Belated Greetings, Paul! I call myself a continuationist now, but I spent the 90’s and half this decade as a charismatic, in Vineyard, AG, independent, and a long stint in an aberrant church that was heavy on 5-fold ministry.  I’m open to some sort of ministry of apostles today.  The word is applied in the NT to others besides the 12 and Paul.  It seems plausible that there is some kind of church planting/oversight that can be called apostolic.  Also, we see NT prophets such as Agabus, those in Antioch, and those mentioned in Corinth.  I don’t see why we should expect that the function of the NT prophet is the same as the OT prophet. 

Unfortunately, I share the experience of others here. My encounters with modern apostles and prophets has shown them to be misguided on these matters, as I see it.  This doesn’t mean that there aren’t others who aren’t.  The NT doesn’t give a whole lot of information on prophets, but if churches would at least insist on testing the prophecies, that itself would probably take care of most of the nonsense.  Greg Koukl made a good point, and my experience backs it up, that too many of the churches that practice prophecy don’t really take it seriously.  Someone will prophesy “Oh My people, etc. etc.” in a service, and people say “Thank you Jesus” and forget about it.  If we take prophecy seriously, we should keep a record so we can test it.

 On the other question, NBC wouldn’t let them take the name “World’s Most Dangerous Band” with them when they moved to CBS.

OK. I’ll admit what a bad preacher I am. Sometimes I actually look at a story in the news and say, “I have to find a text that works with this story. It’s too good to pass up.”

Sunday evening I have to preach- briefly- to the arriving Summer School students. You can imagine what that’s like. No one comes to summer school because things are going well. So it’s not really a chipper group. But I get to talk to them for 15 minutes or so.

This story caught my attention. It’s the kind of story I like to use as an intro or a major illustration at the start of a talk. So…..

How about your suggestions. What texts could you legitimately jump to with this story as your opener? My take is in the extended comments. More »« Less

Those are nice bookcovers. Unfortunately, Matthew has no money to purchase any of them as he broke down last week and bought this (but I didn’t pay that much for it).

And everyone laughed.

MOD: I am trying to work up the spine to buy the Journaling version, and then give away the majority of my other Bibles.

I know I’m supposed to dislike this guy, but almost everything I’ve read by him, I like.

For the Church does not exist just to transmit a message across the centuries through a duly constituted hierarchy that arbitrarily lays down what people must believe; it exists so that people in this and every century may encounter Jesus of Nazareth as a living contemporary. This sacrament of Holy Communion that we gather to perform here is not the memorial of a dead leader, conducted by one of his duly authorised successors who controls access to his legacy; it is an event where we are invited to meet the living Jesus as surely as did his disciples on the first Easter Day. And the Bible is not the authorised code of a society managed by priests and preachers for their private purposes, but the set of human words through which the call of God is still uniquely immediate to human beings today, human words with divine energy behind them. Easter should be the moment to recover each year that sense of being contemporary with God’s action in Jesus. Everything the church does – celebrating Holy Communion, reading the Bible, ordaining priests or archbishops – is meant to be in the service of this contemporary encounter. It all ought to be transparent to Jesus, not holding back or veiling his presence.- Rowan Williams

Paul: Welcome! Unfortunately, attempts to turn lists into proscriptions for the church bore me to tears, so I’ll let you debate that one with Jesse and Bill. I’d be happy if more people would preach Christ crucified, and they can call themselves Apolderphets if they want to! :)

Michael: Hey, I recognize that “reviewer, who is over the top impressed by this book”!

All: Thanks for your very kind responses to my weekend rant. I’m impressed that while few of you (including emailing lurkers) agreed with what I said, all of you were gracious in your disagreement. That really meant a lot to me, and I can’t thank you enough. I’m tempted to post followup and detail a bit more about what I meant, but maybe I didn’t bring the wrath of the ignorant down on the BHT because they missed the post, and I should leave it at that. ‘Cause, you know, that’s what I’m all about: avoiding the ruffling of feathers. :)

Renaissance Art Book Covers. James White linked to this place. They made a custom cover for a notebook computer he uses. I thought I would put this up so Matthew could add “leather book covers” to his bibliophile addictions.

This peice by Dan Kimball has already been linked here, but I think it deserves more attention: My Doctrinal Statement Can Beat Up Your Doctrinal Statement. I have to wonder if certain psychological aspects of the male mind come into play when you have to have more and more details, more and more subjects covered, more and more points, etc. Why aren’t Apostles and Nicene enough for fellowship and mutual recognition of another as a brother/sister in Christ? We are now PAST saying you must understand and affirm justification, but that you must understand and affirm particular subpoints of the doctrine of justification. The whole Gospel is soon going to be about terminology that only 0.01% of the Christian world could even start to recognize. Isn’t there something psychologically obvious in that sort of direction. I’ll leave Freud out of it, but is this a case of size matters?

