Yep, The cool Dr. Todd Hunter is back online and from the looks of him he has taken the pill. From the bowls of Boise, he has created a new ministry called Three Is Enough (TiE). He envisions TiE groups to take shape form Boise to the ends of the earth. He has entered the TiEtrix.

He states in his welcome post:

In one way TiE (Three is Enough) is the culmination of a lifetime of thinking about the intersection of The Gospel, culture, church, kingdom, spiritual formation and evangelism. In another, more humble way, it comes from the closing chapter of my upcoming book from IVP—Christianity Beyond Belief: Following Jesus for the Sake of Others. In CBB, I try to lay out some of the practical outcomes which surround one’s understanding—or misunderstanding—of the Gospel. Much of the conceptual work for the first section of the book comes from my D.Min. dissertation which was titled: Re-hearing the Gospel: Toward Improved Practices for Evangelism and Spiritual Formation.

So go ahead at take a look. Click here and you will be on your way. Don’t forget to take your pill before you make the leap.

Two important events have occurred this week. My first book, God’s EPIC Adventure, is in print and I’ve been Simpsonized!

It has been and interesting process starting a publishing company HarmonPress and publishing my first book, God’s EPIC Adventure through that imprint. It’s an interesting feeling to hold a book in your hand and seeing your name on the front cover. For years I have researched and written lots of material. I was used to writing things like, Sweet says, or McLaren says, or Wright says, but when I saw my name appear in that context in the ForeWord which is written by Len Sweet, Griffin says, it seemed a little strange. Brian McLaren wrote the Afterword. You can read all about it at HarmonPress.

Secondly, I received an email from someone who had been Simponized and followed the link to see how that happened. It was kind of fun and you can see the results to the above.

Donna and I have been married 41 years today. I met her in Honolulu at the church where her dad pastored. How does one get God to call them to Hawaii? There was a new church plant on the island and I was attending their opening celebration and she was there. I didn’t officially meet her but she caught my attention. The next evening I attended the church where her dad pastored and she was playing a Hammond Organ. There was only one pew left when I arrived, yep, the front one. I caught her eye as I set down, she smiled at me and I was hooked for life. She is amazing, astonishing, astounding, fabulous, fantastic, fantastical, incredible, marvelous, miraculous, phenomenal, prodigious, stupendous, unbelievable, wondrous, divine, glorious, sensational, splendid, superb, terrific, dandy, dreamy, great, ripping, super, swell, tremendous, cool, groovy, hot, keen, neat, nifty, and hundreds of words that haven’t been invented yet. I love her more than I did yesterday and less than I will tomorrow. Yep, and I still love her propinquity!

Here we are on that wonderful day! We haven’t changed much, except those wild glasses. I should have kept them, they are back in style.

The day came and will go quickly, just like all other days, a mere 24 hours or 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds. Even though we count each day by hours, minutes, and seconds, it seems that the older one gets the quicker the hours fly by.

On my birthday in 1958 I was junior in high school and my dad was sixty-five years old that year. I though he was pretty old or at least it seemed so to me at the time. I was wrong. Today, I turned sixty-five and it seems really young to me.

It is true that I am in the winter of the life span. Lord only knows how many years I will have left and what effect I will have in God’s EPIC Adventure to partner with him in the recreation of his creation. Today, I am alive and am enjoying the time with two great projects. First, is the creation of Harmon Press (named after my dad) and the second is the creation of Missio Dei Learning Community.

Harmon Press has been in the womb since 2001. It’s been a long time getting born, but that’s not unlike lots of projects in life. The seed thought comes, it settles in, and sometimes it sees the light of day. The simple purpose of Harmon Press is to help authors, who have something important to say, get into print so the world can have the joy of reading their words and thoughts and they can have the joy of seeing their very words produced in a book. It’s true, if you are not visible today, the print world is not really open to you. However, with print on demand technology, it finally becomes affordable for an author to produce her or his own work. Our job at Harmon Press is to help these folks accomplish their dream of being in print. To kick of the fray, we are producing my very first book God’s EPIC Adventure which intends to help readers of Scripture have a fare shake at seeing the storyline of Scripture so they can become less fragmented in their own reading. It will take a reader on an excursion through Scritpure from Genesis to Revelation using the five-act-play model from Bishop Tom Wright. Its production target is the first of November.

