Thursday July 27, 2006

Humor: A prison inmate in New York is being charged after making bomb and anthrax threats. Sadly, he did so in his own name and with his own prisoner number. CNN reports on a not-so-great criminal mind.

Family: Crystal at Biblical Womanhood has some good thoughts on recapturing the nobility of the home. “Home has lost its noble place in society so much so that people can’t imagine what there is to do there all day long. Any woman who dares consider staying home fulltime is made out to be a unintelligent woman living with half her brain tied behind her back.”

Music: Scott Aniol writes about the future of fundamentalist music in an article guaranteed to be controversial. “The answer is not to replace old pop music with new pop music. The answer is to reclaim the music styles that churches used and loved before they began to replace that music with pop styles.”

Archaeology: Fox has an interesting article about a medieval Psalm book that was dug out of a bog in Ireland.

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Blog: Two days after I wrote about encouragement, my biggest little sister experiences just such a moment. It’s a great story.

Weird: Someone sent me a link to a new online finger meditation tool. You got it! It’s a mini labyrinth courtesy of Grace Cathedral, a Lutheran church in San Francisco.

Alcohol: The Thirsty Theologian continues his excellent and widely-lined series on alcohol. He is the flavor of the week in the Christian blogosphere! “In this installment, I will bring Scripture to bear on the assertions I have made. To systematically go through every mention of wine or strong drink in Scripture is a long and tedious process. I know, I’ve done it. I won’t bore you with every one of them. The comments to this post will be the place to bring up passages that you believe I have overlooked or avoided. I will attempt to answer objections in a later post.”

Warren: Jollyblogger (wait, didn’t I link him yesterday?) posts a post-mortem on last week’s article criticizing Rick Warren for teaching Jewish people how to evangelize.

Tuesday July 25, 2006

Theology: Justin Taylor has compiled a list of an excellent series written by Thabiti Anyabwile (no, I don’t know how to pronounce it either and no, my spell checker doesn’t recognize it) entitled “Things I Learned While at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.”

Church: Meanwhile, in another corner of the blogosphere, Jollyblogger is compiling links dealing with the feminization of the church. And, as a bonus, he is offering some of his own comments.

Bible: Rick has been reading the works of F.F. Bruce and has posted a brief meditation on Paul, Apostle of Privilege. “I don’t know if a comparison to even someone like John F. Kennedy does justice to the elite status Paul was born into and spent his entire life in.”

Weird: My sister-in-law and I have been attempting to coin a word to describe the orange residue that accumulates on the fingers of a person eating cheesies (or cheese doodles as I believe you know them in the States). Would anyone like to suggest a possible term? If you nail it with the perfect word I’ll send you a book or something (complete with some cheesy fingerprints).

Monday July 24, 2006

Law: The Harris brothers are discussing Abraham Cherrix, a young man with Hodgkin’s Disease who wants to attempt natrual treatment but is being forced by the courts to undergo chemotherapy.

Theology: BPNews has an article about Dr. Sam Waldron and his contention that the New Perspective on Paul corrupts the heart of the gospel. “The ‘New Perspective’ on the apostle Paul’s teaching about salvation has far more in common with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church than it does with historic evangelical belief…”

Blog: Leslie Wiggins, who is one of the reviewers at Discerning Reader, has just begun her own blog which she is calling Lux Venit.

Books: Ligonier Ministries has just announced Reformation Trust Publishing, a new publishing imprint which will publish books by R.C. Sproul as well as “the best of today’s contemporary authors and theologians.”

Friday July 21, 2006

Film: I don’t get out to the movies very often, but may make an exception for “World Trade Center.” Cal Thomas has declared it a world class movie, saying “Whatever one thinks of Oliver Stone, the man knows how to make movies. This is one of his best. It deserves an Oscar in so many categories.”

Missions: Ligon Duncan has an interesting post in which he relays information about professions of faith in the missions field. There seems to be great confusion, in many parts of the world, about just how one becomes a believer.

Church: David Wayne (aka Jollyblogger) has realizes it’s time to stop being nice about Rick Warren. “Warren is actually very consistent with his own ministry philosophy - he savvily tailored one message to the calvinists at Modern Reformation and savvily tailored a different message to the folks back home at his church. And in this case he has used his savvy to tailor a Jesus-free message to the Jews.”

Design: I just finished up another blog design. You can see it over at IsaiahSix.org. I am pretty pleased with the result. And, thankfully, so is Greg, proprieter of that particular blog.

