I have lots of catching up to do, since I missed an entire week of readng other blogs while we were in Mexico (where my son learned to walk on water). But, here’s some stuff I found this week that may interest you, too. I admit I’ve got a little too much here, but there was lots to catch up on and still plenty to read.
Begin by praying for John Piper, who has prostate cancer. And then pray for John Frye’s ministry in the Ukraine.
Authentic Hamo, that’s how I see it.
1. Ed Stetzer has categorized the emerging movement into three groups: relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists. Here’s his concern with the latter: “Revisionists are questioning (and in some cases denying) issues like the nature of the substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, the complementarian nature of gender, and the nature of the Gospel itself.” OK, this is not a well-written sentence, but this is (to use the language of a Southerner “an odd box of chocoloates”). (HT: Bob Smietana)
2. Jamie Arpin-Ricci’s series and the comments on homosexuality. Part 1, part 2, part 3.
3. Anybody who fines airfares for $5.99 deserves a round of applause, as has Andrew Jones, TSK.
4. Are you full of “truthiness” or facts? Word of the Year. Truthiness is what memoirists write when the facts don’t quite make the point well enough. Sometimes postmodernists prefer truthiness, and sometimes they have a point.
5. Here is the problem for too-tightly connecting sports and education; let’s hope Vick learns something from Maurice Clarett. Strike that; he’s already gotten in trouble again.
6. From the Emergent Room of Tony Jones: What’s up in 2006 for Emergent?
7. A purple pastor with some purple answers and hopes. Thanks for that one, Tom. And, Tom’s got a nice reflection on how Jesus has been captured by our culture.
8. Following the “postcards at the edge” from various emerging leaders: HT Steve Taylor.
9. Karen’s last letter to her daughter before the wedding; very emerging; very good.
10. There is some good interaction at Dark Coffee about Kevin Vanhoozer’s book, The Drama of Doctrine. The book is big, and my own posts about it were brief; but Dark Coffee folk are blogging their way through this important study.
11. Brad Bergfalk’s got a good rant.
On the James Frey flap, see Karen Zacharias, who has herself written a memoir.
Now that Pat Robertson has admitted an indiscretion, for which I am grateful, I hope he changes his mind on prophecy and learns how to read a good prophetic metaphor. A good place to begin is with G.B. Caird’s Language and Imagery of the Bible, or D. Brent Sandy’s Plowshares and Pruning Hooks. I need to do a series on the nature of prophetic language.