Strawberries

It's that time of the year again. A bit later than normal this year because it has been so cold, but that worked out better for me with our wacky schedule this year. Saturday I picked about 40 pounds of strawberries—20 pounds for freezer jam and 20 pounds sliced and frozen. I wanted 50 pounds, but because it is toward the end of the season, the berries were smaller and it took longer than normal to pick.

We still don't have a car, and the patch is about 15 miles away, so Jon loaned me his car. I couldn't have fit that many strawberries onto the bike trailer without crushing them. I certainly didn't want strawberry juice :)

I got to the patch around 9:00 and had picked about 15 pounds when it got cloudy and windy and looked (and sounded) like it was going to rain. In fact, it did start to sprinkle and most people quit and went home. Not me. Instead I asked God to send the storm south of us and let me finish picking. Sure enough, that storm went south of us and I kept on picking. A bit later, when I had about 35 pounds, it started to look like rain again, but I kept on praying. When I hit 40 pounds, my back was starting to hurt and I decided to quit.

I was carrying the flats up to the stand to pay for them when it started to rain. By the time I had the fourth flat there, it was pouring rain. Next time, I will remember to ask God to keep the rain away until I have them paid for! Oh well, I didn't melt, nor did the strawberries.

The rest of the day was spent making jam, slicing strawberries and freezing them. We finished at about 11:00 PM. Long day, but it will be well worth it this winter when Debbie makes shortcake. But, right now I don't want to see another strawberry for a while...

Eisenbrauns 10 day sale

1000 years ago this year the scribes finished copying the Leningrad codex. Eisenbrauns is celebrating the milestone with a sale on the facsimile edition and the smaller Dothan edition, both at 40% off.

Of course, you can't just run those two by themselves, so we threw in 8 other titles for you at savings from 40-50% off:

"Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia: Prepared according to the Vocalization, Accents, and Masora of Aaron ben Moses ben Asher in the Leningrad Codex with Adaptations to Halakhic Requirements"
by Aron Dothan
Hendrickson Publishers, 2001. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1565630890
List Price: $49.95 Your Price: $29.97

"The Leningrad Codex: The Facsimile Edition"
Edited by David Noel Freedman, Astrid Beck, and James A. Sanders
Eerdmans, 1998. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0802837867
List Price: $275.00 Your Price: $165.00

"Deuteronomy"
Edited by Carmel McCarthy
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2007. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 9781598561982
List Price: $99.00 Your Price: $59.40

"Ezra-Nehemiah: Biblia Hebraica Quinta"
Edited by David Marcus
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 20
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2006. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052806
List Price: $98.00 Your Price: $58.80

"General Introduction and Megilloth: Biblia Hebraica Quinta"
Edited by Adrian Schenker, et al.
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 18
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2004. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052784
List Price: $98.00 Your Price: $58.80

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Large Format"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph

Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1987. Cloth. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052180
List Price: $79.99 Your Price: $47.99

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Paperback Edition"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2001. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052229
List Price: $34.99 Your Price: $19.94

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Small format"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1987. Cloth. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052199
List Price: $69.95 Your Price: $38.47

"Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon Old Testament: Study Edition, 2 Volume Set"
Edited by Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament - HALOT
Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 9004124454
List Price: $249.00 Your Price: $174.05

"The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic: Coded with the numbering system from "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible""
by Francis Brown, et al.
Hendrickson Publishers, 1995. Cloth. English and Hebrew.
ISBN: 1565632060
List Price: $34.95 Your Price: $17.48

Tuesday's thought

Another selection from Absolute Surrender, compliments of Blogger's delayed posting action:
I fear that if you take the preaching throughout the Church of Christ and ask why there is, alas! so little converting power in the preaching of the Word, why there is so much work and often so little result for eternity, why the Word has so little power to build up believers in holiness and in consecration—the answer will come: It is the absence of the power of the Holy Ghost. And why is this? There can be no other reason but that the flesh and human energy have taken the place that the Holy Ghost ought to have.

Monday's thought

If you are reading this, then the delayed posting function of Blogger works :)

Here's another selection from Abosolute Surrender:
God gives Christians the Holy Spirit with this intention, that every day all their life should be lived in the power of the Spirit. A man cannot live one hour a godly life unless by the power of the Holy Ghost. He may live a proper, consistent life, as people call it, an irreproachable life, a life of virtue and diligent service; but to live a life acceptable to God, in enjoyment of God's salvation and God's love, to live and walk in the power of the new life—he cannot do it unless he be guided by the Holy Spirit every day and every hour.

Lost shipment

This one has to take the record for time lost.

We sent a shipment out to a customer in December, 2006. It was a foreign address, so we allow up to 3 months for delivery. When it hadn't arrived by March, 2007, we reshipped to him, our normal procedure. He received the follow-up shipment without problems.

Today, we received back a package containing the original shipment. The box was beat up, but the books were still in sellable condition! That was over 18 months that the package was lost somewhere in the world!

Strange things happening...

Thought for a Friday

I haven't had a lot of time to read lately, but I picked up Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray again the other day and read chapter 7. Here is a selection from it:

If the church will return to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is her strength and her help, and if the church will return to give up everything, and wait upon God to be filled with the Spirit, her days of beauty and gladness will return, and we shall see the glory of God revealed among us. This is my message to every individual believer: Nothing will help you unless you come to understand that you must live every day under the power of the Holy Ghost.

God wants you to be a living vessel in whom the power of the Spirit is to be manifested every hour and every moment of your life, and God will enable you to be that.

<idle musing>
Do I ever know that to be true in the last few days. Without the continuous upholding power of God, there is no way I could make it. I feel a wall of peace surrounding me and protecting me. Sure, it hurts and I grieve, but not as those without hope, as the scripture says. David put it appropriately when he said of his dead baby that he would go to be with him, but the child would never return.

I do thank all of you for your e-mails, wall posts, comments, and prayers. They do make a difference and I thank God for all of you. I will be leaving to get Debbie on Saturday and won't return until Tuesday night, so there might not be any postings until then.
</idle musing>

Various notes

I am getting caught up on some blog reading, and wanted to point to a few good posts

Nice post by Claude Mariottini on why just changing the name of your church won't change anything else.

How about some provocative thoughts on marriage

Alan Knox is connecting some dots in reading scripture, and pointing to a faulty view of church

Or, how about some thoughts on baptism and what it means in your daily life.

Finally, how about an outsider's view of American life

Enjoy.

Lakeland again

Well, it looks like I don't have to figure out how to post the PDF. Gary sent it to Todd, and he posted it on his website here.

Peter Kirk interacts with the paper here.

I have known Gary Greig for over 20 years now, from the time we were students together at the University of Chicago. Gary is a very careful scholar and pays attention to detail—unlike yours truly :)

The what?

I think we need to start reapplying the lex sedentium Huh? I had never heard of it before either, but Alan Knox posted on it recently. Here's a bit to help you understand

Sometime during the 1500's the magisterial reformers abandoned the idea of Sitzerrecht - that all believers have the right and duty to test teachers and determine the meaning of Scripture together - and embraced the principle that only a "technically qualified theological expert" could properly interpret Scripture for a gathered group of believers.

The idea that only a qualified expert can exegete and explain Scripture today is embraced by most congregations - even if it is not voiced as a hermeneutical principle by those same congregations. For this reason, the "sermon" and the "pulpit" are placed in a superior position to any other type of communication between believers. Since the sermon is now in a superior position - for many a sacrosanct or even sacramental position - Paul's instructions in 1 Cor. 14:26ff. concerning interrupting a speaker are considered to not apply to sermons.

<idle musing>
Fascinating stuff. Too bad the magisterial reformers (a certain Zwingli included) didn't stick with the scripture, but instead substituted their own version of the Mass (he says, ducking!). Read the whole post for more background
</idle musing>

Sometimes you have to say good-bye

But it is not always easy. Monday they did surgery on Emily Grace. Tuesday, she went to be with Jesus. I only got to see her two days, but she had a sweet spirit about her. Even the nurses noticed it and commented on it. Joel has written a nice little good-bye here.

Lakeland (long)

Up until now, I have avoided saying anything about the Lakeland outpouring. But, it seems that some comments need to be made, so here we go...

