An Brief Outline of Genesis Four Definite Events: 1.1-11.26

God Is A Speaking God: Gen. 1.1-2.3
The first chapter plus is often called an anti-polytheistic tract. (What a mouthful!) This means that it was told first and later recorded to help the Jews understand their belief in One God in a land of many gods. Read it by itself apart from the story that follows. In the truest sense this is not a story. It falls into interesting sections beginning with “And God said,” and ending with “evening and morning….” This repetition was to help the Jews memorize the material before it was recorded.

The Beginning And Fall Of Humanity: Gen. 2.4-5.32
God created Adam and made him a garden for a home. When Adam could not find a helper among the rest of creation, God created Eve and the first family began. Eve was presented with a temptation. She and Adam both ate the forbidden fruit. God pronounced judgment on Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The reader is presented with the truth that the sinful condition of the world cannot be blamed on God.

The Horror Of The Flood: Gen. 6.1-9.29
Horror stories abound in today’s movies. They have nothing on the horror story of the flood. One thing is different, instead of Freddie coming back again and again, the story of the flood had a happy ending. Humankind was destroyed by God because the malignancy of sin had infiltrated every aspect of life. In the midst of this world tragedy, Noah found grace from God. He built an ark for protection.

The Confusion Of Language: Gen. 10.1-11.26
Sin found its pinnacle at Babel. God stepped into history and confused the languages because of man’s continual desire to become like God.

Helpful Resources

• Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary
• The New American Commentary Volume 1 – Genesis 1-11
• Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World
• The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament)
• The NIV Application Commentary Genesis

In the video below according to Seth Godin, megachurch is a factory. He also suggests that most leaders are managers and that a leader says what she/he believes and see who follows. He also think that if you help folks find what they want to do and then get out of the way and let them do it, success will follow.

It’s well worth the 7:05 run time.

On a family vacation several years ago, we visited Washington D.C. to tour the sights. One of the places we visited was The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. I remember the sense of awe, the reverence of place, the silence of those visiting. Some reaching up to touch/rub a specific name, others placing objects at the foot of the panel on the wall where no doubt a loved-one’s name was engraved. As a veteran, I appreciate the Virtual Wall that allows folks from anywhere to visit this memorial whatever their feeling and beliefs about war are and appreciate the memorial.

Just follow the link to The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and search for your state and city and when you click on any name and see a brief review of the individual from there you can see a complete profile. There is even a place to do “digital name rubbing.”

Last weekend I celebrated my 50th high school reunion in Florida. A classmate of mine from high school forwarded this. It was fun to read. For those who may not know Will Rogers died in 1935 plane crash with his best friend, Wiley Post. Below is a collection of sayings attributed to him.

• Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.
• Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
• There are two theories to arguing with a woman — Neither works.
• Never miss a good chance to shut up.
• Always drink upstream from the herd.
• If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
• The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.
• There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
• If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.
• Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin’ it back.
• After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

On Growing Older

• Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
• The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
• Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know ‘why’ I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren’t paved.
• When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
• You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.
• I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
• One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.
• One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
• Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.
• Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it’s called golf.
• And finally, If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old.

BTW: I’m 68 years old. I think Will is spot on!

Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ
Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola
Thomas Nelson (June 1, 2010)

Years ago, as a rather insignificant young pastor in a large denomination, I fearlessly (too fearlessly, as it turned out) stood before some 10,000 delegates to propose we change the order of our denomination’s statement of faith and move our No. 3 article of faith, “The Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ,” to the top of the list and the then No. 1 article, “The Scriptures Inspired,” to the No. 3 slot. Was not interested in changing the language of the articles, just their order. My motive was pure, I thought. I believed that Christ, as the Bible said, should “have the preeminence in all things”; especially, one would think, in a Christian creedal statement. To my shame, I was jeered off the floor. One colleague later scolded me and said he was “ashamed” of me. It took years for me to live down a reputation of being “renegade” and “liberal” (I was neither). Yet here I am, some thirty-plus years later, more convinced than ever that my proposal was a good idea and I have just found vindication in a new book by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola: Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ. (Where were these guys when I needed them?)

Occasionally, despite all my pious religiosity, I get the uneasy feeling that Jesus has left the building. I, like you, have a tendency to become wrapped-up, even obsessed, in whatever my pet issue is at the moment. It may be anything from evangelism to the environment to end-time prophecy. This is understandable since every year hundreds of titles flood the Christian market dealing with every topic imaginable and we sometimes find ourselves swept up in the current hot topic. But in the end it all comes back to that elemental question Jesus once asked Peter: “Who do you say that I am?” When Christ ceases to be the nexus of our faith and we become absorbed in all the stuff “about” Jesus, and not in Christ himself, we lose our focus.

