Friday, May 27, 2005

New Links -

I've added a bunch of new links on the side column - Nick (thinking padre) and Jason, who I went to school with, Kimball, Mark O, also.

Cool blogs that resonate with me.

There are also some Albany blogs in there for the local love. REPRESENT!!

Anyways - today I am breaking a bit of a blogfast I guess - after a trip to Canada, a wedding and announcing my wife and I's new preganancy ----

It's busy season, but I have some heated blogs brewing that should come out soon.

Why do we swear?

Recently I've been thinking through swearwords. It's seeming to be a hot issue in my context right now. Students in the ministry often ask me, "Is it ok for a Christian to swear?" To which I wonder - what kind of a jacked up question is that?

There are several blogs out there that talk about variuos levels of swearing, from the god understands view to the there's swearwords in the Bible view. And there is a whole myspace blog (which will remain linkless) that is becoming dedicated to showing how much you can love Jesus and swear too....I put it under the God understands category too though.

While those explanations may be fine and good to others - it just doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't see how swearing helps you to be a better person.

And isn't that the point - that the way of Jesus is better? In the past few months I have been becoming more spiritual, more disciplined and I have become a strong believer in impulse control. What is the impulse reaction? And is it controlled or does it control.

I think for many potty-mouths the deeper question is what is controlling? Are there moments of loss of control, sure - but God doesn't want to understand - he wants to transform.

So, bluntly, swearing is stupid. Plain stupid. Whether or not it is a sin is a useless waste of time arguement - people who disagree with me can feel free to flame me on myspace, though. Swearing doesn't help your faith, so I'm not going to waste my time with it.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Welcome to the Family

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And you thought your family had problems.

Monday, May 09, 2005

It had to happen...

This past weekend our church received our monthly regional Christian newspapers that sit in the office waiting room where people pretend to read them, but this one had quite the interesting article. The paper has had a couple of mentions of the emerging church movement, mostly observational, and they have finally published one in outright opposition to the emerging church. Titled, 'Emerging church' wrongly defines our faith, it is written by a woman named Deborah Dumbrowski.

The article is not a very strong arguement and relies heavily on words like "aligns himself with" and "is associated with" to put together a weak link of emergind chruch leaders. At one point, the article condemns Rick Warren for teaching after a yoga workshop - like he had authority in the schedule of a convention he was speaking at. So, it's ridiculous. Unfortunately, the article is not yet online, but hopefully will be, because I imagine it will generate some buzz.

However, the greater disappointment comes in the fact that the emerging church really has to work hard to get some decent criticism. The
American church, in varying degree, seems to be attacking the "emergents" in the traditional American way (if you don't understand it - kill it or enslave it).

Dumbrowski owns a small publishing company called Lighthouse Trails Publishing but has a separate research site designed to fight contemplative spirituality as a bridge to other religions.

So you can check it out and decide for yourself. Comment here if you'd like, I'll be busy doing my lectio divinia tonight, though....

Friday, May 06, 2005

Lambs Among Wolves

A couple weeks ago, I gave the teaching at our church - on youth, missions, sheep and the church.

It was a presentation of sorts on this summer's trip to Vancouver to become and serve the people of Vancouver.

The teaching was called, "Lambs Among Wolves", a phrase I totally plagarized from Jesus. so much ups to JC -

Anyways, you can listen to the teaching and talk about it here -

J@<><