As most of you know, I desire to see a revival of true Christianity in this land—actually, in this world. I have read quite a few histories of revival and not a few biographies of some of the greatest revival preachers in the last 400 years. One thing I have noted that they all have in common is that they are misunderstood and misrepresented by their contemporaries. Especially by the established leaders of the institutional church. For example, Jonathan Edwards was accused of allowing the devil to deceive him—they even had a denominational meeting that was going to censure him, but Godly men prevented it; John Wesley was called a “papist” (which was one of the worst things you could call someone in 18th century England—remember they had just come out of the religious wars) and worse; Charles Finney was accused of using “new measures” which were in contradiction to the scripture. Ironically, many of those "new measures" have now become essential in many people's minds. For example, take the altar call. This is a staple in most evangelistic services, but it was introduced by Finney, to the outrage of most of his contemporaries. Now if you don't have one, you are accused of not presenting the gospel!

Another thing that they have in common is an unusual level of physical manifestations which were a bit strange. People crying out under conviction, some actually falling to the ground and going into a trance. If you read John Wesley's journal (not the cleaned up one that Moody Press used to sell, but either the new one by Abingdon, or the older one by Baker), you will see many strange things enumerated. But, and this is the difference between many revivalists then and now, the revivalists did not put any stock in the manifestations. They looked for a changed life; a life full of the fear of God and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Anything else was simply accepted as a way that God was working, but not seen as a substitute for a changed life.

As long as a changed life remains the focus, and God is kept at the center, let the manifestations come in whatever form they do. Personally, I think that is where Toronto got sidetracked. They started out focusing on God, but before very long, the manifestations became the center. Once that happened, God left.

I have heard many accusations raised against Todd Bentley. For example, he is violent; he almost attacks the people physically who come for healing. So? Has anybody ever read any of the reports from a Smith Wigglesworth healing? Herr Tilling, care to say anything? Smith Wigglesworth would probably be hauled into court today for the physicalness of his “laying on of hands,” yet most were healed.

I have heard complaints about the fact that he is tattoed. So? I grew up during the 1960-70 era. Anybody hear of the Jesus Movement? The big complaint about them was that they had long-hair, wore ragged blue jeans, went barefoot, and played rock and roll (guilty on all counts!). Did that mean that God wasn't at work? Did that mean that their salvation wasn't real? Can God only work through established institutional churches with robes, candles, vestments, etc.? Hmmm. Want to join the pharisees and sadducees who were against Jesus because he didn't do things the “right” way?

I have heard him accused of being ignorant. Maybe he isn't a theologian, but I would venture to say that he knows more about God than his critics. The early disciples were “ignorant and unschooled men,” did that stop God from using them? Smith Wigglesworth could barely read (and some of his theology was a bit on the questionable side). Did that keep God from using him? I know a pastor who is now in his 80's who couldn't read until God called him to preach. His answer to God was, “God, I'll preach, but you will have to teach me how to read.” God did. It is a cliché, but true, that God is more concerned with our availability than our ability.

Remember that scripture says people will know we are Christians by our love for one another. It doesn't say by our correct doctrine or by our flowery sermons or our ornate buildings. Also, remember that we are told to watch for false teachers by the fruit of their lives. Again, nothing about doctrine. Yes, doctrine is important! But, far more important is your relationship with the almighty righteous God who created you and redeemed you by the blood of his son, Jesus.

A friend of mine, who has a PhD from the University of Chicago, sent me a theological defense of the Lakeland outpouring. He gave me permission to post it, but it is too long to put up as a post. If I can figure out how to post a PDF on Blogger, I will put it up. Anybody able to tell me how?

June sale at Eisenbrauns

Here it is the tenth of June, and I still haven't posted about the monthly sale. You would almost think that other more important things are going on right now :)

The Eisenbrauns' June sale is offering you the chance to save 40% on almost 50 titles from the AOAT series by Ugarit Verlag. We haven't offered prices this low on AOAT titles for over 2 years. You can view the complete list here

Update on Emily

I just received an e-mail from Joel:

They decided not to do another ECHO. They were putting an IV in Emily's neck when we arrived, but we couldn't watch. She's still scheduled for noon but may not actually have surgery until 1 or 2.

The times are Central Daylight. Please pray! I think they should do another ECHO before surgery, but...

Emily Grace (June bug) Monday results

Joel and Renee couldn't post last night, but I talked to Joel on the phone (Debbie too!). Here's what happened:

The doctors stopped the prostoglandin yesterday morning, as planned. Emily's oxygen saturation levels dropped, as expected; the concern is if they drop below 70. They did drop below 70 last evening, but then recovered into the 80's, but were not stable, although they did not drop below 70 again. The doctors had a nurse technician do an ultrasound/echo monitor on Emily's heart. She was at it for about 45 minutes.

She was fairly sure that she saw forward movement of blood through the pulmonary artery, which is good. Because it was evening, the doctors were consulting with her over the phone. Given that it was evening, and that her levels were somewhat unstable, they decided to begin giving Emily the prostoglandin again. But, there will be a consultation between the doctors and a new ultrasound/echo monitor this morning.

Please pray! This is truly good news! If when the doctors review the ultrasound/echo monitor from last night and this morning they see forward movement of blood, they probably will not need to operate!

Joel told me they would call me at work today with any further updates. I will post them as soon as I hear.

Emily Grace (June bug)

I haven't posted anything on baby Emily since she was born. But, here is the latest, well the latest as of Saturday anyway. You can get all the details, as well as pictures on Joel and Renee's blog

On Thursday they stopped giving her prostoglandin to see if her heart would be able to function normally (see here for details). It didn't. So they resumed the medication. At the time, the doctors said that this automatically means open-heart surgery. But, on Saturday when I talked to Renee she told me that they were going to try one more time—today. Apparently they think there is still a chance to avoid surgery. When I think of that tiny little chest getting cut open... Anyway, with God there is more than a chance to avoid surgery. Please pray that God would intervene and enable her heart to sustain the necessary blood flow.

She is a beautiful little baby and she is one week old today.

The car

OK. The insurance guy came today and took all kinds of pictures. The car is 13 years old, so there was plenty of rust and related dents. After all was said and done, I got about $600 for the car. I hope that covers the repair of the hood; I have a friend coming to look at it tomorrow.

Here are some pictures I took of it. It is in the garage and the sun was causing weird shadows, but you can get the idea.

Back home again

I am now back in Indiana and at work. Yesterday (Wednesday) I swung by the hospital one last time to say good-bye to Joel, Renee, and Emily. She is such a precious little thing and looks very good despite all the tubes. If you want the latest news, check out Joel and Renee's blog.

The return trip is about 10 hours and I left the hospital around noon, Minneapolis time, which means 1:00 PM Indiana time. I made good time around Chicago, even with all the construction, and was coming down our road right around 11:15. I was rejoicing in the good time I made and that I hadn't had any car problems when suddenly a deer runs out in front of me, not more than 15 feet away. I swerved to avoid it, but the thing hit the hood with a crash! Or, was that the airbags deploying? I don't know, but I sure did hit it. The hood folded in half and the car stunk from the airbags.

The poor deer was lying in the road and I thought for sure I had killed it, But, nope. It scrambled up and managed to cross the road into the ditch before it collapsed. You could hear the backbone crunching. It was heart-wrenching to hear and see it thrashing around trying to get away. I called 911 and waited for the sheriff deputy to arrive. Thankfully, he put it out of its misery with 2 shots to the head with a rifle.

Five hundred and thirty miles, and 1/4 mile from home. Amazingly, there were no leaking fluids and the radiator had only moved about 1.5 inches. I actually drove it home and parked it in the garage. Because the airbags deployed, the insurance company is going to declare it totaled, but I'm going to buy it back. I got 55 miles to the gallon coming home. If at all possible, I want that car!

Never a dull moment. Son gets married, daughter has high-risk baby, deer hits car. All in less than a week :)

It certainly makes me believe in divine providence.

Junebug

Hey everybody! I'm a grandpa again! Emily Grace was born at 1:30 PM Central time today. They were concerned that she wouldn't have enough lung capacity to support life. Guess what? God is fantastic! Not only did she cry, but she wouldn't stop crying! Talk about lung capacity :)

More details soon, but my battery is about dead now...