“The Christian life properly conceived and experienced,” affirm the authors, “is simply a reproduction and a reliving of the life of Jesus.” But Christianity is not just a matter of striving to be “like” Jesus. If that is our sole aim, we are doomed to failure. No one has done or can do it. Rather, we must “be” Christ. Don’t jump to conclusions by that statement. The authors go on to say, “Jesus doesn’t want us to be ‘like’ him; he wants to share his resurrection life with us, [not just] imitate him. Christ wants to live in and through us. The gospel is not the imitation of Christ; it is the implantation and impartation of Christ. We are called to more than mediate the truth. We are called to manifest Jesus’ presence.” Or, as George MacDonald prayed, “O Christ, my life, possess me utterly. Take me and make a little Christ of me.” Quoting Bishop Ryle, with whom the authors agree, “Christ is all. Those three words are the essence and substance of Christianity. If our hearts can really go along with them, it is well with our souls. If not, we may be sure we have yet much to learn.”

Author’s Bio
Leonard Sweet currently occupies the E. Stanley Jones Chair of Evangelism, serving from 1995 to 2001 as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Theological School at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. A Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University in Portland, Oregon, and President Emeritus of United Theological Seminary, he is a weekly contributor to the online preaching resource, Sermons.com. Author of more than two hundred articles, twelve hundred published sermons, and almost forty books, Sweet is currently working on two textbooks: one on preaching, Giving Blood, and one on evangelism, Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who is Already There. His most recent book is So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church and his weekly podcast is “Napkin Scribbles.”

Frank Viola is a best-selling author and international conference speaker. His books include Revise Us Again, Reimagining Church, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church and the best-selling From Eternity to Here.

In his book Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation James K. A. Smith (I just love double middle initials because I am blessed with two middle initials, can middle really be two?), discusses the benefits of gutty learning verses heady learning as we experience being kingdom people. Dr. Smith will be the keynote speaker at the Second Annual Society of Vineyard Scholars (SVS) meeting “The Renewal Of Your Mind: Imagining, Describing, and Enacting the Kingdom of God” to be help in Seattle, February 3-5, 2011. You can discover more information here about the SVS meeting.

For those of you not familiar with the idea of gutty learning, you can get a preview by watching the video below. If that whets your appetite, you can purchase his book here. Listen up! It’s not too soon to mark your calendars, tell your social networks like Facebook and Twitter about this upcoming conference and start planning to attend. Let your gut help you make your decision!

These presentations were delivered at Baylor in February 2010.

Give the session you choose a small bit of time to begin.

Prophetic Preaching 1

Prophetic Preaching 2

Prophetic Preaching 3

Prophetic Preaching 4

Here is a set of four Podcasts by Walter Brueggemann on Prophetic Preaching that he delivered at Baylor University in February 2010.

There a bit of delay for buffeting at the beginning, be patient.

Different but Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian/Egalitarian Debate
Derek Morphew
Vineyard International Publishing (December 29, 2008)

In the introduction to his latest book Different But Equal: Going Beyond the Complementarian-Egalitarian Debate, Derek Morphew points out that in recent years some sweeping theological changes have taken place in his thinking regarding the place of women in Christian ministry and leadership. Not changed so much, he writes, “but I would rather say that it has evolved, as I have tried to keep pace with literature on the subject.” With that I can relate. Growing things change—even growing beliefs. To never vary one’s point of view and hold the same position one did a decade or more ago is no virtue; it just means that a person has stopped learning, stopped growing. There’s nothing admirable about an adult still sucking the same decades-old pacifier. At least that’s what I have told myself and after reading Morphew, I felt vindicated. Evolving Evangelical—I think that’s a label I can live with.

Morphew’s developing outlook especially regarded the role of women in official leadership within the church, an issue that has been a perennial hot topic in religious circles for centuries. Conservative groups holding to a strict literal interpretation of scripture often exclude women from ecclesiastical leadership on what they consider “biblical grounds.” In this view women are to “keep silent in the church,” and not exert authority over, but always be in “subjection” to, men, holding that only men lead in the church because they are, well, males. In this view, only men are pastors, teachers, and theologians and women, um, their contribution is appreciated—they can cook the meals at church banquets and clean up the mess—but by and large they are expected to dutifully follow … silently. Women, who are qualified in every respect except gender, are repeatedly passed over in favor of often less qualified men. Early-on I wondered how a person’s sex could possibly make an unqualified male more qualified than a qualified female based solely on gender. I wondered what the wisdom was in subjugating half the population of God’s kingdom? But over time, with the rise of feminism (both secular and evangelical) and the blistering debate about women’s place in the church heated up, I, like Morphew, decided to take a closer and hopefully more objective look at scripture and come to some independent conclusions.