Steve Camp had quite a bit to say about Driscoll’s flippant attitude in preaching. I’ve winced at some of Driscoll’s illustrations, and I’ve winced at a lot of what I hear from twenty-something speakers in my chapel. They definitely have a level of interaction that isn’t robes, thees and thous. But I also know that Driscoll is, like yours truly, speaking to hundreds of unbelievers. If I adopted the Al Martin approach to a text- which I deeply, deeply respect and appreciate- my audience would sleep through my preaching. I have learned how to engage my audience with lighter communication- yes, I make them laugh- in order to introduce a more serious topic. For those of us speaking to large groups of unbelievers, there are a lot of “preaching” barriers to overcome. If I start out with “And now to return to our verse by verse exposition of Ezra,” I don’t have an audience, and I am not buying the idea that I need to do that and the HS will wake up the elect. I want the attention of the room. I won’t have a dog and pony show to get it, but I will use a story, an illustration, and with my new projector, a few images, to grab the audience by some unexpected interest and show them the relevance of what I have to say. So I am not defending Driscoll’s “peeing” story, but I am saying that every audience isn’t Grace Community Church. Some audiences demand more efforts at communication, not just exposition. It’s not a sell out to say “I’m going to work hard to speak this language, and show how the Gospel connects.” That’s not “Calminian” or “Arminian.” That’s how we got the stories Jesus told, especially the ones that surprised the audience and pulled them into his teaching on a level different from the usual.

Frankly, in my setting, I welcome the more relaxed, personal communication of the emerging, missional preachers. I am weary of the artificiality of the preacherly tone and act that I’ve seen my entire life. While some of these young preachers have some rough edges, they are not preaching to the choir, and it is the choir who are writing most of the negative reviews. It’s pretty predictable that folks down on emerging churches are all up on the same churches and the same approaches. Once again, it’s a lot of team sports. That doesn’t zero out the critiques, but it does make them increasingly predictable. “Great post there, Bob. Just what Bill, Sam, Ted and Sally said.” Just like the BHT.

Calvinists and Communication Theory. There’s a post. How do you approach communication when you have a theology that says your methodology is of little importance as compared to God’s sovereignty. Is it wrong to use music, illustrations, visuals, humor, anecdote? I believe all of these things are good SERVANTS of the Gospel, but the Gospel must be clearly proclaimed. But I do believe some Calvinists struggle with anyone who doesn’t simply do exegesis, word by word, in the pulpit. Of course, Spurgeon wouldn’t do well by that measurement.

A quick survey of I and II Cor seems to show that Paul never recognized an “apostle” in that church who wasn’t a false apostle.

Isn’t this the key text?

Acts 1:21-22 21 So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us- one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.”

OTOH, if we adopt a functional definition of apostle as “appointed and sent ones,” then it seems to be more about missionary church planters.

A more puzzling question: Was Matthias God’s choice as an apostle, or was the “Apostle” Paul not really as apostle after all?

Douglas:  True, but within the context of Paul’s question, I think my point stands.  A church functioning with elders and deacons need not worry that they are missing an essential element of their worship or leadership.  The Corinthians were given guidelines for handling prophecy within their worship, but those passages don’t necessarily make prophets operating in a local body normative and certainly not essential.

Bill wrote, “The ‘offices’ of apostles and prophets have little meaning within the context of the local church, as the pastoral epistles make clear.”

The whole question of apostles and prophets was of great meaning to the Corinthians, as both of Paul’s letters there would seem to indicate. We can’t just focus on one section of the New Testament and not deal with the others.

And for that matter, what about the 1600+ years of church experience and practice (read, “tradition”) about who does what, and under what title?

Paul:  The fact that people are speculating on who might be considered an apostle is telling.  If Mahaney were an apostle, we would know it, and he would know it.  People aren’t elevated to apostlehood by the good works that they do, or have done.

The “offices” of apostles and prophets have little meaning within the context of the local church, as the pastoral epistles make clear.  The local church offices are elder and deacon.  Apostles and prophets were not elected, or chosen by the local church, with the possible exception of Judas’ replacement.

Travis, my knowledge of Typepad is zero, so this may or may not be what you want. If you can use your export feature, you should be able to create a backup of most of your content. From the two help files I saw, you may have to do some manual work with images, though.

Here’s the relevant search. If that link fails, just search in the Typepad help section for backup. The two articles you want are called “Backing up your content: and “Exporting Your Weblog Content.”