It's Monday

Haven't had access to the Internet since Thursday, so perhaps a bit of an update would be nice...

Ryan and Emily's wedding was Saturday, and it was wonderful. Their prayer was that God would be glorified and people would see Jesus in everything that happened. Their prayers were answered. We saw people we hadn't seen since the last wedding (Renee's four years ago); others we hadn't seen since we left Minneapolis over 4.5 years ago. After the reception we helped Ryan and Emily take their gifts to their new apartment and left them in peace :) They flew out Monday AM at 6:00 for Florida. Ryan's work has paid for their airfare and lodging for 8 days at Fort Lauderdale! Emily had never flown before, or seen the ocean, so this is quite the treat for her. I just hope they don't get sunburn.

Saturday evening we went to "The House" which is an emerging-type church in Burnsville on the charismatic side of things. This is Ryan and Emily's home church, so we saw quite a few people that we had met at the wedding that morning. Afterwards, several of us joined together in prayer for baby Emily Grace (Junebug).

Sunday we went to see some friends in Chaska (where we used to live in the Minneapolis area). We had a good time catching up and praying with people from our bible study there. After that, we headed over to another set of friends and prayed with them for healing of their marriage. God broke through, and there was a great time of forgiveness and healing. They had been separated, but after last night, they are back together. We praise God for the restoration and pray that they would continue to walk in forgiveness with one another. By the time that was over, it was a bit late to take the kids back to Clyde and Pat's—we had laid them down to sleep at the last place—so we stayed the rest of the night.

Today, we returned to Clyde and Pat's to the news that Renee had gone into labor on her own late Sunday night. They admitted her Monday morning and broke her water around 10:30 Central time. And that brings us up to date. We don't know anything more yet, but they are expecting a baby girl before evening...

More when I have it.

So, what is happening?

Basically, nothing. We arrived in Minneapolis Monday morning after driving through the night. That same afternoon, Joel and I went up to Grand Marais (about a 5 hour drive) to get the kids and their clothes. Debbie stayed with Renee. Tuesday morning Joel and I did some things that they hadn't been able to do before leaving Friday night—they weren't expecting to leave for another 6 days—and packed up the kids' clothes and grabbed the kids. Then, off we went for another 5 hour drive back to Minneapolis. Along the way, we stopped outside of Duluth for a nice cold picnic. The wind was off the lake, which always makes it cold, but it had been 35 F the night before, and was only about 50 degrees at noon. But the lake is still beautiful and we threw our share of rocks into it :) We arrived back in Minneapolis around 5 that night. So, in about 36 hours, I had spent around 20 of them in a car :(

We have the kids and are staying with Ryan's future in-laws, Clyde and Pat. They have a large enough house and a 3 acre yard, so we aren't cramped. They have been great, and the kids are doing well. Joel and Renee come every day to see them after their morning doctor's appointment. Renee has been having contractions off and on, but nothing to really get things moving. Right now, as I write this, they are having an ultrasound, which may tell more, but I doubt it.

Yesterday afternoon, Joel, Clyde, and I went for a nice hike in the nature preserve near their house. They have about 7-8 miles of trails and we did about 5 miles of them. Saw 3-4 deer, 1 wild turkey, and numerous birds.

Last night I helped Ryan pick up their new bed and put it together. They got a nice one bedroom apartment in Bloomington (a near 'burb of Minneapolis) with a nice big yard. Very quiet and peaceful. Ryan has been living there for about a week; Emily is still living at Bethany. They believe in sexual abstinence until marriage—would that others would also!

The only drawback about staying where we are is that they have no high speed Internet and no network for me to attach my computer to even for dial-up. Right now I am sitting in a Panera Bread and typing this, trying to get caught up on e-mails, and do some other stuff.

We left in such a hurry, that I copied the wrong files to my computer, so I am going to try and get those so I can get the Biblical Studies catalog done while I am here.

And they're off!

Wow, what a weekend, and its only Sunday afternoon. We were at some friends Friday night and returned to no less than 5 messages on the answering machine. Emily Grace (June bug) decided to upset everybody's schedule and sent Renee into labor. You can read all the details on Joel and Renee's blog.

They stopped the labor in Duluth while they airlifted her to Minneapolis and decided not to restart it. But, they won't let them leave Minneapolis. So, Joel and Renee are in a hotel about 2 blocks from the hospital, and Joshua and Rachel are still in Grand Marais. So, we are off to Minneapolis to take care of Joshua and Rachel.

I will post as I can, but please pray!

Thanks to all who have been praying; God is in control and will get glory for himself.

Humor for a Friday

I was looking over a book we recently got, entitled Doing Business with Germans. There are some cartoons, but this one hit my funny bone on a Friday afternoon.



I don't know if the image came through well enough to read, but the blow dryer on the right is entitle "Anleitung," and contains rows of instructions. The one on the left simply says "Press." Too funny...

What a waste

I've been a bit busy of late, creating the new Biblical Studies Resource catalog. The titles need to be chosen before we leave for Ryan's wedding next Wednesday. And, I've been trying to get all the outside stuff done at home before we leave. Both of those together limit my reading and writing time significantly.

All of that to say, this list is about a week old now, but still very good. He lists 45 ways to waste your time in seminary. I would add that some/most of them are good ways to waste your life in general, not just a seminary education. Here's a selection:

4. Nurture an attitude of superiority, competition, and condesension toward fellow seminary students. Secrectly speak ill of them with friends and with your spouse.

6. Neglect personal worship, Bible reading and prayer.

8. Practice misquoting and misrepresenting positions and ideas you don’t agree with. Be lazy and don’t attempt to understand opposing views; instead, nurse your prejudices and exalt your opinions by superficial reading and listening.

9. Give your opinion as often as possible - especially in class. Ask questions that show off your knowledge instead of questions that demonstrate a genuine inquiry.

12. Fill your life with questionable movies, television, internet, and music.

13. Set aside fellowship and accountability with fellow brothers in Christ.

14. Let your study of divine things become dull, boring, lifeless, and mundane.

15. Chip away at your integrity by signing your school’s covenant and then breaking it under the delusion that, “Those rules are legalistic anyway.”

16. Don’t read to learn; read only to refute what you believe is wrong.

17. Convince yourself that you already know all this stuff.

32. Gain knowledge in order to merely teach others. Don’t expend the effort it takes to deal with your own heart.

35. Comfort yourself with the delusion that you will start seriously dealing with sin as soon as you become a pastor; right now it’s not really that big a deal.

41. Love books and theology and ministry more than the Lord Jesus Christ.

45. Don’t really try to learn the languages - let Bible Works do all the work for you.

<idle musing>
Read the whole thing, some good insights there, especially number 41! Now, back to the catalog, which will go out to those who just might be victims of number 41.
</idle musing>

Information or transformation?

The Heresy has an interesting comment on ministry:

In conventional ministry the life blood of ministry is information. The underlying assumption is that knowledge changes people so find the right people who will present the right information to everyone else and they will change. It isn’t working out so well now.

If sacrificial love is as important as Jesus, Paul and John make it out to be why doesn’t this value shape what we do? If love is more important than knowledge than why do we spend so much time absorbing information and so little time interacting with people we care about? In as much as I believe in a simpler approach to church organization the size isn’t the pivotal factor. It really isn’t about how many people are meeting where. It goes deeper than that. It is about the Spirit having an opportunity to work through the body and that a Christlike genuine sacrificial love be evident in the lives of those who are committed to each other. If we organize ourselves in such a way that we prevent real genuine caring relationships to form and we put curbs and barriers up to manage people we are squeezing off the life blood of Christ’s body.

He goes on to say that knowledge is essential to prevent weird directions, but is secondary. Read the whole thing.
<idle musing>
The structure of our meetings and church bodies is not a secondary consideration; how we are organized has a huge effect on the results. In the May Christianity Today there was an article that said we are not “brains on a stick” (which just got posted today), yet we organize everything around information transfer (i.e., the sermon). That needs to change in order for God to get our whole lives under His control! And just changing it from emphasis on the sermon to emphasis on the liturgy doesn't reslt in more interaction! A responsive reading or collect prayer isn't any more interactive than silently absorbing a sermon! We need real community, not just a Sunday morning “worship hour” in order to become the body of Christ on the earth.
</idle musing>

Rapture Ready?