In Different but Equal, Morphew articulates some of the changes that took place in his thinking as he weaved his way through the minefield, re-read more dispassionately those hotly debated gender-specific biblical passages, and considered Jewish customs, Christian theology, and church history to offer this timely view that lies somewhere between excessive “complementarian” (men and women have complementary but different roles and responsibilities in society and religion) and extreme “egalitarian” (in God’s sight all people regardless of sex are equal in every respect) viewpoints. Morphew’s is a position that allows for differing interpetations while preserving unity. He writes: “The arguments between these two positions are too nuanced for the differences to become the basis for a breach in fellowship.”

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Artist Bio
Derek Morphew, Ph.D., University of Cape Town, South Africa is a theologian, pastor, and teacher who has been involved in pastoring and church planting for the past 30 years. He serves on the national leadership team of the Association of Vineyard Churches in South Africa, is the international director of Vineyard Bible Institute, and is a highly respected author and speaker at conferences, churches, and universities.

Below is a presentation by Caleb Maskell, part of the church planting team of Elm City Vineyard in New Haven, CT, where Matt and Hannah Croasmun are the pastors. The presentation was delivered at the National Vineyard Conference in the UK. In his presentation he discusses four phases that the Vineyard has journeyed. I thought you might find it interesting.

With the new year often comes a New Year Resolution. These resolutions come in all kinds of forms. We all made them and most of them have been broken. It seems to be an endless cycle. One of the resolutions that followers of Jesus often make is a resolution to read the Bible through during the next year. That too, often falls by the wayside. One of the reasons is the call to move from hardly any consistent reading to a commitment to read for the next 365 days and not only that but read it, the text of Scripture, in a chopped up and very fragmented way. Read Genesis 1-2, then Read Matthew 1 or some other routine that tears at the very core of the storyline of the Bible.

So, here’s an alternative, Read the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days (or 200 or 300). What’s the difference you say? Read it as a story using a text of Scripture that has removed all the chapters and verses. Read it in a more chronological fashion. Set the number of days you want to read. Don’t start on January 1, don’t make it a New Years Resolution, pick another day, be intentional, but start soon.

How do you do this? I have prepared a reading guide using The Books of the BibleTM that you can receive every week that provides a suggestion of reading beginning with Genesis and working your way through Revelation on your own time schedule.

Where can you find this information? Just click on the following link and read the information and signup. It’s free!

Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days

It’s a great story, you should read it. Read it again for the first time.

Tom Wright is one of my favorite NT specialist. Below are a couple of Easter idea that come from Preaching Today. If you have not read anything by Tom Wright, may I suggest: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Text: Matthew 26:17–28:20; Mark 14:12–16:20; Luke 22:7–24:43; John 13:1–21:25; Acts 10:1–48
Topic: A look at what it means to live in light of the Resurrection

Introduction: Bottling up the wonder of the Resurrection
The Easter stories are full of people getting the wrong end of the stick. Mary thinks Jesus’ body has been stolen. Peter sees the linen wrappings and can’t work out what it’s all about. The disciples didn’t understand the Scriptures. The angels question Mary, and she still doesn’t know what’s going on. Then she thinks Jesus is the gardener. Then, it seems, she reaches out to cling to him, and he tells her she mustn’t. You could hardly get more misunderstandings into a couple of paragraphs if you tried.

The point is, of course, that Easter has burst into our world—the world of space, time, and matter, real history and real people and real life—but our minds and imaginations are too small to contain it. So, we do our best to put the sea into a bottle and fit the explosive fact of the Resurrection into the possibilities we already know about.

At one level the continued puzzlement of the disciples is a mark of the story’s authenticity. If someone had been making it all up a generation later, as many have suggested, they would hardly have had such a muddle going on. More particularly, nobody would have made up the remarkable detail of the cloth around Jesus’ head, folded up in a place by itself, or the even more extraordinary fact that Jesus is not immediately recognized—either here, in the evening on the road to Emmaus, or when cooking breakfast by the shore. The first Christians weren’t prepared for what actually happened. Nobody could have been. As one leading agnostic scholar has put it, it looks as though they were struggling to describe something for which they didn’t have adequate language.

