December 2011
6 posts
Her.meneutics: How 'Modest Is Hottest' Is Hurting... →
Some interesting thoughts on modesty and women’s bodies.
"Folks who see the leadership of women like Huldah... →
The Invisible Hand
The quote in my post yesterday brings me back again to a question that I find myself asking whenever I hear Christians tout free market capitalism as the biblical economic model, or whenever I hear the argument that a free market will regulate itself.
I have not studied economics, but I did have to teach an 8 week lesson on economics to an eighth grade class a few years ago, and I learned a bit...
Seriously?
This is a quote from a recent article in World Magazine criticizing the Occupy Movement:
When a politician is using the powers delegated to him to go after a company that sells water, food, and gasoline at temporarily obscene profits in a hurricane stricken area, he receives the admiration of the uneducated public. Instead, he should be voted out of office for decreasing the number of companies...
An Excellent Example of Respectful Christian... →
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying reading a blog-based debate between Lisa Harper and DC Innes, authors of the book Left, Right and Christ. It reminds me of the blog my father-in-law and I had a couple years back.
I hope to see more of this kind of thing to balance out the noise that comes from the cable news shows.
November 2011
3 posts
A Non-Zero-Sum Conversation Between the... →
We Need Each Other in Leadership
Many Christians feel that men are made to be leaders and women are made to be helpers of men. In the family, this means that while the wife certainly has input and should share her insights and opinions, ultimately it is the husband who makes the decisions. In the church this means that men are lead pastors and elders and decide how to run the church, while women serve in the children’s and...
WatchSome friends have shared this video and it’s pretty powerful. I think there used to be a longer trailer available for this documentary, but this is what’s up at the moment. I’d like to see the full doc at some point.
September 2011
2 posts
Stories →
A rare update to our Pre-loved blog.
Complementarians are selective too →
August 2011
12 posts
“Around a billion people in the world today do not have access to clean water....”
– Rob Bell in Love Wins
Here is the New There
The traditional evangelical idea of heaven is some place that we go to some time after we die. Bell has a different take:
There’s heaven now, somewhere else.
There’s heaven here, sometime else.
And then there’s Jesus’s invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place.
This understanding of heaven really resonates with me. It is not just about what...
Some Thoughts on Love Wins
One of the things I appreciate so far about Rob Bell’s Love Wins is that he is asking a lot of questions that are based on making good observations of the Biblical text.
I teach people how to study the Bible inductively, and the first step in really digging into the passage (after you’ve figured out the context of the passage and how it fits into the bigger picture) is to make...
Love Wins
When Rob Bell’s book Love Wins came out a few months ago, it caused quite a stir. I saw lots of people commenting and speculating on twitter, blogs and other articles, before they even read the book. And much of the commenting and speculating was pretty negative.
I started reading the book last week, because our church is having a four-week book discussion about it. I’m not finished...
Men and Women in the Church
I’m rereading Men and Women in the Church by Dr. Sarah Sumner. I highly recommend this book if you have questions about what the Bible says about gender. The debate on gender in the church usually gets polarized into two camps, complementarians and egalitarians. Sumner doesn’t quite fit into either camp.
In one of the early chapters of the book she lists twelve assertions that she...
Taking Dominion →
Mark Chanski author of the books Manly Dominion and Womanly Dominion, was interviewed recently on the CBMW gender blog about this concept of dominion. Chanski says that both men and women were given the “Dominion Mandate” in Genesis 1:27-28, but that since men and women have different roles according to Scripture, their dominion looks different.
Male dominion means a man should seek to “subdue...
I’ve been thinking a lot about gender lately. Why do I gravitate to controversial topics?
Anyway, I read the “Gender Blog” on the website of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. I think it’s important to read things from perspectives other than my own, so that’s one reason for following this. But it also gives me lots of fodder for blog posts (I just wish I had more...
“So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”
Why did God need to create two genders in order to create mankind in his own image?
Could it be because of the value He places on relationships?
Men and women need each other in order to understand who God is. We need each other in order to reflect God’s image to the rest...
Extreme Makeover, Erdmann Kitchen Edition →
Almost four years ago Mark and I started a blog to chronicle the process of remodeling our kitchen. Our last update was almost 3 years ago. But, we finally have some more news to share!
Focus Take 2
Last October I wrote a post about focus, and I think I could write the exact same post today. This is still a challenge for me, and I think summer is a difficult time to make progress.
Time management and focusing on one thing at a time are still challenges, but I’ve also realized lately that I need to work on focusing my mind as well as my time. My mind is so cluttered. I’ve been...
Evangelicals Without Blowhards →
I wonder if this will get any attention other than from evangelicals.
July 2011
4 posts
“In his highly influential work on Ephesians, God’s New Society, John Stott...”
– Timothy Gombis, quoting and commenting on John Stott, in Christianity Today
Lessons from Norway →
My father-in-law recommended World magazine as a news source that gave a more conservative viewpoint on current events, and it certainly does that. World’s tagline is: “Todays News. Christian Views.” It might be more accurate to say “Conservative views with a Christian slant.”
However, I found this article to be very refreshing. It figures that many of the comments...
1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you....
June 2011
5 posts
I’m hoping to write some more about our fabulous trip to St. Louis at some point, but this week I’ve been focusing on preparing a sermon for Sunday. I’ll be preaching at our church, Bethany Covenant Church in Lyndhurst, while our pastor is away. (On a side note: I also want to write more about our church. We began going there in January and became members in May. After a year of...