The other day, Ben Myers published a long review of the book Rapture Ready!. I am quoting a long excerpt from his review, but even so, you should read the whole thing. His insights are disturbingly accurate:

Most of all, however, Radosh’s hopeful outlook arises from his confidence in consumerism itself. Concluding the book, he suggests that the problems in evangelical pop culture – its tendency towards intolerance, for example – will be resolved as Christian pop culture is more fully assimilated into the mainstream market. The weirdness and bigotry that characterises some aspects of evangelical culture will thus eventually be smoothed out – not so much through dialogue, discussion and reflection, but merely through the levelling operation of market forces. The result will be a more liberal and more tolerant Christian culture – in short, a more precise mirror of the values of mainstream culture.

By and large, this analysis is probably correct: in the setting of late capitalism, the creation of a vibrant and distinctive niche market goes hand in hand with the emergence of mass homogeneity. But I’m not so sure this is a comforting prospect. Instead, it ought to raise some disturbing questions about the nature of evangelical culture. It seems to me that the only flaw in Radosh’s analysis is his assumption that evangelical consumerism can be neatly distinguished from evangelical identity – as though the modification of evangelicalism’s consumer culture would not also be a modification of its religious identity.

The issues involved here are, to my mind, far more urgent than Radosh’s concerns about helping evangelicals to become nicer and more tolerant. We should perhaps ask what it means for religious believers to identify themselves by the merchandise they consume; what it means when we allow ourselves to become not a community, but a sub-culture, and thus one more market niche alongside others.

As Slavoj Žižek has observed, the logic of late capitalism presses towards the
commodification of a niche identity for its own sake; the Christian merchandise I buy is not itself the desired commodity, but it is merely an ephemeral signifier of the real commodity, which is my identity as a particular sort of Christian. In this case, the product I am really purchasing is radically non-material, wholly spiritual; I am purchasing religious meaning and belonging, religious “community” (since the merchandise allows me to participate in a specific market niche). Here, any neat separation between my “faith” and my “consumer culture” is simply fictitious. To change the latter simply is to change the former.

So what we need today, I believe, is a sustained theological critique of this commodification of Christian identity, and a recognition that the spiritual identity provided by a consumer sub-culture is a seductive simulacrum, an obstacle to the risky venture of Christian faith. If we are to find authentic Christian identity, it will arise not from the benevolent operations of the market, but in a community which creates a new economic space within the world, with its own practices and its own ways of belonging.

<idle musing>
Amen! True Christian community, with a true following of God's kingdom principles is a necessity.
</idle musing>

A publishing parable

I like this, from IVP's chief editor, Andy Le Peau:

The key personnel gathered. “Listen,” said the publisher. “A publisher went out to publish. And as he published, some books fell on deaf ears. And the remaindering houses came and snatched up the excess stock at a fraction of its cost. Other books fell on hard-headed readers where the ideas were not able to root deeply in their minds. So as soon as the readers’ preconceived notions arose, the ideas from the book withered away. Other books fell among a huge glut of other new books and choked out the shelf-space, so the books were not seen. Other books fell into fertile minds and grew there, making a difference in the readers who in turn touched the lives of thirty, sixty or even a hundred other people.”

He then goes on to interpret it. Go read the whole thing.

Where's the focus?

Scot McKnight was in South Africa last week, so he had some guest posters. One in particular stood out to me, the one on Friday:

I spent so much of my early ministry years living in fear. Fear that I wouldn’t be a good enough pastor. Fear that I wouldn’t be a good enough parent. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to financially support my family adequately. And all of that energy that I invested in fear (and a fair amount of corresponding inner anger and depression) was so unnecessary. If only I had listened to my own sermons on God’s grace and faithfulness...

So what wisdom would I give to a new pastor if were asked the question, “What should I focus on?” Focus on God’s grace and faithfulness — for your people, but especially for yourself!

<idle musing>
Wonderful wisdom! So often I can give the answer to a problem in someone else's life, but ignore the answer for my own life! Isn't there something in Matthew about the speck in your brother's eye, but not seeing the log in your own...
</idle musing>

Have we arrived?

Joel over at Grace Roots has a good post on arriving:

My point here is that I did have some sort of a sense that I had "arrived" at some sort of definition of what the Lord wanted to do with my life, and He would build this "vision" in due time, even if the "vision" wasn't perfectly clear at the time. But over the months and years, I discovered that my life in Christ isn't about some ministry "brand." Even if/when I write a book, my life in Him is still not defined by it. I am in Him and He is in me, and I usually don't have a clue where I'm going!

<idle musing>
Years ago, while I was mowing the lawn one day, I heard a teaching tape from Keith Green's Last Days Ministries (that tells you how long ago!). The message was on how every time the Lord puts us in a new place, we think we have finally “arrived.” His point was that each place is simply a way station on the journey of life. God may allow us to stay there for a short or long time, but it isn't the end of the journey.

I like to say that God gives us milestones along the way, to mark major points in our life. The problem is, instead of seeing them as milestones, we treat them as altars, set up a temple, and worship them. God wants us to celebrate them, and then move on, sort of like the Israelites after the crossing of Yam Suph (Red Sea). They rejoiced, had a good old gospel celebration, and then pressed on to Mt Sinai.
</idle musing>

A truly interesting book

This book caught my eye in the latest Columbia University catalog:

From Student to Scholar
A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor
by Steven M. Cahn
Columbia University Press, Forthcoming September 2008
112 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 9780231145336
Your Price: $14.95
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~CAHFROMST
Description:
Steven M. Cahn's advice on the professorial life covers an extensive range of critical issues: how to plan, complete, and defend a dissertation; how to navigate a job interview; how to improve teaching performance; how to prepare and publish research; how to develop a professional network; and how to garner support for tenure. He deals with such hurdles as a difficult dissertation advisor, problematic colleagues, and the pressures of the tenure clock. Cahn's witty insights are invaluable to traversing the thickets of academia.

Social action

I ran across this post the other day from Dan Kimball about social action:

What I am wondering about, is how do we avoid patterns of the past when the church jumps strongly in the realm of focusing on the gospel's impact for this earth and in this life - but slowly neglects teaching and reminding people of the gospel's impact about the reality of eternal heaven and eternal hell in the life to come after we die?

Ron Sider wrote a book called "Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel" which impacted my thinking on this. I read that at exactly the time I was beginning to realize how much I was personally focusing on "the gospel is all about going to heaven when we die". So the timing was great. He raises how the pattern seems to be where churches will focus on what he calls a "one-sided gospel". What he means by that, is that he has seen churches who only focus on evangelism with little or no passion for the poor and liberation for the oppressed. But then he makes the important point that it also goes the other way. That he also sees churches who focus on peace and justice, but do not have any focus on evangelism. He goes on to say how we can "put so much emphasis on social action that they almost entirely forget to tell dying sinners about our wonderful Savior" (page 17). He even called that "ghastly."

Coming from Ron, this is important to listen to. Ron's life and ministry is all about social justice. He leads the Evangelicals for Social Action network. But here we have someone voicing the need to never forget the need for personal evangelism in the midst of focusing on social action.

<idle musing>
Take that! those of you who claim that emerging is all about relevancy :)
</idle musing>

All quiet

Well, not really. I've been a bit busy of late, between tilling and planting—both raspberries and trees, and mowing and... Wow, I had forgotten how much time being a home owner consumes in the Spring.

But, it is always fun the first Spring in a place. You get to see all these flowers and plants come up that others have planted. We had daffodils, which I love, in front of the house. They finished blooming late last week. There was a lone tulip that is still in bloom. We also have two nice lilacs with purple blossoms that are opening up. The fragrance from them comes in the windows and flows through the house.

But, my favorite discovery was the redbud in the back yard. One day, Debbie looked out the back window and saw that there was a tree with a mass of purple on it. We had no idea that there was a redbud on the property, but it is now in full bloom and very beautiful. If I ever remember, I'll take a picture of it and post it.