Pushing past generalized half-truths about Easter
But this problem isn’t confined to the first century. Ever since then, people have tried to squash the Easter message into conventional boxes in which it just won’t fit. There was a classic example in the Times on Good Friday [2008]. In an article entitled “Universal Truths,” the writer suggested that [everyone can sign on the dotted line] of the Easter message. “Good Friday,” the author wrote, “commemorates sacrifice, the giving of oneself as a martyr for the love of others, so Easter is the achievement of victory through suffering. These are universal spiritual truths. And the more interaction acquaints those of different faiths with the beliefs of others, the clearer is the common acceptance of these truths.” So, in conclusion, “The Easter message draws the devout together”—presumably the devout of all religions. “From suffering, goodness can triumph. Death is not final.” And then, [the writer] offers a grand and woefully misleading last sentence: “That is what all faiths in Britain can proclaim and where they can come together this weekend.”

Well, sorry! Of course we must work to find common ground and common purpose with those of all faiths and none. These things matter enormously. But you don’t achieve anything by downgrading the unique message of Easter. Just as I would expect to take my shoes off if I went into a mosque, so any sensible Muslim would expect, in a church on Easter Day, that we wouldn’t be talking about the generalized half-truth that “out of suffering goodness can triumph.” Even that takes some believing when you look around at the world today. They would rightly expect us to be talking about something unique that happened as a one-off—something that happened to the previously dead body of Jesus; something because of which Christianity cannot be contained in the vague religiosity of late-modern Britain, any more than Mary or Peter or John could grasp the truth by saying that someone had taken away the body. Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus’ crucifixion, it is the central event of world history—the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new. The gospel, says Paul in Colossians, has already been preached to every creature under heaven. This means that with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a shock wave has rattled through the world, so that despite appearances, the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities that were previously unimagined.

It is, I grant you, better to say that from suffering goodness can triumph than to lose hope all together. For some people who would say that, the glass of faith is perhaps half full. But what the article has done, in a typically patronizing example of late-Enlightenment rhetoric, is to offer a glass that’s half empty and getting emptier. Its wishy-washy religion has little to do with any actual faith, particularly with real Christianity. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t even spill over into the surrounding subject matter.

[The second headline in the Good Friday edition of the Times] was rightly complaining about Tibet. What good does it do to say in Tibet that “from suffering goodness can triumph?” Isn’t that just a further encouragement to the bullying Chinese government? And what would a Buddhist say, for whom suffering is an illusion? And would mouthing these platitudes do one tiny thing to encourage our government, or even our [Olympic] athletes, to put pressure on China?

The whole Easter truth and what it means for today’s world
Contrast all of this with today’s story: Acts 10:1–48. The story of Peter and Cornelius shows robustly what it means to have a glass that’s half full and getting fuller. The Roman centurion Cornelius had come, in his personal devotion and prayer, to invoke the God of Israel in respect and humility. God calls Peter to go and speak to this Gentile about Jesus—particularly about his death and resurrection. Peter doesn’t say to Cornelius, “I gather you’ve got a wonderful faith already. Isn’t that marvelous—that we’re all on different paths up the same mountain?” He says, “The God you’ve been worshiping from afar has come near to you in Jesus, and he has done something in Jesus which gives a new shape to world history and a new meaning to human life.” Cornelius believes and is baptized.

Real Christianity, the full-glass version, is both the truth that makes sense of all other truth and the truth that offers itself as the framework within which those other truths will find their meaning. The one thing it doesn’t do—which is uncomfortable for today’s pluralistic world—is offer itself as one truth among many, or one version of a single truth common to all.

This discomfort—so disturbing that many people try to hush it up, to belittle it, to pat it on the head and say, “There, there. That’s a nice thing to believe”—comes out today in several areas, not least in some matters of urgent public debate. Let me just mention two.

First, let’s discuss the current controversy about embryo cloning. Our present government has been pushing through legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby. The euthanasia bill was another example. It has been defeated for the moment, but it will be back. The media sometimes imply that it’s only Roman Catholics who care about such things. But that’s wrong. All Christians are now facing, and must resist, the long outworking of various secularist philosophies, which imagine that we can attain the Christian vision of future hope without the Christian God. In this 1984-style world, we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology. “We create our Brave New World here and now,” they say, “so don’t tell us that God’s new world was born on Easter Sunday.” They reduce such dangerous beliefs to abstract, timeless platitudes. The irony is that this secular utopianism is based on a belief in an unstoppable human ability to make a better world, while at the same time it believes that we have the right to kill unborn children and surplus old people and to play games with the humanity of those in between. Gender-bending was so last century; we now do species-bending. Look how clever we are! Utopia must be just ’round the corner.