Once you have that, a Wordpress.com account can import your data with no problem. I don’t think Blogger has a way to import as yet.

It seems to me that those claiming the titles “Prophet” and “Apostle” have often been abusive both in their claim and in the application of that office/gifting…that said I wonder if the same could be said for “Pastor” and “Elder”.

It also seems to me that often, just as with liturature and music, the significance and ministry of those who hold the above gifting and office is seen more in retrospect. I think that it’s fairly easy on a day-to-day basis to see “Eldering”; maybe it’s a bit more difficult in the short-term to see the effects of “Pastoring”; “Prophecy” seems to almost self-define that time must pass; and I’m wondering if it’s only after looking back at a life-lived that we see “Apostlehood”.

My 1-2 minutes a week exposure to TBN makes me believe that there needs to be a moratorium on the use of the word “Evangelist”.

Regarding Michael’s lurker-based question of “Caliber” and “Platform”: I’ve been asked professionally to take a good, long (six-month) didactic look at what it means to be a leader…and less explicitly I’ve been asked to consider the ways in which I am a leader and the ways in which I am not…and how to grow. My thoughts are in formation and difficult to articulate but it seems to me (I’m using that phrase a lot in this post) that when speaking of the leadership gifts of Christians that words like “Caliber” and “Platform” should be replaced with words such as “Wisdom” and “Love”.

Wecome Paul.

Sadly, I think I am going to have to close my Typepad blog and switch to a free blogger or wordpres blog.  The budget’s just going to be too tight to be able to afford the Typepad fees over the next yaer.  I’m wondering if anyone knows a quick and easy way to save everything I’ve written at the Typepad site. 

Welcome, Paul.  I’m trying to make it a habit of disagreeing with someone as soon as they come in the door, so here we go. 

I don’t think “apostle” is an “office.”  The great difficulty of the word “apostle” is that its meaning, beyond “sent one,” is entirely based on who did the sending.  It’s not some office/status within the church (“alright folks, we need to form an Apostle Nominating Committee as Apostle Frank has taken a position the megachurch across town”). 

I think someone else mentioned that it’s the elders/bishops whose job it is to carry on apostolic teaching, and that, in reality, most churches only have one of those “offices.”  I’m more inclined to think this list is just another one of the shorter “gifts” list rather than a list of the 5 offices of church government. 

So there.  Welcome to BHT.

One chestnut of the postmodern aesthetic stupor runs like this: “If material edifices have any intrinsic christian meaning, it is because of the community who assembles there and what they do when they are gathered—namely, hear the Word of God proclaimed, break that Word for one another, and celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the various sacramental rites.”

-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> -[endif]->

There is some real truth in this. As Christians, we do not believe that our physical structures serve as some sort of divine residence a la pagan temples. Whenever we are concerning ourselves with the stuff of the earth, including ourselves, there is always the potential to veer off into idolatry. But for what purpose, in what context, do we find this truism expressed today? The aim has been, all too often, to enforce drastic minimalist changes upon our churches—sometimes even in the name of architecture itself—to serve the functionalist delusion that eradicates the accumulated layers of meaning that the gathering places for Christian worship have acquired over time.

-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> -[endif]-> More »« Less

I’m setting here watching a TBN special of some kind of America for Jesus Day of Prayer at the Washington Mall today. The speakers are all the usual TBN cast of characters.

These people are crying and pleading over and over for God to speak to them. Then they are doing all this flag waving stuff, complete with Pat Boone.

Back to the “Please God speak to us” bit. What the heck is that? Isn’t the New Testament message that God has spoken finally and completely in Jesus? And what do they want God to say? End times stuff? A new revelation? Do they want proof that God is real?

The conviction these people have that America is the people of God is sad.

Bill,

True, they are spiritual gifts, but they are offices as well. Each has a function to build up the body of Christ. Each has a role in the local church and in the denomination. Another example of an Apostle is possibly CJ Mahaney, who founded Sovereign Grace Ministries and helped raised up 50+ churches across the USA and a few abroad. Even the T4G band of brothers thought that was remarkable, because none of them has ever done that.

When I was at Living Light a few years ago, we had a few who hold to the office of a prophet because they prophesy continually off and on for many years before being recognized with the office. They were tested by the elders and the Scriptures. The same testing and time frame was for all the offices as well. They weren’t quick and naive to confer an office. Some of these men also became elders.

A lurker sent in this question:

Just read Camp’s piece…many thoughts and questions but I’ll just ask you one about this quote:

“Mark certainly is not in the caliber of a David Wells, D.A. Carson or John Piper to share their platform at this point in his ministry. Being included in that company of men is a profound endorsement of his ministry to the body of Christ that should be done with care and circumspection. “

Is there any biblical basis for thinking in terms of “caliber” and “platforms”?