Last night, we dodged raindrops and bought flowers and vegetables. We ended up with 8 tomato plants, 4 cherry tomato plants, 4 bell peppers, 16 impatiens (red), and 42 begonias (also red). Now we get to plant them! Hopefully this weekend will be nice enough for that to happen. Meantime, I still have to till a small spot for our herb garden.

Oh, I almost forgot, we have a wren couple that has taken up residence in one of our wren houses. It is fun to watch the male sit on top of the house and scold anything that comes near. It was also fun watching them build the nest; they have a lot more patience than I would. The male would bring a long straw and try to get it in the small opening. It would fall to the ground, and he would try again, and again, and again, and...you get the idea. They finally got it built.

Virtual sin

Out of Ur has a great observation about the newest Grand Theft Auto video game:

Do you suspect we’ll see Christians picketing Game Stop and Wal-Mart for selling a game that celebrates violence, drunkenness, theft, prostitution, and heaven knows what else? Will we write books and Bible studies to refute the game’s poor theology? I doubt it. I suspect we’ll buy it. And play it...

I understand the temptation myself. It didn’t take me long to overcome the queasiness I felt during my first exposure to Vice City. Sure, I have qualms about murder and carjacking, but only in real life. It turns out it’s quite a lot of fun to pull someone out of their car and drive it around a while when there are no consequences (and no one really gets hurt). It’s also great fun to run down pedestrians and take their pocket money or shoot a cop to instigate a high-speed chase. I had no problem preaching on Sunday morning (in real life, of course) and selling drugs from the back of an ice cream truck (in Vice City, of course) on Sunday afternoon.

But, he doesn't stop there...

...if you can kill a man in your heart (as Jesus seemed to think you could), then why should we expect God to excuse us for offing someone on a video game? We evangelicals are pretty sure we can commit adultery in our hearts, and we seem to agree that viewing pornography makes us guilty of that heart kind of adultery. If viewing pornography (which isn’t a real affair, after all) makes us adulterers, then doesn’t killing someone in a video game (which isn’t a real crime, after all) make us murderers?

No, you’ll object. It’s different. Porn involves real people; video games don’t. You have a point there. But then again, the deep tragedy of pornography is that it objectifies and dehumanizes women (and men). It completely ignores all the things beneath the skin that makes a human a human—the spirit and personality and whatever else. It presents us with a facsimile of a person. A video game starts with the facsimile and then adds spirit and personality to make it more human so that we find more satisfaction in killing it.

<idle musing>
Yep. Face it, evangelicals are down on sexual sins, but let just about anything else slip by. I noticed it the other day at a Bible study; there were two parts to a verse. The first part dealt with loving the world, the second with adultery (which from the context seemed to be figurative—being unfaithful to God), but the only part that got mentioned was the second half. Loving the world was totally glossed over.

I have noticed it before. When there is a text that talks about death to self, it gets glossed over, or just plain ignored. But, turn a preacher loose on Romans 1, and watch out! Why is this? Maybe because death to self is addressed to christians, and is therefore too convicting? What do you think? Am I not seeing something, or seeing something that isn't there?
</idle musing>

Genesis one

Oh, I love it!

A nice discussion is going on over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. John posted this morning on what is going on in Genesis 1. He takes John Walton to task for his functional views. The resulting comments were interesting, but what is even more interesting is that John Walton has responded.

This is going to prove to be an interesting exchange, I'm sure. As John notes, he has a book in the works with us. I just wish it were ready now :) But, fear not, brave reader, it will appear. Personally, I am looking forward to it. Maybe I can convince Jim to give me a copy of the manuscript...

Eisenbrauns' May sales

May is here, and so are our new clearance and monthly sale items.

We are running a clearance on some pretty neat items, like Child's Exodus, or Bovon's Studies in Early Christianity. Quantities are limited, so you need to hurry...here's the direct link

Our regular May sale is here. I kinda like my blurb, even though it is tacky:

Taking a cue from nature, with its variety of Spring flora, Eisenbrauns has selected a wide variety of titles, hopefully with something for everyone, to put on sale. Enjoy a bouquet of Eisenbrauns titles this May, with the sweet smell of savings from 40-70%.

I'm not a poet, and not even poetic, so what can I say? :)

Seminary

Just a Guy at Going to Seminary.com has an interesting post entitled "Failing Seminary for the Glory of God." Provocative title, isn't it? Here's a brief excerpt:

After spending time in seminary, there is no doubt in my mind that the institution can not fully prepare a man or woman for the calling to vocational ministry.

I’m beginning to believe that if those who are in seminary follow the lead of the One who called them, bad grades are highly possible.

Why? Because, in general, seminary is incomplete. The seminary has become a place of information and not transformation. The focus has been shifted from who you are to what you know. Spiritual formation has changed from a life lived before the cross to a 2 hour class on Thursdays. Prayer is not the air we breath but a formality to start a lecture.

<idle musing>
He goes on to list seven suggestions. While I don't think you will fail if you follow them, he is probably right that getting an A won't be as important to you.

But, I'm not so sure that seminary ever was about more than information transfer. For example, Charles Finney was complaining about the sad state of seminaries back in the early 1800's; he was convinced they didn't equip people properly for ministry. Perhaps on-the-job training would be better? After all, it seemed to work for the early church...and it seems to be working in the 2/3 world, with house churches being planted all over the place and the church growing exponentially.

Just an
</idle musing>

That $600 check

Out of Ur has an interesting take on the government economic stimulus checks:

“I thought that spending my check from the government was supposed to be the patriotic thing to do, but I’m not sure it’s the Kingdom thing to do.” That is how my friend Chuck began explaining his idea about what our congregation could do with the economic stimulus payments that begin arriving in the mail this week. After hearing so much about the sluggish economy and our responsibility to jumpstart it through consumption, he was wondering if there might be a better way to invest Uncle Sam’s rebate.

On Sunday, I invited Chuck to join me in front of our church. I asked him to explain why spending the money on himself was not the best thing he could do with it. “As I read about the government’s plan in the news, the more the idea of spending money on myself seemed to be at odds with the values of God’s kingdom,” he said. He told us he’d been reading Jesus’ words in Luke 12 and it appeared to be opposed to the message that we can spend our way to prosperity, security, and happiness.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear… Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.

Chuck said that Kingdom investment doesn’t necessarily mean giving money to the church.

Read the rest for suggestions.

<idle musing>
Yes. A kingdom view is probably a good bit different than the official government view. It is encouraging to see people asking God what to do with the money instead of rushing out to spend it on themselves.
</idle musing>

Concordance or commentary?

I was visiting a competitor's website today and noticed an interesting thing. They have the "People who bought this also bought this" type thing. They also have a topic heading to go with it.

Always the curious type, I checked what they suggested for Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. They had a whole bunch of good items that were very relevant, but one subject heading had me confused. Why would there be a concordance link when I didn't see any concordances in the listings? So, I clicked on concordance and. low and behold, the listings were all for commentaries!

Hmmm...maybe people should consider actually checking things out with knowledgeable people? Another good reason to buy from Eisenbrauns :) We know the difference between a concordance and a commentary. We even use them.

Where's the problem?

Out of Ur has a recent post which compares the "emerging/emergent church" to the movie Cloverfield.

So much energy has been devoted to discrediting the emergent movement, that it can also be disappointing to discover just how modest and meager their changes are. They may do church in the round. They may sit on sofas rather than pews. They may wear jeans rather than khakis, but basically, the emergent movement is a heartfelt gathering of Christians trying to follow Jesus together.

<idle musing>
And that is what the problem is? I just don't understand why the emerging church is a lightning rod for criticism...Oh, wait, here it is:

A struggling, insecure church has identified emergent Christians as the new enemy.