Have we learnt nothing from the dark tyrannies of the last century? It shouldn’t just be Roman Catholics who are objecting. It ought to be Anglicans and Presbyterians and Baptists and Russian Orthodox and Pentecostals and all other Christians—and Jews and Muslims as well. This isn’t a peripheral or denominational concern. It grows directly out of the central facts of our faith, because on Easter day, God reaffirmed the goodness and “image-bearingness” of the human race in the man Jesus Christ, giving the lie simultaneously to the idea that utopia could be had by our own efforts and to the idea that humans are just miscellaneous evolutionary by-products, to be managed and manipulated at will. The Christian vision of what it means to be human is gloriously underscored by the resurrection of Jesus, and we as Easter people should make common cause with all those who are concerned about the direction our society is going in medical technology as in so much besides.

The second area of Easter concern is our treatment of people from other countries. In 2007, Daniel Bourdanné, a distinguished African scientist, was installed as General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a long-standing and highly respected body which serves members in 150 countries with its headquarters in Oxford. The British High Commission in Accra dragged its feet over Daniel’s application to come here, eventually turning it down with minimal explanation. Daniel then asked for permission to travel to the U.K. on his current visitor’s visa and was told he could. When he arrived he was detained for 22 hours, his mobile phones were seized, and he was flown back to Africa. He is still waiting to appeal this decision and treatment. I would love to think that many people here this morning might wish to take up the case of Daniel Bourdanné with our immigration authorities, our Home Office, and indeed the High Commission in Accra. But I raise his case not simply as a one-off, but because it typifies the careless and shabby treatment our supposedly civilized country now metes out both to bona fide people coming here as part of their proper work, and to those who have come here validly seeking asylum. This is further highlighted by the story of a critically ill woman who was returned to Ghana and who has now died. In hunting for her case by doing a Google search with the words “asylum seeker dies,” I was horrified to discover that there has been a whole string of asylum seekers committing suicide because they have lost hope of fair or just treatment.

Why am I talking about all of this on Easter Sunday? When I mentioned asylum seekers in passing at the Christmas midnight sermon [2007], I was rebuked by someone who told me it had nothing to do with Christmas. Well, according to Matthew, the boy Jesus and his family were themselves asylum seekers in Egypt. And Easter gives us more. First, Peter’s message to Cornelius was that through his resurrection, Jesus has been constituted as the judge of the living and the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the final putting-to-rights of all things. In the light of the Resurrection, the church must never stop reminding the world’s rulers and authorities that they themselves will be held to account, and that they must do justice and bring wise, healing order to God’s world ahead of that day. Those who want to depoliticize the Resurrection must first “dehistoricize” it—which is, of course, what they have been doing enthusiastically for many years. We wonder why the church has sometimes sounded irrelevant! We who celebrate our risen Lord today must bear witness to Easter—God’s great act of putting-right—as the yardstick for all human justice.

Second, that same message from Peter to Cornelius stressed that, with the Resurrection, the one true and living God was welcoming all people into his family. The church is the original multinational corporation, copied but not outdone by the empires of this world, both territorial and financial. The xenophobia which treats other people as inconvenient and disposable is unworthy of a country where seventy per cent of the people describe themselves as Christian. Actually, I rather wish the real problem was xenophobia! I fear it is, in fact, the box-ticking mentality of some junior civil servants, coupled with the habit of normally unscrutinized bad behavior—and this at a time when the same government is not only tying us hand and foot in complex and trivial compliance legislation, but refusing to provide or police even basic rules for the conduct of its own members.

Conclusion: The call to live as Easter people
I make no apology for raising all these issues on Easter Day. Easter is about real life, not escapist fantasy. Easter is about God’s judgment calling the world to account and setting up his new, glorious creation of freedom and peace, summoning all people everywhere to live in this new world. Easter is about God’s rich welcome to all humankind. As Easter people we are called to celebrate all of that in practical ways as well as in glad and uninhibited worship. I pay tribute to the many people in this diocese who are sacrificially doing just that, not least with asylum seekers. That is the point of it all. It’s all done because Easter is about Jesus: the Jesus who announced God’s saving, sovereign kingdom; the Jesus who died to exhaust the power of this world’s rulers; the Jesus who rose again to be crowned as king over all things in heaven and on earth. God give us grace, this day and from now on, to live as Easter people, celebrating Jesus’ love and joy at his table and making his kingdom and justice known in his world.

