What's going on around

Some real good stuff around the blogosphere right now...

Jim Martin over at A Place for the God-Hungry has 2 posts from St. John of the Cross, The Seven Sins of the Spiritual Life (Part 1) and (Part 2). I hope he keeps going with it. If you want to read the whole thing without waiting for him to post, you can head on over to CCEL.

Dan Kimball at Vintage Faith has a good post on pastors:

In a small church, the "pastor" is slave to the people and their opinions of how things should be done, does most of the chores and jobs around the church and is on call at any time day or night for the people.

In a large church, the "pastor" is king of the people, and comes out once a week on Sunday to give a mesmerizing speech which woos the people and then he disappears for another week.

And Scot McKnight has a nice series going on women in the church, specifically from the book by Sara Sumner. here is the one from yesterday, a short quote is in order:

Here’s 1 Cor 11:7 (TNIV):

A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.

Sumner observes that “he” is the “image” of God while she is the “glory of man.” This led Augustine to comment on the text with two major implications:

First, that only Adam is the image of God; Eve is “image” only when in union with Adam. This drives the woman to be married to the man/male in order to form a complete identity.

Second, the “image” of God is the “rational” part of humans (males); females are more concerned with lower things while males with higher things. Women can “bear” the image of God; a man “is” the image of God. Women cover their heads in worship to cover their lower-focused heads/minds; men don’t cover their heads because they are focused on higher things.

<idle musing>
I think she is right on the money here...I like Augustine in some things, but his view on women is not one of them.
</idle musing>

And Ted Gossard has some insights into why less is more:

I'd rather give a one page handout, getting us into Scripture with some questions to facilitate discussion, than give a handout with reams and reams of material, that likely neither they nor I am really going to "get" very well. In this case, less is more, and more is less.