Yep! That's it. Trying to defend your version of "church" instead of rejoicing in the diversity that is in God...
</idle musing>

Real Peace

Tödt, paraphrasing Bonheoffer's “peace sermon” on August 28. 1934:

“Brothers in Christ cannot take up arms against one another, for they know that in doing so they take up arms against Christ himself. In all secular endeavors, peace and security are confounded. There is no peace by way of security. For peace must be ventured. Who of us can say what it might mean for the world if a people would meet the agressor—not with weapon in hand, but—praying, defenseless, and precisely for that reason armed with the only true defense and weapon? Not the individual Christian, not the individual church, but only the one great ecumenical council of the holy church of Christ all over the world can with authority proclaim to the peoples of the world the commandment of peace, and take the weapons from their youth's hands. This must be done now. The trumpets of war can be blown tomorrow. Do we wish to get involved in guilt greater than ever before?”—Authentic Faith p. 134-135

<idle musing>
Those words are as true today as they were in 1934. What would happen if the church universal were to decide to embrace the peace of Christ as a lifestyle? Or, for that matter, what about the church here in the U.S.? Put away “defending our way of life” slogans and begin to work for true peace, which can only happen where justice is practiced (take a look at the Hebrew root $LM). Instead of spending trillions of dollars on war, why not spend it on peace and justice?

I know, pie in the sky thinking. Or is it? Isn't that what Jesus calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount? Aren't we supposed to be salt and light? How much light is there in the barrel of a gun (other than the flash of gunpowder)? It's a weapon of death, not a weapon of light!
</idle musing>

How to measure success

The Heresy asks some good questions about how we measure success.

If the church were a business we would measure our profit and if we weren’t making enough we would change. If we were a hospital we would measure how many of the sick and injured become healthier. If we were a vocational training institute we would measure how many people get jobs and keep them in their area of training.

Now imagine a school that measured how much people enjoyed the classes, how great the day care was, how inspiring the teacher was, the levels of enrol[l]ment and the amount of funding they had but only passively cared about the success of their graduates in the workplace. That my friends describes most of the church in North America today.

He goes on to suggest some better questions to ask.

Tödt for Monday

“When we question the commandment of God before obeying it, we have already denied God.”—Tödt, Authentic Faith, page 134

<idle musing>
Wow! That statement is worth the whole book.
</idle musing>

The latest on June bug

Joel and Renee have posted the latest update.

Good news: Joel and I did not go to Minneapolis to have a baby today! No signs of heart failure within our baby, so, thank you, Jesus!

Good news: June Bug has a new name! May we introduce Emily Grace Pike to you. Emily means 'to strive, to rival, to excel'. Emily (June Bug) has been striving to survive, striving for life but only with the empowering grace of our God. Joel and I have been striving to trust, to believe, but only by the empowering grace of God. We felt that this name fit perfectly.

<idle musing>
I like that; a good choice for a name.
</idle musing>
Now, the hard news:

The heart takes up 70-80% of the chest cavity. A normal heart of equal age would only take up 50%. Big difference! The concern is now of the lungs. The concern is NOT of the maturity of the lungs but if there is enough lung mass to support Emily. In other words, the lungs at 38 weeks will be mature, able to handle oxygen and be perfectly normal except for the amount of lung tissue. Since the heart is taking up so much space within the chest cavity, the lungs are forced at a standstill in reaching the desired size. There is no way of knowing how much lung mass is needed for Emily.
The doctor said, optimistically, there is a 50-50 chance that Emily's lungs will sustain her once that umbilical cord is cut. If the lungs DO sustain her, then we 'worry' about the heart. But if the lungs do NOT sustain her, then she goes home to be with Jesus.

Please continue to pray for complete healing for Emily Grace.

Friday dose of Bonhoeffer

Tödt in Authentic Faith, discussing Bonhoeffer's theological ethic of the state, especially in regard to the pograms against the Jews in 1932:

Bonhoeffer confronts the tendency that prevailed in German theology at that time to shift the Kingdom of God to the beyond, or to a final eschatological future, or to inwardness. In a 1932 memoir on the “social gospel,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “Taking the kingdom of God seriously as a kingdom on earth is biblical, and is in the right, whereas an otherworldly understanding of the kingdom is in the wrong.” So Bonhoeffer sees the state commissioned, as an order of preservation, to guarantee law and external order and to provide neither too little nor too much of both. There would be too much law and order if the state would develop into a Weltanschauung state, and let its matter-of-fact activity become ideologically heated up. There would be too little of them if the state would not protect the rights of all sections of its population.

Real Peace

Tödt, quoting from Bonhoeffer:
“Where a community of peace endangers or stifles truth and justice, the peace community must be broken, and struggle announced. When both sides then really struggle for truth and justice, the peace community, even if broken externally, is realized more deeply and strongly in the struggle for the same cause.”—Authentic Faith p. 125

Authentic Faith

I recently finished Tödt's Authentic Faith. I will feature some quotes from the book for the next several days.

But, a little background might help. Tödt was a young soldier on the Eastern Front for Germany during WWII. After the war he spent 5 years in a prison camp in the Soviet Union. He went on to become the chief editor of Dietrich Bonhoeffers Werke, the German version of Bonhoeffer's Works that are currently appearing from Augsburg/Fortress Press.

Authentic Faith is a collection of essays from the 1970-1990 period. In some of the essays, Tödt reflects on why the German church was unable to see the direction the government was taking, and take steps to stand up against it, but that will appear in later excerpts. Meanwhile, enjoy today's:

How is a society to be assessed that is oriented toward economic individualism? John Maynard Keynes, the famous English political economist who died in 1946, judged that modern capitalism is completely nonreligious, without inner coherence, lacking in public spirit, not always, but often, a mere heap of “possessors and pursuers.” To put it differently, individualism in economy and society will unleash the individual's productive forces, but the public spirit, the solidarity among the citizens and of the citizens with the commonwealth, in short, the emotional bonds, will waste away. Where individualism rules alone, it will make society into a mechanical social apparatus in which all are fixed on their own interests, and face each other in competition, or at a cool distance.

What type of religion fits this society? Undoubtedly, a religious individualism that regards any decision as a matter of personal conscience of a individual who rejects interference...—Authentic Faith, page 60.

Whole again

Joel over at Grace Roots had a wonderful 2 part post on Trusting Jesus to make them whole. Here's a short excerpt (emphasis his), but read the whole thing:

First, I think we don't trust Jesus to make others whole. We look at their behavior and that's as far as we go. We begin and end with outward appearances, and we drop all hope right there. We don't want to get too close or too deeply involved with them until their behavior changes. Instead of reaching out to them with the love of Jesus, just as they are, we "wait" until their behavior is suitable enough, and then we'll accept them. Or we try to force their behavior to change by setting up rules, prohibitions, laws, boundaries, etc. In many cases Christians have gone to court, and gone to their lawmakers, and gone to rallies and marches, and held up signs, and protested the sick, evil, twisted, demented behavior of others, thinking this will get their nation on the right track. We somehow think the key to everything is rooted in controlling behavior!

In doing all these things, even in the "name of Jesus," it's very possible that we actually leave Jesus completely out of the picture. Jesus didn't say, "go into the world and get everyone to start behaving morally, and then bring them to Me." Jesus' word to us, I think, is more like, "Just as you, like sheep, had gone astray, and you were not righteous, no, not one of you, but I came looking for you just as you were... go and find others who were just as you were, meet them right where they're at, accept them and embrace them. Love them unconditionally." And then as with the words of the song, Jesus tells us, "Bring them unto Me. I will make them whole, I can set them free."

Your rules, your laws, your looks of disgust, your protests... will never make them whole and will never set them free! JESUS makes people whole and JESUS sets people free. He really does!

<idle musing>
Amen! Good preaching! It is only Jesus who can change and transform. We can never, ever change people's inner attitudes; only God can. And just as God accepted us and changed and transformed us, he can and will do the same for anyone else, however vile and disgusting they might appear to us.
</idle musing>

Trees

<idle musing>
Over the weekend we planted some trees, 33 to be exact. Everywhere we live, we try to plant trees, or at least lilac bushes. I can't imagine living where there aren't trees. We planted 21 white pines as a windbreak on the north side of the house, 7 fruit trees, one red maple, two red bud trees, and two forsythia.

I am looking forward to the fruit trees bearing in a few years. There are 3 apple, two pear, and one each of plum and peach. Good jam, canned fruit, and apple sauce for the winter. Yum.

I read somewhere, years ago, a quote attributed to Martin Luther, although I never have found out from whence it came: “Even if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree.”

Sounds good to me!
</idle musing>

AAR and SBL back together?

Pat McCullough posts an e-mail he just received, and checking the AAR website confirms it...