My answer to your question is: because all of the people that I see calling themselves Apostles and Prophets are total nutcases.

Great gift idea, especially now that baked bean and hotdog season is upon us.

Pastor, teacher, evangelist, apostle, prophet.

These are spiritual gifts. Not leadership positions.

(author edit:  what I mean is that these are not local church leadership positions. Certainly someone gifted in these areas may be leaders in the appropriate context.) 

Elders lead the church (or should). One would hope that at least one elder would have the give of pastorship, but most churches have totally screwed up the “postion” of pastor.

Personally I think apostleship is over. I’m not prepared to defend that postion to the death however. Frankly I don’t know what to do with the idea of prophets. I’m not a cessationist, but most of what passes for prophecy is simply insane people given a pulpit instead of being locked away. The other end of the spectrum, which says that prophecy is simply preaching, just doesn’t satisfy me either.

Welcome, Paul!

leif is right on: “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” is a rocking name for a band. I was not aware that it had been changed but, of course, I haven’t watched Letterman regularly since I was in college (he was right after Carson, then).

The Apostle Mark Dever has an excellent post in honour of Memorial Day. He tells the story of one James Smith, a Christian slave in antebellum Virginia. I love stories like that.

Speaking of Memorial Day I am watching the Sox-Jays game and it is a bit odd to see the Toronto Blue Jays sporting a tiny U.S. flag on their caps. Oh well!

Happy holidays, friends!

For Memorial Day:

Ashes Of Soldiers

Again a verse for sake of you,
You soldiers in the ranks–you Volunteers,
Who bravely fighting, silent fell,
To fill unmention’d graves.

ASHES of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumes–again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From the ce-eteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves,
In wafted clouds, in myraids large, or squads of twos or threes, or
single ones, they come,
And silently gather round me. 10

Now sound no note, O trumpeters!
Not at the head of my cavalry, parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glist’ning, and carbines by their thighs–(ah,
my brave horsemen!
My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride,
With all the perils, were yours!)

Nor you drummers–neither at reveille, at dawn,
Nor the long roll alarming the camp–nor even the muffled beat for a
burial;
Nothing from you, this time, O drummers, bearing my warlike drums.

But aside from these, and the marts of wealth, and the crowded
promenade,
Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and
voiceless, 20
The slain elate and alive again–the dust and debris alive,
I chant this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead
soldiers.

Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet;
Draw close, but speak not.

Phantoms of countless lost!
Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my companions!
Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live.

Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living! sweet are the musical
voices sounding!
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes.

Dearest comrades! all is over and long gone; 30
But love is not over–and what love, O comrades!
Perfume from battle-fields rising–up from foetor arising.

Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal Love!
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers,
Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride!

Perfume all! make all wholesome!
Make these ashes to nourish and blossom,
O love! O chant! solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry.

Give me exhaustless–make me a fountain,
That I exhale love from me wherever I go, like a moist perennial dew,
For the ashes of all dead soldiers.

- Walt Whitman

And since I did 20 years in the US Navy, there’s

O Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up–for you the flag is flung–for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths–for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

–Walt Whitman

So the new version of WordPress has this feature where the button that’s in bold is Save, as oppose to Publish, which has contributed to several posts of mine being saved but never shown, until I realized what I done and it was too late because the conversation had moved on.

Anyway, hello to Paul. I’m a recovering Charismatic myself, so I sort of know where you come from. My answer to your question is: because all of the people that I see calling themselves Apostles and Prophets are total nutcases. I would sooner accept guidance from Ouija sessions with my cat than from them. This last Sunday, I heard a preacher talk about how a prophetic word had gone forth that the prayers of the saints had punched a hole into the third heaven and that healing power was now leaking out. I’m not even sure where to begin with that, except maybe to snicker and leave the room.

Also, in churches with bishops the bishops are understood to have inherited (part of) the Apostolic mantle, so your criticism only applies to certain Protestant groups.

Related rant: why is it that whenever Paul (or others, but mostly it happens with Paul) lists out positions or qualities, the list is taken to be a checklist? E.g: The nine fruits of the spirit, the seven gifts of the Spirit, the five-fold ministry, the six pieces of the armor of God, etc. I’m pretty sure that the Spirit creates fruit other than the nine listed (and some of the nine seem redundant), and I’m very sure that there are gifts, ministries, and implements of spiritual warfare other than the ones Paul mentioned. Furthermore, I don’t think that the lack of people with “Prophet” on their nametag indicates any real deficiency in the Church.

Steve Camp joins the reformed blogosphere’s consideration of Mark Driscoll.

