RD Royce

This blog's been moved

2010-12-11T16:29:00.000-05:00

I was getting really tired of the look of my website so I asked a friend to help me update it. It's not built using Word Press and I've migrated the contents of this blog to my website:

http://www.rdroyce.com

See you there....

Bob

The Good Life

2010-09-05T23:12:00.001-04:00

As we think about how to help build sustainable economies in depressed areas of the world, it's important to consider our personal biases toward things like work. This file from Free Range Studios is a caricature of idealistic extremes, to be sure, but it's enjoyable to watch and makes an important point...creating wealth for its own sake rarely satisfies.

A Company for BAM Practitioners to Watch

2010-07-18T21:52:00.001-04:00

One of the goals for those starting Kingdom businesses is to model God's love in the workplace. One of the key decisions to make involves what wage to pay workers. Is it a good witness to run a factory and pay the prevailing wage? Sure, you'll pay your workers for all the time worked, provide them humane working conditions and treat them with dignity. But what if the average wage paid by other factories in the area isn't enough to provide a decent standard of living? For that matter, how will you determine what constitutes and "decent standard of living"?

Once you determine a good wage, then the challenge is maintaining a competitive edge. In the US, where access to quality to workers is often constrained, companies like Starbucks and Zingerman's have found that providing above average compensation packages (compared to their competition) lowers turn-over and provides a better customer experience. This in turns helps them maintain premium pricing and maintain profitability. It's no panacea but it is an effective strategy.

The New York Times today writes about an apparel company that is seeking to determine if this will work in a third-world country like the Dominican Republic—
An Apparel Factory Defies Stereotypes, but Can It Thrive? - NYTimes.com. Will this work in a country where workers are plentiful? In China, we're starting to see a shift as demographics works against the mighty dragon as workers, now increasingly in short supply, get more selective. So factory owners are starting to look elsewhere for cheap labor (see the recent NYT article on Bangladesh moving in on China.

Is it possible that the answer is not to "look for the cheapest labor" but to build a competitive advantage through building a loyal, loving workforce?

Knights Apparel is running the experiment and I will surely be routing for them.

Business Is Our Mission

2010-06-29T22:02:00.001-04:00

Business Is Our Mission is a good article from Inside Work about the good, bad and ugly of BAM. I'm reminded of something Mark Russell points out in his book, The Missional Entrepreneur, about the dangers of "Business as Cover": The undercover missionary thinks people will assume they are a missionary if and when someone begins to suspect they aren't a real business person. Mark's research in Thailand, however, found that people were more likely to suspect that the business was a cover for drug or sex trafficking.

Designing for delight (Giles Colborne)

2010-06-02T22:38:00.001-04:00

Here's a nice slide show on what it takes to delight your customers....Designing for delight (Giles Colborne)

thanks to Dan Klyn for pointing it out to me...

The economics of social progress

2010-04-23T23:49:00.002-04:00

On McKinsey's "What Matters" blog, Iqbal Quadir, founder of the Grameen phone company writes an excellent article on the interplay between profit and social enterprise. Among other topics he discusses why charging for a service (v. giving it away) provides a better foundation for scaling the ability to help people than giving it away. He also shares some lessons learned about pricing and the need to hold firm to pricing strategies that allow a service to become profitable, even though it may limit the near-term social benefit. In the long run, the prices drop as the service scales, thus bringing economic benefit on a much broader scale than could achieved otherwise.

A Conservative Definition of Social Justice

2010-04-06T14:45:00.001-04:00

I just listened to an interesting talk that Michael Novak gave to The Heritage Foundation called "Social Justice Is Not What You Think It Is." He points out that the origin of the term dates back to an Italian Jesuit priest named Luigi Taparelli (1793-1862) who struggled with how to deal with the shift from a predominantly agrarian society to one which included urbanization.

