1.  A review of Accordance software and how it works in bible study.  I love Accordance and this was a great post about the software, but also about how to conduct medium level bible study.  HERE.

2.  More Internet Monk love.  In this post are some suggestions for interpreting the gospels. HERE.

3.  While the term "emerging church" has slipped out of vogue, many of the issues that were raised during this trend are still important.  This post talks about the EC and Liturgy. HERE.

4.  I have written about how Christian Music lacks an artistic edge here, and I have slowly started to find some folks that break the mold.  The Emerging Psalter is a great project. HERE.

5.  Eschatology, Political Theology......what else is there to not like.  Great article about both. HERE.

6.  Sometimes a whole site is worth mentioning.  Church Tech Arts has many great conversations about what it means to lead the Audio/Visual team during worship. HERE.

7.  Another great blog that continues the Augustinian thread about the church has society. HERE.

After I got back from youth cap last week I spent a couple of days recovering by watching way to much television.  I am the kind of guy who loves commercials, and these new Ally back commercials took the cake.

After a few laughs, I realized that these commercials paint of picture of what happens in the local church many times.  In our attempts at revival style evangelism, we often promise a life that is better than anything else, but is all actuality barely differs from the secular world.  I have never seen hidden print in a church bulletin, or stipulations to what church membership "actually" requires, or a list of social norms that an attender must hold to...but these exist within the church.

When we base our entire ecclesiology (theology of the church) on evangelism and salvation experiences, we are dropping the other end of the ball when it comes to our existing members and others that need care.  Even Willow Creek recognized that they did a bad job of this, and published the findings in their Reveal study.  Ask any average Protestant church member what the purpose of the local church is, and you are more than likely to get an evangelism oriented answer.  You may not believe me, but I am not trying to dog evangelism, but to put it in its proper place within the greater corpus of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Through Jesus a new life is offered, but in the name of organization I think we all to often fail at this.  The quest is to build Churches that are self-sustaining outposts of the kingdom of God, providing the type of caren(physical, emotional and spiritual) that people need.  When new members are brought in (either through salvation or transfer), we must stay attached to them to make sure that they are able to transition from a mode of taking into sustaining.

My church had a woman join about 5-6 months ago.  At first she seemed to be a great member and brought TONS of children into our church, almost tripling our childrens church attendance.  But after a couple of month, she started slowly dropping off and we have barely seen her in 2 months.  We see her children from time to time, and we have kept a good handful of the other kids she brought, but I think we lost her.  She needs more than we can give.  I am not talking about financial help, but the type of sustaining pastoral care that is best brought about by a community, not an individual.  Her not coming isn't a result of her backing down, but us not fulfilling what we promised when she became a member.

Here are just a few things I think we need to learn to exhibit and practice.
1.  Build churches of care-giving.  There is no such thing as sedentary membership.  The days of coming on Sunday and listening to a sermon and that constituting membership are gone.  I love how 1 Peter sets up the idea of a boundary of church membership, and inside that boundary is safety, love and the ability to meet needs.  This is what we need to grow towards.

2.  Define moral boundaries in order to define holiness. In many smaller churches, there is always one member that can get a great fight going.  All to often these are power struggles.  In larger churches, there maybe a different type of problem regarding moral lapse.  Going back to 1 Peter, a clearly defined boundary that can be interpreted today as "church membership" does state what characteristics are examples of Godliness.  These are not set up to have "holy clubs", but to protect leadership and pastoral staff.  If this is enacted, it means that those who are at the margins are not excluded, but constantly encouraged in their faith until they are at this point.  Holiness should always be lifted not as an unreachable place, but an expected goal.  The issue here will be defining 21st century holiness and coming to terms with classic 19th century holiness. 

3.  Build a worshiping community that is focused on God and his actions, instead of humans and our emotions.  The consumer culture of worship has to go.  It promotes experience over embodiment and abiding.  But this also means our sermons, prayers and actions during "church".  I would imagine that this would look like more formal situations and more informal situations of worship, instead of re-working current ideas and Sunday hours.

