I always suspected...

You Are From the Moon

You can vibe with the steady rhythms of the Moon. You're in touch with your emotions and intuition. You possess a great, unmatched imagination - and an infinite memory. Ultra-sensitive, you feel at home anywhere (or with anyone). A total healer, you light the way in the dark for many.

What Planet Are You From?

Emerging church? What's that? from Maggi Dawn

This is a question and a perspective that I have felt for sometime.

frontline: is wal-mart good for america? | PBS

Did you see this program on PBS? It was fascinating and overwhelming. I don't know even were to begin on this issue.

Beef! It's what's for dinner! And in our case after receiving a side of beef breakfast and lunch! 

Compassion International increasing help for AIDS-infected children

Compassion estimates that more than 20,000 children whom it assists in Africa are HIV-infected and tens of thousands more have a parent or sibling with the disease.

“HIV/AIDS intervention is an ongoing, natural extension of Compassion's mission to provide health-related benefits to all Compassion-assisted children,” Stafford said.

World health experts warn the problem is only growing. There are nearly 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa, and in sub-Saharan Africa, 42 million people are HIV positive. Two and a half million Africans will die this year from disease.

While Compassion has always provided medical help to the 600,000 children in its program, the latest addition calls for the use of antiretroviral drugs -- medicines that can extend the life and quality of life for a child.

Good to see Compassion responding! We sponsor two children through them and it is a great organization!

Pastors.com Article: I left Kenya asking, 'God, what can I do?'

just one of the 700 to die of AIDS, in a single day, in Kenya. That’s 4,900 a week; 21,700 a month; 252,000 a year

Horrifying statistics from Kenya. Read the article to be encouraged to get involved.

Global AIDS Prayer Partnership

Check out the Call to Prayer they are organizing on World Aids Day December 1.

Church Marketing Sucks

Good stuff. Check it out.

Radical Reformission : Reaching out without selling out

Mark Driscoll on his new book Radical Reformission:

Our lives shape, and are shaped by, the culture we live in, and the gospel must be fitted to (not altered for) particular people, times, and circumstances so that evangelism will be effective.

Great quote in a great article. He goes on and defines three tendencies in Christianity; parachurch, liberalism, and fundamentalism. Here's his great formulation for thinking about these tendencies:

Gospel + Culture - Church = Parachurch

Culture + Church - Gospel = Liberalism

Church + Gospel - Culture = Fundamentalism

Great thoughts!

My hope is built on nothing less...

I am amazed at the amount of despair I am reading on several blogs concerning the re-election of George W. Bush. Is our hope really on the government? Do we really need to rant about conservative Christians voting their moral values?

I am becoming more and more turned off to this whole blogging thing. Especially the reading of blogs part. Don't get me wrong. I have learned much and have been greatly challenged. I hope others find my blog and read it.

But I have often been admonished to spend time reading those books that are classics, that have stood the test of time. How many blog posts will stand the test of time? How many will be still read a year from now let alone 100 years from now? Honestly there are very few classics in the making either on the net or hard copy. C.S. Lewis writes,

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

I think I need to apply this to blogs as well for the very reasons Lewis gives in the context of the statement above.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

I am feeling the need for some clean sea breezes! Happy ranting to all you ranters out there...I'm going for a nice long walk on the beach.

Online Finger Meditation Tool

Give it a try.

Luke 20:27-38

As I study this passage in preparation for this week's sermon, I am reminded of what Dallas Willard said about Jesus in his book The Divine Conspiracy. Willard called Jesus the greatest teacher ever. Here in verse 28, the Sadducees trying to trip up Jesus call him Teacher.

Is this an image of Jesus that I hold? Do I view him or understand him as Teacher?

This led to asking Jesus questions like you would a Teacher. Teacher, is God good? Teacher, is anything certain? Teacher, how can I be a better husband, father, follower?

It is amazing how different it feels to pray like this! To pray to The Teacher, seeking his input, his truth, his wisdom on life's situations.

I liken it to seeking out a mentor, becoming an apprentice. Who would you most like to be an apprentice for? The Donald as in the show The Apprentice? Who we choose as a mentor has much to say about our values.

[Listening to: From The Beginning - Phil Keaggy]

Why Church Isn't Really a Church

The pain of all this strikes church leaders especially hard. Deep down, not one of us believes the organization we serve is a true expression of authentic Christian community. Each of us thinks, 'THIS is what Jesus gave his life for? No way!'

Good article. This has been my experience as well. The churches I lead clearly aren't true churches as we struggle to form true Christian community.

Dallas Willard
: Articles

I attended a conference this week on anti-racism/pro-reconciliation. Though the conference was offered by one of the denominations I am affliated with, we did not talk at all about spiritual formation and transformation of the heart as the most profound answer for this complex and difficult problem.

Needless to say, I was deeply disappointed. This article by Willard in which he discusses his book Renovation of the Heart, I believe hits the nail on the head.

That’s the secret of Jesus. You watch Jesus and you see he never did “withdraw” and then “attack.” All of the time people wanted him to do it and in many ways, but he would not. Then to the body of believers he said, “This will show everyone that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” but he had already said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” So that’s the model. In that sense the transformation of the social world is at its heart the transformation of personal relations. That’s the key to transforming society in the larger arena. There is no cure for the social battles that we fight in our culture–and there’s so much grief around race, gender, and so forth–until you eliminate “withdrawal” and “attack” and replace them with “acceptance” and “help.” Once you do that and not just talk about it, these other issues will fall into place quickly. They will not fall into place at all unless it is done this way.

The church truly is the hope of the world!

First time Wi-Fi

This is the first time I have ever connected by wi-fi and I am loving this! The speed is incredible and the freedom is awesome! For this rural kid, I keep thinking that I need to get one of these connections!

RUF Hymnbook Online Hymn Resource

Very nice discovery today!

.: Corvallis Gazette-Times :. Archives

The survey also found the quality of the sermon is the primary reason new people return to a church. It ranks above how friendly the church is or the 'overall worship experience.'

NFL.com - NFL Hurricane Relief Drive

Visit this page and the NFL will donate $1.00 for hurricane relief.

our back pages : christiancounterculture

Looks like a lot of good articles to read.

te deum : That Glorious Mongrel : How Jazz Can Correct the Heresy of White Christianity

I simply ask us to consider how much our white Christian worship, and our practice of faith in general, is more akin to the framing of the concert hall experience than of the jazz performance. Too often, it seems to me, our worship is oriented to the isolated individual's private relationship with God and set apart from the world around us. We order and arrange it so that worshipers are mere auditors, focused as passive and inert spectators on the preacher's words or the singer's solo performance. Jazz as a model would have us recognize the importance of everyone's participation in worship and see the constitution of a social body—not one-on-One relationships with God—as vital to Christian spiritual formation and witness.

I am a huge jazz fan having played in high school and college and this is a great article looking at how jazz can help white Christianity and its heresies. Long article but well worth the read.