The AAR board of directors has decided to schedule "concurrent, yet independent Annual Meetings with the Society of Biblical Literature as soon as is feasible." Which means from 2012 on, since the meetings are already scheduled through 2011 (and that one is already concurrent).

They go on to state "a single, jointly sponsored Book Exhibit." The sound you heard was all the booksellers rejoicing that they will not have to decide which one to display at, or at both.

HT: Jim West

Discipleship

Alan Knox has a good post on Discipleship by example. After pointing out that we have reduced discipleship to intellectual assent instead of a lifestyle, he makes the following observations:

Of course, in this idea of discipleship by example, there is a built in assumption: the people involved in the discipleship relationship must have access to one another's lives. Furthermore, this access can't be a surface level access. This type of discipleship requires sharing life together, both the good times and the bad times, both the high points and the low points, both the good examples and the bad examples.

I believe this last point is exactly why we have de-stressed discipleship by example and stressed discipleship by teaching only. In our individualistic and entertainment driven society, we are not willing to share our lives with other people. We want what we want, when we want it. We want to do things that are fun or pleasing to us. The idea of inviting someone else into our lives, to consider their needs, or yielding our will to theirs is completely foreign. In fact, in order to think about and live this type of discipleship by example it would take a new way of thinking - a renewed mind, in fact - a mind that is not conformed to the common ways of thinking. But, of course, this is exactly what Paul exhorts us toward - a renewed mind.

<idlemusing>
Exactly! The refrain of our society is “I want what I want when I want it in the way I want it.” That certainly doesn't make a good foundation for community, does it?

It is only as we begin to live who we are in Christ—a new creation—that a true community can develop. The natural outgrowth of that is the modeling of discipleship that Alan is talking about.
</idlemusing>

Today's quote

A book just came across my desk today, and my eyes fell on this paragraph:

In North America today, unfortunately, we are infatuated with models and methods. we travel the continent and spend great amounts of time and money looking for cutting-edge and innovative ways of how to do church. I agree with Neil Cole who said, “The answers are not found in our models, methods, and manmade systems but in the truth of God's Word and in being filled and led by the Spirit of God.” Missional House Churches, p. 4

Seeker services are dead!

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad! The number one reason—well maybe not the number one reason, but close to it— the church in the U.S. is lethargic is dying! This from Out of Ur's coverage of the "Shift" conference:

Today, Greg Hawkins, executive pastor at Willow, recapped the [REVEAL] study and then shared some changes that the church is now making in response to the research. He said they’re making the biggest changes to the church in over 30 years. For three decades Willow has been focused on making the church appealing to seekers. But the research shows that it’s the mature believers that drive everything in the church—including evangelism.

Hawkins says, “We used to think you can’t upset a seeker. But while focusing on that we’ve really upset the Christ-centered people.” He spoke about the high levels of dissatisfaction mature believer have with churches. Drawing from the 200 churches and the 57,000 people that have taken the survey, he said that most people are leaving the church because they’re not being challenged enough.

<idle musing>
It's about time that market research caught up with reality. Barna's survey's have been saying it for years: the ones leaving the churches are not the unbelievers, but the serious believers who wan a deeper walk with Christ. They are sick of being fed watered down and diluted baby food.

Now, of course the question is, what will they feed them? Will it be more works righteousness? Will it be more programs, just with a different focus? Or, will it be the crucified life that is the only true Christian life?

The answer to that will determine the success of the change.
</idle musing>

Junebug update

I keep forgetting to post an update on Junebug. Joel and Renee are very good about updating their blog, so I forget...

Anyway, they went to Minneapolis last week and got some good news:

-Surgery is no longer completely necessary. There is a medication that can be given to June Bug after she is born that will help and possibly eliminate the need for surgery. She will need to be closely monitored for a few weeks and the specialist will determine when she can be removed from the medication. So this is wonderful news!!

And then they went to Duluth this Tuesday and heard some more good news:

We were encouraged talking to our maternal fetal medicine doctor in Duluth. She was not concerned with Junebug's growth. Although it is slow (about 10% behind), it is not falling sharply away from the norm. So this means that the heart defect is not causing a serious development challenge. Also, Dr. O'Day suggested we cancel our trip to Abbott hospital in Minneapolis on May 2 because they can do the same tests in Duluth.

<idle musing>
I believe this is in answer to prayer. And, I still am praying and believing that Junebug will be born with a normal heart and aorta. I encourage you to believe and pray, too.
</idle musing>

Success?

Wonderful post on Out of Ur. This quote is worth its weight in gold:

"The hardest thing about this ministry is that we know how to grow a church big and fast, but we refuse to do it. We don't use church-growth strategies; we don't market ourselves. We could grow the ministry fast. But we'd rather grow it biblically."

<idle musing>
Wonderful! If only we were all as committed to doing things biblically!

Success does not always equal big numbers. I think the bible makes that quite clear. It always seems to be the underdog who, with the presence of the Holy Spirit, wins. Look at Gideon as an example: too many men, send some home. Still too many, send some more home. Why? Because otherwise the people will think it is their power and steal the glory from God. Still true. Watchman Nee used to say that you should never put a person in a position where they had natural ability; it would prevent them from relying on God.
</idle musing>

Who are you?

Alan Knox has a good series going on “Sin and the Church.” In Thursday's post he talks about public confession to the church:

I've talk with many Christians who struggle with sin. Sometimes, these people struggle with "big" sins - that is, sins that the church considers to be unacceptable - not acceptable sins like pride or anger or selfishness or covetousness. No, I'm talking about sexual sins among others. Most of the time, these believers who are struggling with "big sins" are repentant. As I'm discipling them, I tell them that the best thing they can do is confess their sins to the church and ask the church to help them deal with their temptation.

What response do I get? Most of them say that they cannot even return to the group of believers with which they once met, much less confess their sin to them. Why? Because they know they will be condemned by these followers of Jesus. How do they know this? Because they have seen how the church has condemned other brothers and sisters who have committed "unacceptable sins" - that is, sins that are not acceptable to the church.

The church is more than happy to accept those who are proud, resentful, angry, selfish, covetous, etc, even when they are not repentant. But, if someone repents of an "unacceptable sin", that person is condemned and rejected. This is not the scriptural way to deal with sin.

<idle musing>
Yep; sad, but true, isn't it? Bonhoeffer in Life Together talks about the necessity of public confession. Not just a generic collect, either, but specific confession.

As I look at the journal of John Wesley, one thing that continually strikes me is the centrality of repentance and confession of sin. I think that is one of the reasons that the Wesleyan revival lasted 60 years. Wesley preached the ability of Christians to live without sin, and believed it was possible here and now. But, he didn't shy away from calling a sin a sin when he saw it. But, we seem to have lost that. Either we preach that christians are sinners—they aren't, they are saints—or we preach that they don't sin—they don't need to, but can—and so close our eyes to blatant sins, such as selfishness, pride, greed, materialism, etc.

God, redeem your church! Save us from such blindness!
</idle musing>

Who are you?

Joel at Grace Roots did a couple of posts on our identity in Christ. Good stuff; go on, get over there and read it. What are you waiting for? I'm not going to extract it; you need to read the whole thing.

God and country

Out of Ur has a wonderful post about patriotism and Christianity:

A few months ago, while visiting a church out of state, I had a moment of crisis. Just before the sermon, the pastor stood to give the announcements. After wrapping up, he invited a young man in military uniform to stand. The young officer had grown up in this church and had just returned from his first tour in Iraq. The pastor thanked the congregation for their prayers for the soldier and his family. The congregation responded with enthusiastic applause. So far so good.

But then the pastor reminded the church of the dangerous and noble work America’s soldiers were doing in Iraq. He said they were protecting our American freedoms and that we should be grateful for their sacrifice. The congregation stood to their feet and began clapping…and clapping…and clapping. I have never experienced a more enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation on a Sunday morning in my life.

What would you have done?

<idle musing>
Good question. I have been in situations like that over the years; inside I want to stand up and scream that God is greater than our nationalism. Instead, I do what the author did, I sit quietly.

Cop out? Maybe. On the other hand, there have been times when I have confronted the idolatry that is too often american christianity. The results are predictable: I am unpatriotic, unappreciative of all that this country offers, etc.