4.  Be honest about what your church offers.  If you can only pull of a couple of services a week and a few pastoral visitations, don't pretend that you are in the same leagues as the big churches you respect.

These are just a few that came to the top of my head.  I became convicted lately that I don't offer to many answers. 

So at times camp was ackward.  Different kids responded in different ways.  I had one that would go to the back with the leaders and raise his hands and really involve himself in worship.  My girls did what most girls do, and had alot of fun with their friends.  I had another group of guys that just stood there, but I knew they were processing what all of this was.  Camp was a good thing, and all of my kids left with an idea of what it is like to meet with God.

I didn't have "problems", but I did have the time to make some notes.  Like I said earlier, my kids aren't from church, and I started to recognize the amount of language that had to be translated.  The Charlie Hall song "Oh God of Jacob", was filled with alot, mainly the line about "seeking his face".  That one really threw a couple of my kids for a loop.  I could write this post about how awesome it is to have these kids at this level, but thats not the point of the post.

How does our worship confuse outsiders?  People make jokes about "Christianese", but lets think about how much of our devotional vocabulary is based on revivialist spiritual experiences and the buzzwords that go around with them.  Could a non-Christian come into an average evangelical service and figure out what is going on?  Does our language speak of God in a way that is not esoteric, but instead speaks of his glory and actions?  Do we sing about us or Him? 

I have a professor that told me the best way to speak about God in worship was to use his own words, that scripture provides the pool of language and image to speak about God.  I know a common practice in alot of worship is to pull from the psalms, but by us picking up lines, do we break canonical ideas about the majesty and person of God?

What I have seen in de-churched settings, is that the language the brings people to understand and interact with God is not revival oriented and based on personal experience, but the classic words proclaiming righteousness and action on God's behalf.  I think this is because many older folk who aren't in church have experience with people talking about what "they think", but not enough about what God has said and what scripture says about God.  Instead of long sections of personal interpretation, extended communal scripture readings open there eyes to a new spiritual reality.

In regard to youth ministry, this means training our kids to not thrive on "mountain top experiences", but to develop deep roots of spirituality that will sustain them through times of doubt and need.  If they are never taught to worship themselves into a fervor, the idea of "bad worship" not bringing God in will never cross their mind.  Starting from a completely different point will hopefully allow the entire consumer mentality to be non-existent and instead a lifestyle of patterned devotion to God and what he has done will become ingrained.

These are alot of questions, but I think that they are the ones the church will have to asking itself more and more has our world turns away from Christendom and into a secular mindset.  But I don't think this is a bad thing at all.

Over the last couple of months I have really fallen in love with this trashy little town and my itty bitty church.  They seem to go hand in hand.  I love seeing older folks become passionate about their faith again and I even more enjoy when my friends I meet around town find out they can talk to me about God and not get bible thumped. 

Ever since the last "7 bowls of...." post, I have become a huge fan of Chucks "Confessions of a Small Church Pastor" blog.  He really brings up some great stuff for those of us that don't exist inside of the Megasphere of church, either at a large church or at a church pretending to be large.

Part of Merediths summer schedule is going to bed while its still light outside.  The last few nights have gotten pretty boring, but I decided to do something I really enjoy tonight and more nights.  I want to get to know the town better, but also have a change to pray for it.  So I have decided to take regular walks around town to just be around more, and also to get some exercise.  I think that ministers have to place themselves inside of their community in order for their church to really serve it's purpose, so this is an attempt at that.  I have always been amazed at the amount of people that walk around here, so its not like I will be out by myself.  But it makes me happy.

Well, I am off.  Have a good night.

Daniel (the person)
Daniel (the book)
Ezekiel's Daniel

I grew up never questioning any ideas of OT authorship, but I did assume a certain mythical quality to much of what I grew up with in church.  A few years ago I really started to question the validity of some of the traditional, conservative claims regarding who wrote these books.  My OT prof at asbury, the infamous Lawson Stone, did a good job explaining how a later date for many of these books would work, and that the Jewish people in exile complied many sacred writings for the sake of continuing their distinction as a people.  I never really got into it past there, because that seemed to be a valid idea, but not one that really mattered to me at the time. 