Novak makes a point of distinguishing between the English etymology of equality, which emphasized the qualitative aspect, from the French etymology which stems from egalite, and focus on quantitative equivalence. We do not all deserve the same thing quantitatively, argues Novak. For example, those who put in more effort toward a task deserve the greater reward. But we do deserve an reward of relative equivalence, regardless of who we were before we started the task, say upper class v. lower class.

Arguing from the perspective that individual rights are the best way to achieve the common good (v. socialist reliance on government), Novak describes it, social justice, properly understood, is a virtue, a habit that people internalize and learn. A capacity to organize and associate yourself with others to accomplish extra familia ends, for the good of others outside your immediate context, be it the community at large, your state, or even other parts of the world.

It's a long lecture, but interesting.

Cronyism

2010-03-25T09:37:00.000-04:00

During the dot.com boom I worked for an eCommerce company that, like so many others, was going through it's share of difficulties. Toward the end we were playing a good game of management roulette, as the folks in the valley tried to figure out what to do with our group.

With each new "top dog" came a few tag alongs. Some of them were quite sharp, even sharper than the man they followed, but at least one of them was a complete fish out of water. We'll call him "Tim". I'm sure Tim was quite competent in the role he had when he was the client of our new VP, "Jay", but he was woefully unprepared for his new leadership role on the other side of the table as a consultant. These two Dilbert's tell the story masterfully:

Business as Mission and Scale

2010-03-23T09:51:00.002-04:00

Something I’ve noticed as I read through the literature on “Business as Mission” is that most of the efforts are focused on a relatively small scale. There is nothing wrong with starting small, but there almost seems to be a “common wisdom” that starting out small is the only way to go.

While I won’t argue the value of proof-of-concept efforts, there are times when small won’t cut it. Certain ideas need to start out at a scale that necessarily involves a great deal of risk. A good example is the Grameen Phone company started by Iqbal Quadir and discussed in his TED talk below:

Patient Capital: A Third Way to Think About Aid

2010-03-22T17:14:00.003-04:00

For the past year I’ve been thinking about ways to use my entrepreneurial skills to help the international communities I work through the Vineyard. The ideas around “patient capital” that Jacqueline Novogratz proposes seem right on the money, so to speak.

Plants that clean the air

2010-03-22T16:45:00.001-04:00

I’ve had a post-it note hanging around my desk for a while now with a list of plants that in combination supposedly clean the air of indoor pollution. I jotted it down from a TED talk. I’m posting it now so I can throw the note away. All quantities are per person. All plants are pre:

(4) Areca Palms--shoulder high (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens) take it outdoors every 3 months

(6-8) Mother-in-Law plants at least waist high (Sansevieria trifasciata)...called a bedroom plant because it converts CO2 into oxygen at night

(1) Money plant (Epipremnum aureum) removes formaldehyde

Here’s the video:

MacJournal

2010-03-15T22:37:00.001-04:00

I’m writing this entry with new software, MacJournal, I just downloaded from MacHeist. It promises to be a whizzy new way to organize my thoughts, create, write, journal, etc. I’ve been using a Mac for over 25 years now and I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this kind of software. Remember HyperCard? I loved it. Learned it. Helped create a HyperCard users group. Then there was MORE, still the ultimate outlining tool (OminOutliner is more powerful, but I still miss the simple elegance of MORE).

This tool promises to let me organize and then post to my blog, which seems like a good way to motivate me to blog more since I can write drafts and keep them organized without having to log into blogger....we’ll see.

Dead Aid

2009-04-01T15:30:00.001-04:00

I first read about Dambisa Moyo's ideas about the dangers of foreign aid in the NYT Magazine (see The Anti-Bono). I was particularly struck by her answer to the question:

Q) If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?

A)Microfinance. Give people jobs.

Here's another post about her book:
Dead Aid | Varlden idag

I just ordered it from Amazon (as if I need another book to read :-)

An Athiests Perspective on the Positive Value of Christianity to Africa

2009-01-07T23:46:00.002-05:00

My friend Paul forwarded a link to this fascinating article by an African returning home after 45 years to present-day Malawi—As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God: Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset.

