Frank Turk...

...has more fans on Facebook...

...than I do.

Maybe it's all the gauzy promotion.

Wonderful weekend, icky week

It's been a challenging start; I know none of you is a stranger to the phenom.

Sunday was just a joy, as I was off preaching in a new (to me) church with my dear wife and youngest sons in tow. That was a complete pleasure: meeting brothers and sisters, spending a delightful afternoon with one family.

This church has such a rich history, and such potential for a rich future. They were founded in 1916 by a missionary who landed at that port on the Sacramento River, and preached the gospel. I learned this from talking with a brother who's been a member of that church since 1946! In California terms, that makes it a really historic church. (Readers in Scotland will kindly not laugh and point at my state.)

Everything about the day was a happy blessing.

And here's something at which some of you will laugh: I really enjoyed that they had a stained-glass window. I admit it: I really like stained glass. I can't even remember the last time I preached in a church with stained glass. For that matter, I can't remember the last time I sat in a church with stained glass. It was probably in the early eighties.

This could bring up the whole subject of church architecture, in which I will someday take 1500 words to say that it isn't essential (meeting in a field can be more church than meeting in the finest building), but it isn't nothing.

Then Monday here at work — eesh! Some Mondays are Monday-er than other Mondays. This was an exceptionally Monday Monday. And this week, at my current employment, I have the job nobody on our team wants: working the email queue. It will shred my brain, and making blogging more difficult.

It's especially nasty, though. Following being able to do what I really delight in, I come to... this!

But then I'm sure you all know it. And I think it'll help me be a better pastor for having experienced it myself (2 Corinthians 1:3-6).

Who loves, or hates, his GPS?

Another way in which I am an atypical guy is that I've never had problems asking directions. What I have problems with is feeling lost. I hate that feeling passionately. So asking someone for directions, to make that feeling go away, is a small thing.

Definitely had that feeling on our trip to the South earlier this year. Trying to find a location in Kentucky, my dear wife and I traveled some narrow, remote roads that had me wishing I'd never seen Deliverance. It was a bad feeling. Nice company, pretty scenery, bad feeling.

So thinking ahead, my wife wants to get a GPS, and she says I should ask you, Faithful Readers, if you have any experiences to relate.

The one that looks best so far is the Garmin nuvi 660 GPS Navigation, which gets really terrific user ratings both at Circuit City and Amazon. Also, it's on sale at huge mark-downs.

So, your thoughts?

You know, some things, you just have to accept

...a sentiment this gent clearly doesn't share.

Evangelicals not buying the Dems' "woojie-woojie-woojie?"

Mostly religion-related polls are depressing, for a Bible-believer. So it's nice to see one that is at least a little encouraging.

Apparently not too many churchgoing evangelicals (which should be, but isn't, a tautology) are buying the Dems' duplicitous outreach attempts. Nor are they buying the a moral hierarchy that puts the could-be/maybe/some-think of "global warming" over the immediate realities of jamming "gay" "marriage" down our throats, and of the torture-killings of inconvenient or imperfect babies.

And that's all a good thing.

Now, some more random thoughts prompted by the article:

1. I really wish pundits would stop saying/writing that McCain "is generally reticent about his own faith." First, nobody is really "reticent about his own faith." How you live and speak is your faith. This idea that someone can have a public life without ever referring to Christ or the Word of God, and then suddenly in some candid moment unveil his intensely private but deeply-held convictions — sorry, but baloney. How you speak and live is what you believe (Luke 6:43-45). So, second, I already know enough about McCain's "faith." It is in no way compelling to me. And finally, third, if McCain — who is the worse of the two relevant candidates running for president today, excepting only Barak Obama — were suddenly to claim that Jesus has been his Lord for decades, and the Bible is determinate for all his thoughts, values, decisions, and actions... I'd be insulted. Not appealed-to.
2. BTW, does anyone know when McCain plans to start campaigning?
3. So far, has there ever been a lamer campaign that McCain's?
4. I've said it before, I'll say it again: given what a complete insult Obama is, this election is John McCain's to lose — and, by jingo, he's the man who could do it!
5. The title's "woojie-woojie-woojie" is a reference to a very old cartoon, where (IIRC) a male frog tries to woo a reluctant female frog with the eloquent come-on, "Woojie-woojie-woojie?" She replies, pointedly, "No woojie-woojie-woojie!" And now, you know that.
   

If ever I were to feel guilty about firm meta moderation...

...and I don't...

...all I need to do is look at Justin Taylor's metas.

And then I feel all better.

Poll of you New England / Canadian-types and cognoscenti

Under orders from my dear wife:

We're heading thitherwards next month, Lord willing, and would like to know:

• What are the must-see's in Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine, Ontario, Massachusetts and upper New York.
  
• Specifically: Historical sites, areas of great beauty, museums, factory tours, great architecture, fantastic eateries, etc.
• More specifically: we're looking for stuff, if possible, off the main route. Local favorites; your favorites.

Y'all have always been a terrific resource before (well, except this time; but I'm not bitter).

So thanks in advance!

Homosexual man makes case for "loser pays" laws

Unintentionally, of course.

Perhaps he could make a class-action suit joined by liars, hypocrites, rapists, murderers, false teachers, adulterers, women "pastors," thieves, pro-aborts, and the like.

Caner irony

Ergun Caner is irritated that young Southern Baptists feel themselves entitled to leadership without having done anything to earn it. Here is the core of his reported complaint:

"I think by and large, we have an entire generation of guys my age and younger, who inherited churches that run 2,000 [in membership] but have never grown a church that runs 2,000," Caner warns.

That gives them a sense of entitlement, asserts Caner. He says to go around "crowing" about something one did not have anything to do with, and saying "see what I've done," is ridiculous.

Interesting. Crowing about something you had nothing to do with is "ridiculous." Well, amen.

I wonder whether Ergun Caner voiced that complaint to his brother Emir Caner who, in the context of slandering Calvinists, once signed a comment "Elected because I selected." (Further comments on that, here.)

Yep, nasty thing, that — crowing about something you had nothing to do with, and saying "See what I've done."

Once again one hears the immortal words of Buck Murdock: "Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."

Indeed.

Good and bracing thoughts about corporate worship, from Ben Witherington

Disclaimer: I haven't read Witherington's books; quotations from them indicate to me that he has some notions with which I'd heartily and emphatically disagree.

HSAT: Justin Taylor links to a first and second post by scholar Ben Witherington, offering a withering (pun intended) interaction with Barna and Viola's Pagan Christianity.

You don't have to have read PC or any of Witherington's books to find this pair of essays profitable. Witherington offers some very solid, Biblical, historical, theological interaction with an idea that's been festering for a few decades. This is the idea that what's really wrong with the church is that we have structure in our services, meet in buildings, and have services led by men. Things would be so much more wonderful if we had none of those things. Constantine ruined everything. All those bad things entered after several centuries.

Witherington points out that the idea is itself nonsense: those unstructured meetings still meet in particular places at particular times with particular ends in mind, and have particular individuals exercizing some sort of oversight. But he also shows the bad, un-Biblical thinking that lies at the bottom, and the crazy (I'd say Dathanic) abuse of the truth of the priesthood of all believers.

(Anyone over 40, I'd say, looks at the current Emerg*** [and other] mish-mash and thinking, "Uh, yeah, this is so new we already tried it and rejected it in the 60's and 70's.")

Witherington offers more, but you'll find here a bracing and healthy counter to this latest man-centered fad. It's well worth wading through, and not minding the typo's.