artists. I saw a clip of Sir Elton ripping into Madonna on this, and I just said “Yeah!!” It’s insulting, and the music journalists that write about these people know what is happening. Why don’t they just say it?

On Emergent churches: I have to admit that I really don’t know these people. I have invested some time in getting to know Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. I’m very impressed. A lot of involvement in the arts. A major commitment to “radical Biblicism,” that shows in leadership, preaching, musical content, and next week at a conference for young pastors featuring John Piper. If Driscoll is an indicator, then I approve. His book, Radical Reformission, is excellent, and really quite convicting for me.

One thing I notice immediately: this is not Rick Warren and the Seeker church. Trust me. Driscoll’s sermons are Spurgeon compared to Warren. For one thing, he’s an expositor. He’s currently going through Genesis a chapter at a time. None of this Warren/PDL verse clipping stuff. And that just gives some real substance that appeals to me. I actually see a lot of similarity between Driscoll and Keller. Redeemer Presby is also big on the arts, especially jazz, and Keller, while not being an expositor all the time, is a tremendously theologically driven preacher, dealing with deep stuff routinely. Stuff Warren and Co. would avoid like the plague. And, of course, Warren and company still sound like SBC revivalists at heart. Driscoll and Keller don’t. They sound like culture-changing Reformed types.

So, Danny, Driscoll says this isn’t a repackaging, but a bringing missionary theology out of the far country and into the neighborhood. He says it’s NOT about reaching Gen X, but about reaching all culture groups. He explicitly criticizes the “age ghetto” of some emerging churches. I guess I am attracted to this because I have consistently taught that missionary theology was the best road to church renewal, and the best movements for reaching our culture haven’t been a bag of tricks, but a rethinking of the mission/church/Gospel/culture paradigm.

Now I’m convinced, does anyone have a Gmail invite to send my way?

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

I haven’t tried it yet.

Thanks Michael for the McLaren link/paragraph. One quote from A New Kind of Christian that’s been stuck in my brain for more than a year is: “Count conversations, not conversions”. His writings (and yours) have been of great value to me in “lightening up” and not being so “wretchedly urgent” about everything.

Another interesting guy to read is Donald Miller, he had a line in Blue Like Jazz that went something like, “I was a fundamentalist once, for about three months…”