Road Trip
Mark, Isaac and I are in St. Louis this week, visiting City Lights, InterVarsity’s urban project here. This afternoon Mark heard a great teaching on being sons and not orphans, and how the Holy Spirit plays into that distinction. We have been learning lots from Gerry and Sharie, the directors of the project. City Lights is a great partnership between InterVarsity and New City Fellowship, a...
What I didn't Anticipate →
How we ruined the tomato →
A while back I read Everyday Justice by Julie Clawson, and committed to making a huge effort to purchase food, clothing and other goods in such a way that I wasn’t contributing to human trafficking, mistreatment of workers or the destruction of our environment.
To that end, I have been buying most of our food lately from Whole Foods. Now, the prices at Whole Foods are not as steep as some...
Caillou and Ethnicity
Several months ago, I discovered Caillou on Netflix. Once I did, it quickly supplanted Thomas the Tank Engine as Isaac’s favorite TV show. He was hooked on it right away.
My guess for this is because it was immediately so relatable to him. Caillou is a four-year-old little boy who lives at home with his Mommy and Daddy, little sister Rosie and cat Gilbert. He spends time with his Grandma...
May 2011
11 posts
Called to Do Good or Called to Be Faithful?
In sharp contrast to kingdom-of-the-world thinking…disciples of Jesus aren’t to act first and foremost on the basis of what seems practical or effective at securing a good outcome. We are to act on the basis of what is faithful to the character and reign of God, trusting that, however things may appear in the short term, in the long run God will redeem the world with such acts of...
…in truth there is no greater power on the planet than self-sacrificial love. Coming under others has a power to do what laws and bullets and bombs can never do—namely, bring about transformation in an enemy’s heart.
~ p. 32, The Myth of a Christian Nation, by Greg Boyd
Should our goal as Christians be to get people to behave in the right way, or to see people’s hearts...
[The Kingdom of God], in a nutshell, is the primary thing God is up to in our world. He’s not primarily about getting people to pray a magical “sinner’s prayer” or to confess certain magical truths as a means of escaping hell. He’s not about gathering together a group who happen to believe all the right things. Rather, he’s about gathering together a group of people who...
“Fallen humans tend to identify their own group as righteous and any group that opposes them as evil. If they were not evil, we tend to believe, no conflict would exist. Hence, the only way to end the conflict is to “rid the world of this evil,” as President George W. Bush said after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The “good” (our tribe) must extinguish the “evil” (their...
“My thesis…is this: I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry. To a frightful degree, I think, evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with a preferred version of the kingdom of the world…Rather than focusing our understanding of God’s kingdom on the person of Jesus…I believe many of us American...
What if "Christian" Actually Meant: Looks Like...
Last week I finished reading a book called The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, by Greg Boyd.
The book itself is an example of someone taking an idea that could have been adequately covered in about 50 pages and stretching it to 200 to make it long enough to be considered a book. That said, the idea presented in the book is profound.
The...
I want them to look back and think, “I’m not sure... →
This is refreshing. I sometimes feel that as a mom (especially a Christian mom), I’m expected to have the same creativity, energy and knowledge of toddler games and crafts as a preschool teacher. That’s just not me. It’s nice to think that it could really be as simple as making sure my kids know I love them and love Jesus.
5 Most Segregated Urban Areas in America →
jopan:
via Laura. This is why urban plunges are so important in the Midwest. Top 5: Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee — there are almost clear cut lines!
Smiles on Mother's Day
One summer at camp, we each brought home a piece of construction paper on which everyone in our group had written something they liked about us. Several people had written on mine that they liked my smile. At the time, I thought they had just said that because it was something generic you could say about someone without really having to give them a compliment. I had a hard time believing people...
Thoughts on Bin Laden, Government and Romans 12...
There has been a lot of talk this week about Bin Laden’s death and the many responses to it, from dancing in the streets to Bible-verse tweets questioning the appropriateness of such rejoicing.
I found these remarks from N.T. Wright in Christianity Today’s Politics Blog very interesting. It brings up many questions for me.
I’m guessing that many American Christians are OK with...
A Modest Proposal on Moms →
I thought this was interesting. What do you think?
April 2011
3 posts
Toddler Prayers →
Isaac and the Big Yellow Bus →
March 2011
16 posts
Cleveland’s Signs of Renewal →
I love Cleveland.
“God’s original design did not include a world where a few of earth’s residents...”
– Scott Bessenecker, “Quest for Hope in the Slum Community” (via jopan)
Worship in Black and White | Christianity Today |... →
I’ve been thinking more about these things again recently. I was very aware of the fact that on the Plunge, although we did go to Mt. Sinai and Christian Fellowship Mission, the worship music that we had within our own group in the mornings and at the Concert of Prayer Thursday night was very white. Next year I hope we can have a more diverse experience of worship on the Plunge.
Thursday Reflections on the Plunge
Painting today at Laura’s Home, then the students visited St. Herman’s House of Hospitality to make, serve and eat dinner.
We had a concert of prayer tonight, a time to worship in singing and pray for the city of Cleveland. I was glad that we had several visitors join us for this—Mark’s parents, some IV students from Akron, and some women who work for City Year. It was...