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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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.