Thursday July 20, 2006

Creation: Over at her very pretty “Sprittibee” blog, Sprittibee has taken on the subject of creation and evolution and this has (as we might expect) generated some buzz. (Buzz, get it?). You can check it out here.

Conference: Bob Kauflin has listed his “Top Ten Reasons to Register Now for the WorshipGod06 Conference.” Coming in at number 4 is “Christian blogger extraordinaire Tim Challies will be live-blogging the conference. Although Tim would confess he’s not a charismatic, you wouldn’t want to miss the possibility of seeing Tim raise his hands in a moment of unguarded passion.” No, you wouldn’t.

Video: This (a restaurant that serves live squid) has got to be one of the most nauseating things I’ve seen in a long time.

Blogging: Adrian has done some thinking about what makes a blog influential. He does a good job of avoiding the easily-quantifiable but too-easy measures of influence.

Wednesday July 19, 2006

Church: “Understand the Times” has a lengthy article explaining why Calvary Chapels have decided to pull Purpose Driven materials from Calvary Distribution.

Culture: Derek Thomas at Reformation21 writes about a British clergyman who kissed a young girl on the cheek. “The deed was done in a public setting when the child, who had struggled in a mathematics class, had done well. The 58 year-old clergyman was accused by politically correct social workers of ‘inappropriate touching’ and placed under investigation.”

Theology: The Thirsty Theologian is beginning a series on alcohol. Among the issues he will discuss are: “Is drinking alcoholic beverages a sin? Is abstinence a higher standard? Is moderation acceptable, but abstinence wiser? Are the ‘rules’ different now than they were in ‘Bible times?’ What about the ‘weaker brother?’”

Tuesday July 18, 2006

Church: An article at Yahoo discusses megachurches that build a Republican base. “In a March survey, a quarter of Ohio residents said they were evangelicals — believing that a strict adherence to the Bible and personal commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ will bring salvation.” Sadly, that is probably what many of these people actually believe!

Blogging: The 2006 Blogathon is going to begin soon. If you’re interested in raising money for the cause of your choice, perhaps this is a way of doing so. It involves 24-hours of blogging at 30 minute intervals.

Music: On September 1, Derek Webb will begin giving away his latest album “Mockingbird” for free. You can learn about his rationale at freederekwebb.com. “On september 1st, we’re launching freederekwebb.com, a place where anyone can go online and not just hear but actually download, keep, and share ‘mockingbird’ completely for free.”

Blogspotting: Adrian Warnock mentioned to me that Ed Stetzer mentioned an article I wrote a while back during the recent Resurgence Conference at Mars Hill Church. It is part of this speech and references this article entitled “An Eight-Part Music Test.”

Monday July 17, 2006

Television: If you’ve never watched that hour-long program about the Duggar family (the Christian family from Arkansas with 16 children), and if you’ve been wanting to do so, it appears that it will be playing tonight at 8 PM on TLC. It’s worth an hour of your time.

Books: Justin Taylor says that Wayne Grudem is getting things done, following the advice of a book by that name. Maybe it’s one that is worth reading. Then again, it’s not like I’m hurting for reading material!

Theology: Mark Dever asks if evangelists should question professions of faith. “Sometimes I get the feeling that people think there’s something wrong with questioning the reality of a profession of faith. It’s legalistic, or judging, or holier than thou. Or something.”

Church: There’s an article at “Christianity Today” describing the way Willow Creek moves people into its small group ministry. “The key is to let the group leader make the decision about whom to invite into the small group. If people like one another, they’ll stick together. But if they don’t, you can have great curriculum and leaders, but the small group won’t work.” Doesn’t strike me as a very charitable method.

Personal: After feeling under the weather for some of the weekend, I’m feeling better for now, at least. But with temperatures soaring today, it may not last. It seems that I am unaccustomed to this ridiculous heat!

Friday July 14, 2006

Interview: “Christianity Today” has an interview with Ronald Boyd-MacMillan in which they discuss Rick Warren’s upcoming trip to North Korea. “You can travel as religious VIP, but it’s a propaganda exercise. I went in as one, and they took me to the Korean Christian Federation, which is this so-called Christian church in Pyongyang, but it’s completely set up for the foreigner’s benefit.”

Relationships: Michael Lawrence, an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, has contributed an excellent article to the “Boundless” webzine. The article is called “Stop Test-Driving Your Girlfriend.”

Video: I caught a couple of amazing videos online yesterday. Check out Taylor Ware (x2), Kevin Johnson and The Millers (x2). Amazing stuff.