Enter Daniel.  I got a last minute call to preach this weekend (my pastor has some family business to attend to), and I jumped into Daniel, because I had plenty of resources at my fingertips.  I am finding out that Daniel probably has the best argument regarding an extreme later dating than any other major book of the OT.  It doesn't bother me (and I don't what to hijack the post and say why), so I can deal with it.  I am respectful of my conservative congregation, so it won't get mentioned, but I do wonder what impact it would have.  I don't want this to turn into a historical criticism blog post, but instead think about the relationship of scripture to the local church.

This seems to be an issue to some because denying the "classical conservative" (mainly evangelical) approach to authorship takes pot-shots at Gods sovereignty and existence.  To others it may be denying the existence of God.  It doesn't go that way for me, because I think looking at this sociologically proves even more because of traditions (the Bible, and the idea of a Judeo/Christian religious system) continuation.  If people are willing to not only practice, but  to sacrifice and even be killed for something the believe, it has to be pretty valid.  This isn't religion as "opiate for the masses" but as an expression of life and an alternate reality of looking at the world.

So here are a few questions.
1.  Would you feel your religious worldview to be shattered if the VBS perspective of these books weren't the case?
2.  How do you feel this reality could either enhance or detract from a congregational perspective?
3.  Is the point of scripture inside  these "facts" or is it the wider narrative of Gods people that is the most important?
4.  How do you feel the local church would/could operate if it weren't bogged down in a "propositional" mentality?

I guess the ultimate question is this:  Do you feel that this (the authorship issue) threatens your entire belief system?

Think about it or post some answers in the comments.  Thanks guys.

More and more, in my careers of youth and college ministry (as well as meeting adults who are coming to church for the first time) I am encountering people that have no idea of anything remotely resembling a biblical world-view, and it doesn’t bother me.

How many times have you heard a belief come out of someone's mouth that absolutely blew you away?  I remember being taught “where black people come from” as a child, with the teacher using the story of Noah and his sons seeing him naked and drunk.  You have to admit, the more conservative side of evangelicalism has a knack for teaching people some pretty wild stuff and claiming it is in the bible, or interpretations that lack any amount of substance.

When I first started teaching multiple bible studies a week for my church, I was pulling my hair out, because I was finding it impossible to teach anything without having to do at least 30min of back story.  The solution was close at hand, because I spent over a year working in a ministry that practices a more narrative form of communication in bible study.  These methods worked to a point, but I was still dealing with 14 year olds whose main scriptural influence was specials on the History Channel.  The only frustrating part was that I was worried that my non-orthodox methods of bible study were going to get me in trouble.

Fast-forwarding almost 2 years later and I have settled into a pretty good groove.  One night a week is a more low-key study, with as much back and forth dialogue as I can muster.  The last few months we have been talking about Israel and their desire for a king.  This way we are doing some serious back story regarding King David, which always factored in whenever I didn’t have the time to explain it.  We just finished a year going through the gospel of Mark on Sunday mornings.  This was more in-depth and slower, and allowed me to hit key points regarding gospel, the kingdom of God and the person of Christ.  We just started looking at the entire NT, going through the basic points of a book each week.
So why do I enjoy this?  I think it is allowing me to teach these kids (and adults at times) a way of reading the bible and interacting with it that goes far beyond the traditional evangelical view of the “quiet time”.  Another small group is going through Daniel chapter by chapter this summer, and I am teaching them some really basic methods of inductive Bible study. 

The Biblical Story is one that shapes the church to its very core, and is so much more than an instructional manual.  Teaching in this way, I end up with folks that know how to read and think more than them just hearing bible stories and learning moral lessons.