This only a partial answer, Paul, but I do take a little issue to one of your phrasings:

I mean, we have 3 out of 5 with Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers in church governments today. Why not Apostles and Prohpets leading the church?

In the government of the church I belong to (Presbyterian), we have one true leadership office: elders. You could make the distinction between teaching elders and ruling elders, but we really only recognize one office.

Most full time “evangelists”, it seems are usually independent, not under the authority of any church body. That was the way it was when we’d have an ‘evangelist’ come in to preach a revival, back in my SBC days. Our church does support missionaries who are under the authority of the Presbytery, but these are not leaders within the church.

So without answering the question of “Why not five?” I just wanted to point out that most churches are currently doing one of five, not three of five.

I am not waiting for Bill Mackinnon to throw his long cutlery at me, so here is my question: Why not a five-fold minstry in church government?

I mean, we have 3 out of 5 with Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers in church governments today. Why not Apostles and Prophets leading the church? Adrian Warnock considers Mark Dever to be an Apostle and John Macarthur as apostolic and prophetic as modern-day examples. Do not denominational leaders function as apostles?

Ephesians 4:11-16 ESV – And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Here is an example of a denomination of my former church, Living Light Church:

Ascension Fellowships International

Here is the picture I was trying to link to.  It is only by God’s grace our BCM building did not go up as well.  We had 19 volunteers staying with us at the time of the first fire.

A few months ago I was startled out off bed by this act of arson next door to my apartment. http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl011106khfire.67d5ade5.html

We still do not have windows in our bedroom because of this.  This morning someone set an abandoned Ford Explorer on fire next door at roughly the same time the other fire was started.  I was woken up this morning by exposions.  It set the building next door on fire again.  There are two other ababndoned vehicles outside our place and I am afraid they will be the next targets. 

In the picture from the story ou place is on the left.  I am really sick of this crap.  For some reason i could not get the hyperlink to work.

A BHT Must Read: You Had Me At Hillel- TSK responds to a critic.

I really don’t like the attitude of some of the fish around here.

Hey Dale, I totally have to visit this church someday, just on the merits of their name.

Them crazy old emerging Acts 29 people… ;)

When there’s gallons of chum in the water, even William Wallace knows better than to go swimming.

It’s posts and threads like that keep me from even mildly applauding actually insightful and clever posts, like Wilson’s “incarnational” one that Dale posted a couple of days ago. Yep, Jolly’s a really mean, bad guy for calling a spade a spade in the heat of legitimate ire, but “I don’t see anything wrong with exercising biblical discernment” when it leads to Tony Jones = Saruman = Doug Henning = Dan Brown = more equivocal than Islam. Can I get a “Damien?” “Liars and deceivers” going once, “liars and deceivers” going twice…can I get an “Antichrist”? “Spawn of Satan?” ... “C’mon gang, we know the EC is more dangerous than mere liars and deceivers, right? Let’s ramp it up to ‘utter depravity’, guys.”

A little research will reveal that a great deal of the heat on emerging/emergent (and I know the difference, which they know but purposefully ignore) comes from the website of Ken Silva. His “Apprising.org” is the main site, but I think more people read his stuff at “Slice of Laodecia,” which is someone else’s site that runs his stuff all the time. Silva works hard to promote various connections between emerging/Emergent, Catholic spirituality and New Age spirituality. His favorite targets are Richard Foster, Thomas Merton and Dallas Willard.

This is the guy carrying the “research” side of this program to make emergent Christians into a tool of the anti-Christ, and I would imagine that it wouldn’t take much to find the entire “false Christians of the last days, preparing for the anti-Christ” thing going on.

I was once contacted by a radio guy in LA about a Rick Warren piece at IM. He said he had read the piece on his show. So I listened. He used my stuff in an elaborate conspiracy theory involving Rick Warren and the occult, all in preparation for the acceptance of the anti-Christ.

So this is, I think, all quite probably related to a particular view of the end times, where the Catholic influence is really occultic, and it all adds up to accepting the anti-Christ as your personal savior.

Since Rick Warren is my evil twin, all of this may be bad news for me.

It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the USA.

The following picture is via Purgatorio.

Not only are Emergents heretics and apostates, now they are Tolkien villains.

The only thing left now is for someone to accuse Brian MacLaren of being the AntiChrist…

>Thank you for accepting me.

Who said we were accepting you? I haven’t accepted Bill yet. (jn)

Joel: That WMFCB (World’s Most Famous Christian Blogger) thread really needs some straightenting out. Where’s the William Wallace in you, man? Paint your face blue and charge!

And hey….how about a brief review of some contemporary church design?

“Mr. Driscoll? Mister Dirssssssssscol?”

