Trick or Treat

Halloween Thoughts

Here is a great post about how Halloween has been demonized (pun intended) by many in the evangelical establishment. http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-internet-monk-annual-halloween-rant-2

I echo the thoughts in the article. I have great memories of dressing up with my mom to go trick or treating. One year she went as the Bride of Dracula and I was an escaped convict (mind you all before the age of 8). Definitely not the norm for evangelicals celebrating the holiday in 2011. I turned out alright...

More Thoughts on the Reformation

Church & Culture Blog | Church and Culture

Reformation Sunday

In honor of Reformation Sunday, being the good non-creedal, non-liturgical baptist that I am I offer a quote from one of the most crude, sloven, prone to imbibe, incredibly gifted theologians the church has ever produced...Martin Luther.

"Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly... Pray boldly - for you too are a mighty sinner." 

Father to a Son

It's hard to believe that we are halfway through pregnancy number 3! I am extremely excited to be having a boy this time around, but also very nervous. I know what to do with girls...at least so far. I'm not so sure with boys. I was talking to a student this morning who is a big outdoors person. He hunts every chance he gets. I have been hunting once, so I'm not sure how to teach my son anything about wildlife. I'm not really great with tools, mechanical things, etc. so I'm not sure where he will learn to do any of that stuff either. If he wants to have a discussion about theories of atonement while I change his diaper then I can handle that area. Or if he wants to discuss the influence of jazz and blues musicians on current music or the merits of being critically acclaimed and not popularly acclaimed in the world of music. I can even handle discussing the theological implications of such films as The Goonies or TV shows like Friends and for Halloween, Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin I'm there! The good news is I have a few more months to figure some of these things out!

GSU vs. App State

Fall Festival

Quoteable Quotes

Vocation is not primarily a thing one does to live but the thing one lives to do. It is, or should be, the full expression of your faculties, the thing in which you find spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction.

       Dorothy Sayers

Maturity is to accept oneself and ones origins as non-negotiable.

I do not want to make Baptists shut themselves up in their little clam shells and be indifferent to the ocean outside of them. I am a Baptist, but I am more than a Baptist. All things are mine; whether Francis of Assisi, or Luther, or Knox, or Wesley; all are mine because I am Christ's. The old Adam is a strict denominationalist; the new Adam is just a Christian.

       Walter Rauschenbusch

I came across all of these in the book, For Faith and Friendship, currently in my stack of reading material. 

Tacky Day

Fair Parade 2011

Fair Parade 2011

Wilco Live

Here is video of the Wilco song referenced in an earlier post.

Voices in your Head

Wilco, the alternative band with deep roots in alt-country and folk music released a new album almost a month ago that I have been listening to lately. The variety of musical styles are amazing (ranging from Neil Young ala Harvest to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon). The song Dawned on Me has really captured my mind lyrically and musically.

I've been taken 
By the sound 
Of my own voice
The voices in my head

It seems to me that the temptation for ministers is to allow the voices in our head to overtake the voice of the Holy Spirit that is calling for a life of humble submission to Christ. Unfortunately the voices in my head don't tend to be very humble or willing to submit themselves to Christ. Some of the reading I have been doing lately has reminded me that I need to listen to the voice of Abba rather than the voices in my head. The voices in my head may be my own voice, one of pride and arrogance or it may be accolades from others, approval and acceptance from others...regardless it is so easy to subtly give the "voices" more influence than the Spirit.

Fair

Fair

A Book List

I always love to hear or see what other people recommend as essential or required reading.
Church & Culture Blog | Church and Culture

Speedway

Construction Zone

Fair 2011

GSU vs. Furman Game

Feeding the Midway Workers

A Fully Biblical Liberation Theology | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

A Fully Biblical Liberation Theology | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Pain

"If we don't learn to transform the pain, we'll transfer it." Richard Rohr

Ashlyn's Birthday Party

Rainy Day 2

Rainy Day

God of the Impossible

I came across this quote from St. Ambrose, one of the early church fathers, in my devotional book.

"What is impossible to God? Not that which is difficult to His power, but that which is contrary to His nature."

Fall Festival @ Claire's School

Another Innovative Leader Passes

The internet has been abuzz with homages to Steve Jobs and his innovations that have impacted our culture, but there was another gentleman who died this week whose innovative thinking helped impact our culture too. Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was a key figure in the struggle against racism and for equality for African-Americans in the U.S. He was dedicated to his efforts at impacting culture not because he was black or because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the biblical thing to do.

George Herbert on the Eucharist

"Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloude; but I, as wine."
The Agonie

Luther on Faith

"We can be saved by faith alone, but not by faith that remains alone."

Family Night at CFA

The girls got to explore the inside of a firetruck!

Ready for Halloween

What you get when you cross Little Red Riding Hood and a Cowgirl.

On Repeat in the Volvo!

Prayer and War

A journalist once asked the great spiritual Jewish leader, Abraham Heschel, why he came to a demonstration against the Vietnam War. “I am here because I cannot pray,” Heschel answered. Confused, the journalist asked, “What do you mean, you can’t pray so you come to a demonstration against the war?” Heschel: “Whenever I open the prayerbook, I see before me images of children burning from napalm.” Heshcel meant that we forfeit our right to pray if we are silent about the cruelties surrounding us. “Prayer,” he said, must never be a citadel for selfish concerns but rather a place for deepening concern over other people’s plight.” (See Essential Writings below, 17).

Excerpted from Walter B. Shurden’s preaching Journal, October 2011 Vol. 4 No. 40