From Preaching Today

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.

Here’s a short video clip of Brian McLaren asking me a question about God’s EPIC Adventure. Enjoy.

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.

The Bible is the world’s best selling book! We own tons of them. Most folks that will read this will most likely own more than one Bible. Why do we own so many Bibles but read so little of it? Unlike other books that we often read, the Bible needs special care in reading. Below is a small bibliography that can help you get the help you may need to read the text of Scripture itself for both enjoyment and spiritual life. Living in God’s Grand Narrative as his new creation brings new meaning to why we live. Just move your mouse over the book to see more information about it.

• The Art of Reading Scripture
• The Beauty Behind the Mask: Rediscovering the Books of the Bible
• The Bible: A History: The Making and Impact of the Bible
• The Bible As Literature: An Introduction
• The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity (The Bible in Early Christianity , So3)
• Birth of the New Testament
• The Book: A History of the Bible
• Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
• The Cambridge History of the Bible
• The Canon of Scripture
• The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
• Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading
• Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Second Edition (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)
• The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations
• The Formation of Christian Biblical Canon: Revised and Expanded Edition
• A History of the Bible as Literature
• How the Bible Became a Book: The Amazing Story Behind the All-Time Best-Seller
• How the Bible Came to Be
• How the Bible Was Built
• How to Read a Book (A Touchstone Book)
• How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour
• How We Got the Bible,
• The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford Bible Series)
• The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible
• The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible
• How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
• The Literary Guide to the Bible
• The Literature and Meaning of Scripture
• The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
• The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon
• The Making of the New Testament Documents
• Making Sense of the Bible: Literary Type As an Approach to Understanding
• The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning
• The New Testament in Its Literary Environment
• The New Testament in Literary Criticism (Library of Literary Criticism)
• The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism
• The Origin of the Bible
• The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible (Oxford Illustrated Histories)
• The Septuagint (Understanding the Bible and Its World)
• Studies in Early Christianity

Have fun reading and learning!

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.

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!

On February 23, 2007 the movie Amazing Grace will hit theaters all over USAmerica. It is the story of one man’s struggle for justice in his time and place. Below is a trailer for the movie. If you want more information, you can discover it at Amazing Grace Movie.

Over the years of teaching and training in the church, I have suggested on more than one occasion that the church is not the primary source for the spiritual formation of children. This primary responsibility belongs to the family. Traditionally, families have not been trained with this notion in mind. Training is always going on with kids and they are being spiritually formed even if we are not actively thinking or reflecting about it.

I just found this resource that I thought might interest you. It’s written by Ivy Beckwith, who is apart of the Emergent Village conversation. She has written Postmodern Children’s Ministry: Ministry to Children in the 21st Century Church in which she speaks about the spiritual formation of children and their place as full participants in the community of faith.

Here is a brief part of her introduction:

The church’s ministry to children is broken. A cursory look doesn’t reveal its brokenness. From the outside children’s ministry looks healthier then ever. But it is broken. It’s broken when church leaders and senior pastors see children’s ministry as primarily a marketing tool. The church with the most outwardly attractive program wins the children and then the parents. It’s broken when we teach children the Bible as if it were just another book of moral fables or stories of great heroes. Something’s broken when we trivialize God to our children. It’s broken when we exclude children from, perhaps, the most important of community activities – worship. It’s broken because we’ve become dependent on an 18th century schooling model forgetting that much of a child’s spiritual formation is affective, active, and intuitive. It’s broken when we depend on our programs and our curriculum to introduce our children to God – not our families and communities. It’s broken when we’ve come to believe that church has to be something other than church to be attractive to children. It’s broken when we spend lots of money making our churches into play lands and entice children to God through food fights and baptisms in the back of fire trucks. And perhaps most importantly it’s broken when the church tells parents that its programs can spiritually nurture their children better than they can. By doing this we’ve lied to parents and allowed them to abdicate their responsibility to spiritually form their children. A church program can’t spiritually form a child, but a family living in an intergenerational community of faith can. Our care for our children is broken and badly in need of repair. Let’s imagine together a new way, a new future.

I trust you will pick it up and give it a read.