I do believe that quoting one another on “postmodernism=denial of truth i.e. God said anything” makes up 80% of the reformed blogosphere.

Kurt,

We have been here in College Station for three years and we are members of Living Hope. Pastor Butch is still here. This summer in the discipleship classes, I am co-teaching with him on the “Living By the Book”.

We live a couple blocks away from Parkway Baptist, off of Anderson and Brentwood.

Thank you for accepting me.

A moving speech by Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz.

Welcome, Paul.  Nothing personal with the picture I posted—I’ve been waiting for weeks for Michael to add a new member so I could whip that out.

It can be difficult to discern whether some watchposts are actually written by human watchbloggers or are created by the Postmodern Essay Generator infected with a Reformed virus. Some of the crack posts that Michael links make me want to burn my eyes out and bury them.

Gary Wills smacks a grand slam out of the ballpark…

(D)oesn’t Jesus say to care for the poor? Repeatedly and insistently, but what He says goes far beyond politics and is of a different order. He declares that only one test will determine who will come into His reign: whether one has treated the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the imprisoned as one would Jesus Himself… No government can propse that as its program. Theocracy never went so far, nor could it…

Some may think that removing Jesus from politics would mean removing morality from politics. They think we would all be better off if we took up the slogan, “What would Jesus do?” That is not a question His disciples ask in the Gospels. They never knew what Jesus was going to do next. He could round on Peter and call him “Satan”.  He could refuse to receive His mother when she asked to see Him. He might tell His followers that they are unworthy of Him if they do not hate their father and their mother. He might kill pigs by the hundreds. He might whip people out of church districts.

Hiya Paul, please accept my belated welcome. :)

So you’re residing in College Station? On purpose? (kidding) Dang, small world. The wife and I lived there three years ago while I finished my bachelor’s at Sam Houston State. We belonged to Parkway Baptist Church. My mom was a member of Living Hope before my parents moved. Is Butch Smith still the pastor there?

Anyhow, welcome the bar. I won’t tell Butch yer darkening the doors of an alehouse if you won’t speak in tongues before 9 PM. ;)

Michael: OK, so you’re doing a home church, preparing for your daughter’s wedding, and writing about Remarriage and Divorce. You’re busy.  But I want to hold your feet to the fire regarding a promise you made about compiling a list of high-caliber emerging church blogs/websites. I ask this because the battle is heating up again, and the same problem (the critics only interacting with the easy targets) is still there.

The latest skirmish is between Tony Jones and the Tim Challies. The original argument started out about the spectrum of political representation in Emergent, but has quickly hit down to the touchstone of the question of absolute transcendent truth, and how the critics have it and Emergent doesn’t.
The pertinent posts are listed below.

Jones – Is Emergent the New Christian Left? Part I / Part II

Challies – Is Emergent the New Christian Left?
Pertinent quote – Jones

If you take some of these books (and blogs) seriously, those of us who make up the Emergent Village are a great threat to the Christian church – we undermine doctrine, truth and church life. The fact that we’re discussing theological items that have been previously deemed “undiscussible” is considered grounds for labels like “heretic” and “apostate”.

Honestly, I care little about these critiques. They come from those who either have no idea what Emergent is all about and/or could not possibly be persuaded from their position anyway.

There are three things that struck me in these articles. First, these two articles highlight some of the ways in which any meaningful discussion with the Emergent leaders is little more than an exercise in frustration and futility. Second, they also highlight how far some leaders within the Emergent conversation have gone in abandoning truth. And third, they highlight some of the mixed-messages sent out from the leadership of this conversation.

I have managed to resist the siren call of Thinkling posts on music for some time now. But the latest post by T-Daniel was like too much peril in the Castle Anthrax. I bit.

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So I get to play snob once again and I thought I’d take the opportunity to post something here on architecture. There is an excellent review article by Catesby Leigh in First Things on the suggestively titled A Sense of the Sacred: Theological Foundations of Christian Architecture and Art (by Kevin Seasoltz).

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Catesby Leigh is an architecture critic in Washington and has a book coming out soon called Monumental America (although I can’t find any online vendors for it yet). If you can’t get your hands on the May 2006 First Things, check out these pieces:

1. “Church Ugly,” Touchstone, Dec 2002.


2. “The Stones of Babel,” Touchstone, May/June 1999.


3. And here’s a little piece in the WSJ back in January 2005 on church architecture.

Actually, I don’t have the time to do this post. Never mind. You other sticks-in-the-mud might find a fairly new journal, Sacred Architecture, worth checking out.

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At some point I want to follow-up my earlier quote from Barth (nice catch there, Tommy), but I’m just too cranky right now.

Dan Edelen gets watchblogged. Hang in there Dan-o.