More and more the church is going to have to learn to operate in this manner, and dealing with people that don’t know or understand the Bible.  For to long we have taken for granted the idea that everyone knows Bible stories and heard them as a child and then when they grow up we teach them about what to do and not to do.  I think that we have lost our story to a point, and it is inside the classic actions of the church that we will recover the characteristics of the Church.  I am not one that believes good doctrine will fix everything, but I do believe that a group of people that are steeped in the teachings of Christ and in the traditions of His Church will dramatically impact anyone they come into contact with.

I cleaned alot.  Some of you know that I have the habit of really cluttering up space.  Being a pack rat runs in my genes, and I have started to combat that this year.  My shop is now set up alot better for projects and I am working on getting a few things taken care of.

I have also been gardening.  This is a fairly new passion, but I think it is really important for people to take food into their own hands.  Last year I had a few plants, and helped out my buddy Justin in his "big" garden.  This year I maximaized the space that I had at my house, and I have 3 separate beds as well as a cackle of plants in pots.  I am starting to have a few tomatoes come in, so it really gratifiying.

Meredith and I are also having to say goodbye.  2 sets of friends and their children are leaving this week.  When you live in a transisent society like seminary, goodbyes are inevitable.  It is sad to see Jason, Hannah, Margot and Eloise as well as Adam, Dru and Israel leave, but I know they are getting on with life.

So my few weeks of laying low are over, but I feel that I did alot.  When I think of rest now, I think more in terms of biblical rest, like in Hebrews 4.  Rest is something that is done in reaction to something, not just being lazy.  Even in rest though, we are still participating in the glory and glorification of God.

1. Good Friend and traveling buddy Benji Overcash has a great post about Rapture Theology.  He is writing for the Theophilux site.  What's wrong with Rapture Theology.

2.  David Fitch is a pastor and scholar that asks some provoking questions.  He is writing a series about issues the evangelical church is dealing with, specifically "When they will not come", and the issues the modern church is dealing with in regard to attractional based action and evangelism strategies.  In this post he tackles apologetics and witnessing.

3.  Here is a great site about the various ecumenical uses of prayer beads.  This is a must read for the closet liturgical folk stuck in a conservative protestant congregation.

4.  Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has a great thread about Protestant use of the rosary.  While this began as an advert for my bud Alan Creech, some great conversation goes on in the comment section.

5.  More of the Internet Monk, this time specifically regarding the idea of "What Jesus's Community Looks Like".

6.  I saw this post several months ago and marked it.  A leading Southern Baptist asked twitter what people thought of the denomination, and got some very interesting responses.

7.  Last, Chuck Warnock runs a blog about being a small church pastor.  More and more I understand the holy task of serving in a small community and I plan to spend some time reading this blog.  Confessions of a Small Church Pastor.

Well thats it folks. I hope you have a great weekend.

Reading a Brennan Manning book always leaves me with the same feeling.  I can sequence events in my life according to either his writing, or people he has deeply influenced.  While at first this seems somewhat biased to be a review, give me a little while.

The furious longing of God tackles the issue that every (that I have read) Manning book does...the issue of people not realizing the love of God and the life that they are “called” too.  The book glorifies the downtrodden and points people towards a life of radicial love through simple, short chapters that can easily be read.  It is an accessible book, and the kind you give to people that are in seasons of questioning.  The chapters are focused on single ideas and Manning takes good use of situations and life experiences.  This allows him to communicate easier and have great flow.

What this book seems to lack is what most of Manning’s books lack...answers.  Yes, he answers the deep spiritual questions he poses in his writing, but he doesn’t answer the questions about his own life that appear in my head every time I read him.  This is the kind of frustration that makes me still feel good about the book, but I have quit reading his stuff for awhile due to this.

This is a good read, but I feel that sometimes Brennan Manning’s books are to short.  Great for devotional thought, but I want more.  Grace is evident in his writing and I imagine that his lack of depth is because he doesn’t feel it is necessary, not due to intelligence. 

I guess this book is like an AC/DC record.  It is good actually really good, makes me tap my feet, but it is the same record that they have recorded 19 times.  It has a good single or two that will stay around, but besides that it is the same dependable good stuff.

I give it a 6 out of 10.