The second project in hand is Missio Dei Learning Community. Missio Dei (the Mission of God) is being created to attract adult learners in our computer based society to access learning within an ongoing community online and live face-to-face encounters. We are not an accredited school but we do hold the status of being a “religious exempt” school in the State of Washington. We will be using a state of the art Course Management System to deliver courses for busy-in-life folks who won’t have to fight the freeway to get to class. The ultimate goal is to help Christ-followers experience the Grand Narrative of God and find their place of ministry in his Story. We are presently targeted to begin this process in the last quarter of 2007.

Both of these projects will have a web presence and will be fully online soon.

While retirement at age sixty five seems to be a goal, it seems to me as I have reached that age that life is full and enjoyable, and busy at this point with work. Since work is good and not a part of humankind’s rebellion, that’s a subject for another time, let work continue.

Recently, on my trip to Florida my brother Robert introduced me to Crocs. At first I thought he was feeding me a load of croc! His wife Allyn had just had leg surgery, her job requires her to stand for up to eight hours a day. After she purchased a pair of Crocs, she said that lots of her foot, leg, and back pain have disapppeared. She now has several pairs in all different colors to match her daily work wardrobe.

So off to the store to buy my first pair. I am an adult diabetic and foot problems are part of the deal it seems with diabetics. I wore them all day on the Saturday I purchased them and then wore them to church on Sunday, and all day on my return flight from Orlando to Seattle on Monday. They are so comfortable, I hate to take them off, really! Below is some information about these shoes. Oh, BTW, there are two other members of my family that have purchased a pair.

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Cayman is a slimmed down version of the original Crocs. Perfect, airy, warm weather design that comes in full sizes and is made with croslite PCCR material. Slip-resistant and non-marking soles. Crocs are designed to fit loosely. The wide, roomy footbed may feel large at first, however this is one of the key reasons your Crocs are so comfortable. To adjust the fit, simply stretch the back of the heel strap slowly until it retains the desired length. Anti-microbial and odor resistant. Crocs will respond to body heat by molding to fit your feet. Available Colors: Army, Burgundy, Celery, Cotton Candy, Lavender, Pearl White, Sea Foam, Kelly Green, Ruby Red, Black, Chocolate, Light Blue, Lime, Navy, Pink, Purple, Red, Khaki, Orange, Sage, Sea Blue, Butter, Turquoise.

Your can purchase Crocs Cayman here!

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It’s been a week since Jerry Falwell went off into the next phase of life. Some thoughts have been roaming around about his life. I did and do not ascribe to his form of fundamentalist theology. Having said that, his life and ministry seem to me to try and bring together what is often a dualism of Church and State. As a pastor, he entered into the realm of politics where the church has been so silent while the American state has become secularized.

He has passed and followed a rather contemporary cultural practice of leaving his ministry to sons. As I understand it, one son will become pastor of the church in Lynchburg while the other will assume duties as the head of the university. This is just another incident in which father-son inheritance in ministry secession has occurred. I am sure there are many. Some come to mind: Oral to Richard Roberts, Robert Sr. to Robert Jr. Schuller, Billy to Franklyn Graham, John to Joel Osteen. I wonder why that is.

I also wonder why there are not more pastors involved in political situation at the local, state, and national level. The belief of the founding fathers that there should be no regulated church by the state has turned into a dualism of Church and State. There is now a deep ugly ditch between the Church and the State.

I’m not advocating that we return to a former state of being that caused our forefathers to seek church freedom. In England today, N. T. Wright, who is Bishop of Durham, is also a member of the British Parliament and actually attends session of the Parliament while remaining a pastor of his local church in Durham. I realize that is an English model.

What I wonder is: what if pastors of USAmerican churches became entered the realm of politics and remained pastors of their congregations at the same time. How would that change the ugly ditch between Church and State?

Well, Dr. Jerry Falwell has gone on to his life after death awaiting his life after life after death. I wonder what he thinks about where he is and if it is what he thought and taught it would be. I wonder if he could return what he would believe and teach differently. I wonder…