Quote of the week

2008-11-30T18:25:00.001-05:00

"Act in such a way that your humility may not be weakness, nor your authority be severity. Justice must be accompanied by humility, that humility may render justice lovable." Gregory the Great

On Dropping the Debt by the Bishop of Durham, Dr. N. T. Wright

2008-05-14T20:43:00.001-04:00

On Dropping the Debt by the Bishop of Durham, Dr. N. T. Wright:
NT Wright discusses, in a condensed manner, the rationale behind forgiving third-world debts. As usual, he writes in a very clear, methodical manner, but ends, somewhat uncharacteristically with the following emotional excerpt from the Jubilee Debt Campaign:

Just imagine that, when your uncle died, you discovered your family had inherited his debts...

Just imagine that the banks seized your home and much of your parents’ wages, forcing you all to live on a rubbish tip...

Just imagine that you were turned away from school, because the money had been used for debt repayments...

Just imagine that when your sister went to hospital to have her baby, they turned her away too...

Just imagine that, having only polluted stream water to drink, several of your brothers and sisters sickened and died...

Just imagine that you see your parents worn out by work and worry, and you know that you will inherit the debt...

This isn’t imagination! This is the tragic reality of the lives of hundreds of millions of young people in the poorer countries.

I've Been to the Mountaintop

2008-04-03T22:15:00.004-04:00

Forty years ago tonight, Martin Luther King gave his last speech (tomorrow is the anniversary of his assassination. It's an incredibly moving speech that was truly prophetic with chillingly immediate fulfillment, as well as intermediate and long-term fulfillment.

Watch here and remember...then act.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

And here's the last minute showing actual color footage...

Kevin Kelly says Creation needed as well as Evolution

2008-02-14T22:30:00.001-05:00

Really? Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, author of "Out of Control" which popularized the power of the "hive mind" to the general public says you need God, too? Well, no, not really.

But those contemplating the merits of theistic evolution will find his recent blog entry The Bottom is Not Enough quite thought provoking. I'm going to ponder it further myself before writing more.

But I will say I think he brilliantly elucidates one of the core drivers of the Web 2.0 business craze:

What's new is only this: never before have we been able to make systems with as much 'hive' in it as we have recently made with the web. Until this era, technology was primarily all control, all design. Now it can contain both design and no-design, or hive-ness. In fact, this Web 2.0 business is chiefly the first step in exploring all the ways in which we can combine design and the hive in innumerable permutations. We are tweaking the dial in hundreds of combos:

1) dumb writers, smart filters, no editors.
2) smart writers, dumb filters, no editors
3) smart editors, smart filters, no writers
...ad infinitum.

The exhilarating frontier today is the myriad ways in which we can mix out-of-control creation with various levels of top-down control.

Timeless quotes from the man who altered our view of time

2008-01-25T15:44:00.000-05:00

Max Kalehoff has gathered a collection of quotes for Albert Einstein he thinks would make great chapter titles for a book on marketing. You can read his commentary on them here: Online Spin: Blog Archive: Move Over, Seth Godin, Einstein’s Here.

Here are the quotes themselves:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

“A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.”

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”

“Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”

The Web 2.0 Bubble...tell me it isn't so

2007-12-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a funny spoof on the latest build up of Web 2.0 valuations....

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

2007-12-04T20:52:00.000-05:00

I've always enjoyed the material from the folks at Free Range Studios. Funny, edgy, in your face stuff that really makes you think. The "Story of Stuff" is their most ambitious effort yet and doesn't disappoint. I question a few of Annie's facts, but the basic message is hard to ignore: We have developed a completely unsustainable way of life here in America, one that drives us, more and more I'm afraid, towards political and ethical positions any fair-minded person should seriously question.

I particular like her point that the way we live our lives is not inevitable. Our society was engineered this way intentionally by the drivers of industry...and we not only acquiesced, we cheered it along. After all, it truly is great to be an American and we amde sure the rest of the world knew it through our primary export—media and entertainment.