The BHT’s Chair of Theology has a good post on theological “centering” and the doctrine of justification.

Abbot Creech did a retreat at Gethsemani, and took some nice pictures. I used to go up there a couple of times a year, but now I drive 5x as far to go to Meinrad. I’m dumb.

I’ve been involved in the “Mark Driscoll” comments thread at EmergentNo. A strange experience. People who agree with me are dogging me about being “off topic” at blogs that are doing the school of sharks with Driscoll, either in the posts or the meta. So how is it off topic to talk about the methodology of sharks? There are people on the web who read Mahaney’s stuff on humility and conclude we should say nothing about the slander of men like Kyle Lake and Mark Driscoll. BS. That’s phony humility if it ever existed. It’s the schoolyard bully saying you made him feel bad for pointing out that he’s beating up the new kid.

BTW- I love it when people act like I came to their blog to get traffic for my sites. Riiight.

Clay’s X-III review.

Denise returns to blogging.

Wedding countdown: 6 days. Saturday, 2:30, Tate’s Creek Presby Church.

The family watched “Insomnia” last night. Made me want to sleep. I hate to see Pacino used for all the wrong reasons.

Leifrigney,

I haven’t watch David Letterman in over 3 years, so I don’t know why the Canadian changed the band’s name.  Since Junior High School in the mid-1980’s, I have been asked if I was on Late Night with David Letterman.  If I had to watch Late Night television, I would watch Jay Leno. 

I am a Christian who is a husband and father.  The Lord Jesus Christ, before the world began, wrote me in the Book of Life, and at the appointed time in January 10th, 1993, the Lord saved me and begun to reveal Himself to me. On June 21st, 1993, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “Come Follow Me.” From this point on, I have been following the Lord.

After I got saved, I grew up in Living Light Church in Winona, Minnesota from 1993-1997, 1999-2000.  Living Light is charismatic in experience that believes in the 5-fold ministries in Ephesians 4 and practices all spiritual gifts, but is baptist in its doctrine.  I went to bible college at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.  Central is one of the main undergraduate colleges of the Assemblies of God denomination which is Pentecostal.  I went there from 1997-1998 and I met my wife there and left after one year. From 1998-1999, I lived in Durant, Oklahoma with my wife in her hometown.  We went to Victory Life Church in Durant.  This church is charismatic.  In 1999-2002, we moved back to Winona, we went to Living Light again and Faith Assemblies of God.  During this period, God began changing my heart towards the Reformed doctrine, we went to John Piper’s Bethelhem Baptist Church in Minneapolis a few times and began reading many of his sermons and books.  In the fall of 2002, we moved to College Station, Texas, where we had our first child and have been attending Living Hope Baptist church for 2 years.

The person who I found in Christianity as a model of my beliefs would be C. J. Mahaney.  He is example of man who can hold to the Reformed doctrines and yet be Charismatic in experience.  John Piper would be the second model.

Welcome, Paul.  I have one question for you, and then I swear I’ll leave you alone:  Why change from “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” to the el-lame-o “CBS Orchestra”?  “Orchestra” is so blah.  Was that Dave’s idea?

Matthew: I think I understand the innate hostility of the press to this idea. “Hey, we can’t have the Church publically shaming people – that’s OUR job!”  (JN)

Now, for the serious bit. I’ve been reading through David Fitch’s The Great Giveaway, as I have noted before. The last chapter I completed was the one on the Church’s economics, in which he made some pretty hard-hitting suggestions about how to rethink the way we view our finances. One suggestion he made (offhand) was having every member of the local church write down once a year their gross income and their general expenses, so that everyone could be held accountable as to how they actually spend their money.

And you think having an extramarial affair exposed is bad…

I just watched a sermon by Dr. Ergun Caner on why he is not a hyper-Calvinist. Most of what he described as what he is against was basic Calvinism. I think I understand now why the brothers are afraid to debate Tom Ascol and his friend. Basically I learned tonight that Calvinists don’t love people, don’t believe in evangelism or missions, and change scripture to mean whatever they want it to. I wonder what this guy thinks of Piper.

He also yelled a bunch and seemed angry.

Why not?  :-)

Welcome, Paul. Now there are two of us who can be confused with our (in)famous celebrity counterparts.

Realplayer

Windows ME

Microsoft IE 6

IBM PCjr

IOMEGA Zip Drive

That’s all.

You have one week to acclimate yourself, then the long discernment knives come out.

We’ll always remember you fondly as the “good lutheran.”

Welcome to the newest BHT fellow, Paul Schafer. We are replacing our LCMS guy with a Charismatic. I’ve thoroughly warned him about Bill.