NO! I don't think I am. Is it not possible to critique the country you live in without being accused of being a traitor? As Christians, our allegiance is supposed to be to God alone. Jesus goes so far as to say we should hate our family, let alone our country, for the sake of allegiance to HIM.

I just finished Tödt's Authentic Faith. In it he is wondering, 50 years later, why the church was unable to resist Hitler and National Socialism's evils. He concludes it was because they were unable to separate out their patriotism from their christianity. Scary thought, isn't it? Almost the entire German church held captive because in their mind God and country were synonymous.

OK, I will sit back down and be quiet until the next time...
</idle musing>

Eisenbrauns April sale

Whew! Next year I am definitely going to write the copy for the April first titles earlier. Of course, that is what I said last year...

Anyway, the April sale (the real one!) is now up:

The long-standing Swedish series Coniectanea Biblica New Testament and Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament have recently become series that Eisenbrauns will publish; watch for announcements about new books in the series soon. In the meantime, we have acquired all the back stock from the previous publisher. In celebration of this acquisition, we want to make available to you 55 of the titles at savings from 30-50% off retail. The quantities on some of these titles are limited, so don't delay.

Here is my favorite:
"The Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in
the Ancient Near East"
by Tryggve N. D. Mettinger
Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series - CBOTS 50
Almqvist and Wiksell, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9122019456
List Price: $48.00 Your Price: $28.80

My dissertation, may it rest in peace (or pieces), was going to be on that very topic, with lots of Hittite, Ugaritic, Greek, and Latin citations. Instead I got to be an operations manager for 15 years before coming to Eisenbrauns :)

By the way, I loved what I did, but I love what I do now even more.

April 1 at Eisenbrauns

Yep, we did it again. We scoured the world for the best titles to advance the study of the ancient Near East. Don't believe me? Check them out for yourself:

Lost Graves Revealed
The Exact Location of Famous Historical Figures
Edited by Seems Wright
Winged Bull Press, Forthcoming August, 2008
150 pages + pull out maps, plates, English
Cloth
List Price: $1,000.00
Your Price: $900.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~APRIL2008A

Cuneiform type elements for the IBM Selectric
by A.P. Ril
Winged Bull Press, 2008
Akkadian, Sumerian, and Babylonian
List Price: $600.00
Your Price: $540.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~APRIL2008B

Bite Your Tongue
A Practical Guide to Impractical Phonology
by Hatta Sayyit and Augusta Summer
Edited by Felix Languealchat
Winged Bull Press, 2008
xiv + 150 pages, English
Paper, 5 x 8
List Price: $75.00
Your Price: $67.50
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~APRIL2008C

Nuzi & the Hurrians
Greatest Hits Collection
Winged Bull Press, 2008
Hurrian
CD-ROM
List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $17.98
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~APRIL2008D

Hostess of Heaven
A Critical Reading with Recipes from the Book of Jeremiah
by T. Winke
Winged Bull Press, 2008
200 looseleaf pages + b/w photos, English
Cloth, 8.5 x 11 inches
List Price: $99.00
Your Price: $89.10
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~APRIL2008E

Be sure to visit the website for all the details!

Nuclear-free zone?

Wow! That's all I can say after reading this at Christianity Today. Who would have thought that conservatives would be leading a charge to eliminate nuclear weapons?

In other words, the United States presently faces a rapidly-closing window of opportunity — the "tipping point" referred to by Shultz, above. We can either doggedly cling to our own arsenal, ensuring that such weapons will eventually be used against us, or lead an international process toward a world with zero nuclear weapons.

If this world sounds like a hippie, leftist fantasy, consider that a non partisan supermajority of the former secretaries of state, defense, and national security advisers have endorsed the vision and a process to get there — including Colin Powell, Jim Baker, Frank Carlucci, and Melvin Laird, as well as a dozen additional top foreign-policy officials from the Reagan administration. And newly declassified documents offer overwhelming historical evidence that Ronald Reagan was a fervent — and utterly misunderstood — abolitionist.

Read the whole article and dream; Bonhoeffer would have loved it!

500 pound gorilla

Once upon a time there was a river in Brazil. It was the largest river in the world. Then the Internet came along and a young man decided that he wanted to sell books on it. He named his company after that river. Today, it has become the 500 pound gorilla in the bookselling trade.

A few years ago, this company began to expand by buying other companies. One of the companies purchased was a small print-on-demand (POD) company. No one thought much about it at the time, since the company was small and didn't seem to have a good customer service record. Fast forward to this month...

It appears that people who try to sell POD on said river's site now need to use only that company, or lose their coveted "Buy now" button, and free shipping with it.

Why am I talking in ciphers? I guess I don't want to give any glory to them, but enough of that; let's talk straight:

Amazon's POD subsidiary BookSurge is telling people that if they don't switch their POD to them, the "Buy Now" button will be turned off. So what, you say? Well, let's allow someone else to tell you who is an expert:

Amazon/BookSurge would make money two ways on Amazon.com sales - first the fee for printing the books, and then 48% of the list price of each sale through Amazon.com. Lightning Source allows its customers to set their own discount rate for Amazon and other retail sales, and does not force POD publishers or authors to pay "48%."

Furthermore, it could take the larger POD publishers months to submit their book files to Amazon/BookSurge, at a considerable cost and number of man-hours. This makes the deal even less attractive. Finally, while the initial list of books submitted by POD publishers could be submitted to Amazon/BookSurge for free, the contract states future books would cost $50 each to process. The cost for individual authors to publish through BookSurge is considerably more, with an average publishing package cost of more than $1,000.

Since Amazon/BookSurge does not offer Ingram distribution (Ingram distribution is considered imperative in the industry for bookstore sales), any company that accepts the Amazon/BookSurge deal, who desires to keep offering Ingram distribution, may need to maintain two copies of the book files. Since the Amazon/BookSurge current specs don't match the Lightning Source specs, future book files, both interior and cover, may need to be formatted separately. So, they would have to pay double the setup fees and might have to do double the formatting work as well...or pay designers to do double the formatting work.

Likewise, self-published authors who believe they must have Ingram Distribution AND an active "buy" button on Amazon to be successful may need to pay double the setup fees (to a POD publisher AND Amazon/BookSurge), and also may need to create two separate sets of formatted files.

<idle musing>
Hmmm, can you say anti-trust?

While I am no big fan of self-published books—I believe in peer review and not because I work for a publisher!—I also believe it has its place for books that have a print run of 30-50 for families or community organizations, churches, etc. This move by amazon has some serious repercussions for the POD world, and also for the book world, whether you are an author or reader.

Do take the time to read the whole article and feel free to comment here. I don't censor comments except for profanity. You can disagree with me and sing the praise of amazon if you want, but remember that every penny you spend there is an endorsement of this new policy.

Support your independent bookseller (of course that includes Eisenbrauns)
</idle musing>

SBL Regional conferences

Every Spring (and late Winter), there are regional SBL, ASOR, ETS, etc. conferences all across the United States. We go to some of them, mainly the ones that are within a reasonable driving distance. But, for the rest, we just send catalogs and order forms—with a conference discount, of course. Once in a while, we even take out an ad in the conferences program book.

Here is the ad we recently sent for the EGLBS (Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society) meeting next weekend.

Late Easter

Ben Meyers has a guest post with an Easter Sermon worth reading. I quote but a small paragraph:

Am I suggesting that forgiveness become the central plank of the West’s ethical foreign policy against terrorism? A counter-question: why the absolute astonishment, indeed repugnance, with which Christian themselves react to such a suggestion? Does it not, in fact, demonstrate – in the sense of “what difference does it make to our discipleship?” – that we do not live the truth that Jesus is the risen Lord, that we ignore the events of Holy and Easter week, as well as his life and teaching, that we honour the seventh beatitude more in the breach than the observance; rather we live as if Caesar (in whatever guise) were Lord, as if the events recorded in our tabloids rather than the stories of Jesus in the Bible define the “real” world, as if violence rather than peace were the origin, goal, and very grain of the universe? If being Christian trumped being American, British, or whatever, and if the church itself practiced a politics of peace, then at least we would have something to say to government that wasn’t the mere echo of its own loud voice.

<idle musing>
In order to get the full impact, you should read the whole thing. No Payback! I love that refrain.
</idle musing>