It's no surprise, then, that everyone else in the world would like to live as well as we do. The only problem is they can't. There's simply not enough "stuff" to go around. I could go on, but the movie does a much better job.

Here's the description from the website:

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard: "From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

It's Always Harder than it Looks

2007-11-09T20:39:00.000-05:00

Car-pooling has always been virtuous thing to do. It's always harder than it looks. It's really hard to find a compatible group that synchs up on the basics like starting location, time to go, destination location, and time to return, much less the finer, but just as important issues like what radio station to listen to.

Travel Convergence thinks they have the answer with their patented system (in New Zealand for sure and pending elsewhere). Apparently their pitching the system as a solution to New York's traffic problems at Less Cars In NY. They whole system seems quite well thought out. Ann Arbor is probably too small to implement a system like this, but you never know.

Location. Location. Location

2007-11-07T17:33:00.000-05:00

The LA Times reports (free registration required) how Google maps are finding their way to gas pumps in a deal with Gilbarco Veeder-Root. It's only one small deal in among many in the emerging local search space, but it reminded me of something I learned as an eCommerce consultant in the late '90's.

When I worked at AppNet, I had the honor of working with John Cross, former CIO of then British Petroleum (now just BP). He was such a fine gentleman to work with. He pointed out that one of BP's biggest assets was its real-estate. If I recall correctly, at the time (around 1997), both BP and Shell each had more locations than MacDonalds, something like 20,000 to 30,000 stores each. As they began to see themselves as more than an oil company, they took advantage of their real estate to add retail outlets where you could buy high-margin "stuff" like pop, candy and other little necessities of life. If handled well, they could make more profit on the retail than at the pump.

Now they're equally in a position to leverage local search to their advantage. This assumes people figure out how to monetize local search adequately, mind you.

The importance of Story

2007-11-03T10:58:00.001-04:00

One of the things NT Wright drove home for me is the importance of story in ancient culture. If you don't understand the general cultural stories people told about their lives, who they were, what the problems were and what the desired solutions would be, you're likely to mis-read an ancient book like the Bible. It is a story, told to people for whom story was a primary means of communication, entertainment and value sharing.

Today is no different, but instead of sharing stories personally we rely on mass communication for our stories. I wonder if we really understand the significance of this shift. Now, instead of telling "our" stories, we're left with others stories, conceived of in "Hollywood" (for lack of a better generalization), and co-opted as our own. Indeed, Hollywood is a powerful story teller as witnessed by the profound influence Western culture has on the rest of the world.

It's not just Hollywood, though. Brands tell a story, too. Listen to Max Kalehoff, vice president of marketing for Nielsen BuzzMetrics, talk about a recent study in Online Spin: We’re All Suckers For Narratives:

When people ask me what is my secret sauce, my answer is simple: it’s the ability to probe deep and elicit the essence of who you are, and to extract key stories that passionately demonstrate relevance, mission and a human connection to our world. While great brands are the result of many things — particularly all the factors that deliver great experience over and over and over again — it’s the presence of compelling, authentic stories that determine high resonance in our minds. Face it, we’re human and we’re suckers for narratives.

But it’s more than my gut that supports this notion. According to a three-year study by the Advertising Research Foundation and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, ads that tell a branding story work better than ads that focus on product positioning. As reported by Brandweek, 33 television ads across 12 categories were analyzed by 14 emotion and physiological research firms, with tools that included testing heart rate and skin conductance to brain diagnostics. Reported Brandweek: “The report contends that in many ways, advertising is stuck in the past. The 20th century was dominated by a one-way transactional focus where ads were pushed at consumers. Today, consumers interact with ads to ‘co-create’ meaning that is powered by emotion and rich narrative.”

He goes on to say, "But the most valuable takeaway is at the core brand level — specifically, how our minds are hardwired to embrace narratives and distill meaning with emotional force."