I have added audio of this morning’s Bible study at the soli deo site. The text is John 14:1-6 and the lesson is about 48 minutes. The OBI chapel bells start ringing near the end. It sounds like 8 a.m. because it is 8 a.m. I sound like I went to bed at 1:30 because I went to bed at 1:30.

Eric, Godspeed, brother.

Travis, you did stick around for the quick scene after the credits, didn’t you?

I am still reading but my internet is semi-out. I am posting this from my sons house. hopefully the tech guy will come out and fix it this week

The 25 worst tech products of all time. Of course, I have one of these in the closet, and one of these in the shed.

We have cable and they told me they’d come and set it up for me.  I kindly declined, but I’m a quarter geek.  I’m also a quarter Campbellite Church of Christ so I don’t dance, either.

My other suggestion would be to turn it over to McKenna.  Every kid her age knows something about computers.  But remember, she’ll never respect you again.  (Sorry if I misspelled her name).

If you get DSL, the phone company will probably set it up for you if you ask. If you get cable, which is what we have in a package with charter, they set it up. I had to buy a cable modem and wireless router. Comp USA deals with helpless non-geeks all the time.

leifrigney: I’m (more or less) not a geek so I might speak in terms you recognize.

If you don’t want dial-up, you have to choose how the internet comes into your house. Right now, that means that a notageek has to pick whether or not he or she would like to have DSL or a cable modem. The advantage to cable-internet is that if you want to not have a “land line” telephone and just use cell phones, you can do that.

After the notageek has the internet in the house, they have to pick whether they want to have their computers connected to the modem with a wire or without. If you have one computer that sits right next to the modem, you can use a wire. If you have a couple of computers, or want to take your laptop out onto the porch with a beer and cigar, choose wireless.

If you choose wireless, make sure you’re password protected – or everybody in the neighborhood will be able to use your internet service.

I have a netgear wireless router and it’s fairly simple to set up, but you might want to have a fairly geeky friend walk you through it. My son set up his laptop pretty easily, but my desktop doesn’t want to play well with it and I just don’t feel like spending the time trying to figure it out.

If you have a laptop, it’s worth figuring out how to connect it wirelessly (even in you use a wired connection at home) – many, many coffee shops have free wireless, as well as a few Micky D’s and Burger Kings. At the college I attend, the entire campus is wireless…

I took a networking class and a couple of programming classes, but it’s been several years and if you don’t use it, you pretty much lose it – but I can still figure out my router.

Good luck…

Okay, I am about to reveal the further depths of my ignorance.

Warning:  For you computer folks: I am, computer-speaking, the guy who talks to a mechanic about a car and basically only knows how to use the thing; he knows nothing about what makes it run, or how to fix it, or assess its problems, etc.  That is me with computers—I am basically one of those guys who makes you roll your eyes by asking questions that any idiot should know.  I mean, how basic can you get??

SO here goes: We have been staying at my mother’s house for a few months while our new house is vacated, and we have been using their wireless internet service.  Before that, all I’ve ever experienced (at home) is dial-up.  We are moving into our new house next week, and I need internet service (am taking an online course this summer), but I am completely ignorant on what my options are, and everytime I try to read about it I just get confused because the people seem to be talking as if I already understand some givens.  Usually I don’t.  I do know I would like to avoid dial-up if possible.

Can any of you gentlemen or ladies email me and tell me, in really basic, child-like terms, what my best option would be?

PWinn:  A hearty AMEN from me on your sex post (eew, that sounds like some sort of, nevermind).

Seriously, though, I agree with everything you said.

We say good-bye and God’s blessings to BHT fellow Eric Rogers. You’ve been a good contributor, Eric and we wish you and your wife-to-be the very best.

X-men 3 was decent.  This might sound like a funny thing to say about a comic book movie, but I think the director too frequently rushed the plot to get to the next ‘splosion.  I mean, I like to see things asplode and all. (Warning: Spoilers Ahead) More »« Less

The protestant Church of Scotland (PRE-Westminster) had a Church Calendar! (HT to Jeff Meyers)

In other news, TSK goes on a pub crawl, and both John Armstrong and Steve McKoy beat up on the Cubbies.

Phillip: I can’t say I agree with you on the birth-control aspect of your argument (maybe because I’m having issues with birth control as a general principle – too much exposure to RCC theology I guess), but your rage against the idea of denying a vaccine because people could misuse its benefits is spot on. Based on that principle, we ought never have invented penicillin since it can (or could before the bugs got tougher) alleviate STD infections and thus made sex less risky…But I keep forgetting that Christianity is all about making the pagans behave themselves, apart from making them believers. Isn’t that what made the early Church in the Roman Empire so successful? (JN)