The Shift in Evangelical Thinking

2007-10-31T22:46:00.001-04:00

The New York Times magazine had a feature-length article this weekend on the changes occurring within the Evangelical movement that I read while closing things out at Cloud 9 (which was an awesome retreat...great job Donnell and team!).

Jim Wallis does a good job of excerpting the article, describing the shift as a "Real Awakening" so I won't do so here. Suffice it to say, the article certainly reflects my own personal experience in my faith journey and a surprising number of those I know. Clearly the Spirit is doing something.

A complementary read, much shorter and perhaps more to the point, is this post provocatively titled Willow Creek Repents? in which Bill Hybels reflects on the results of a comprehensive study his mega-church conducted on the effectiveness of their programs in making disciples:

Speaking at the Leadership Summit, Hybels summarized the findings this way:
Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn’t helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for.
Having spent thirty years creating and promoting a multi-million dollar organization driven by programs and measuring participation, and convincing other church leaders to do the same, you can see why Hybels called this research “the wake up call” of his adult life.

Hybels confesses:
We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.
In other words, spiritual growth doesn’t happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. And, ironically, these basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage.

The blog post also has links to the full video presentation by Hybels.

It's great to see so many streams starting to run together.

Business Models for Making Social Media Work

2007-10-31T17:01:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about ways to use the Internet to promote books lately. There are the obvious things to try, a website, MySpace/Facebook/Name-your-favorite social network, a blog, etc. But its clear that the choice of venue for your efforts is not the most important decision. You need to pick the combination of things that works both in terms of your resources and your audiences predilections.

That said, I really like the model Ariana Huffington employs at the Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt from an article from Fortune describing it in a nutshell

Unlike a conventional newspaper that devotes the majority of its resources to basic newsgathering, the Huffington Post instead devoted its scant editorial budget to hiring a few key editors, staff bloggers, and political reporters who post links to the day's stories and imbue the site with a dishy and slightly indignant sensibility, while giving the endless parade of invited bloggers co-star status on the Arianna Show. To date, some 1,600 bloggers have accepted Huffington's invitation to write. They are given a password to log into the site's publishing system and blog at will.

It's an ever-changing stew. On a given day John Cusack, Deepak Chopra, Nora Ephron, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Governor Bill Richardson, John Kerry, and scores of other politicos, actors, activists, and academics take to the digital pages of the Post with their views, causes, and beefs.

This model of drawing together a collection of interesting voices into an ever flowing "collage" of opinions and ideas characterizes many of my favorite web sites over the years. A good example I like to point out is worldchanging.org.
Gotta run to the fall festival...

The Dread Cancer of Stinginess?

2007-10-17T16:37:00.001-04:00

I recently took over leadership of the missions ministry at my church, the Ann Arbor Vineyard, and one of the issues we're dealing with is how to balance the need of our sister churches with the fear of creating a dependency. As John Rowell points out in the beginning of his article The Dread Cancer of Stinginess | John Rowell | The Christian Vision Project

Few principles have been as central to the modern missions movement as the "three-self paradigm." This seminal framework was popularized in the 19th century by three notable leaders: Henry Venn, Rufus Anderson, and John Nevius. It proposes that truly indigenous churches should be self-governing, self-propagating and self-supporting. For 200 years the three-self ideal has been nearly axiomatic. Modern missiologists have placed particular emphasis on the last point, interpreting it to emphasize financial independence and developing a whole stream of thought trumpeting "the dangers of dependency." These missiologists want to prevent the unhealthy dynamics they presume are unavoidable when outside funds are introduced into any newly developing indigenous movement.

Indeed, a desire to avoid dependency is also a core part of the "Missiological Assumptions for The Vineyard—USA" which states:

Dependency exists when churches in another culture are not able to function on their own without assistance. The most common form of dependency is financial. While we recognize that some level of dependency is likely during the pioneering stage of church planting, we are committed to avoiding long-term dependency among our churches.

But like Rowell, I think there is a real danger of misapplying this principle due to biases inherent in our western mindset toward the world.

To be clear, I'm not in favor of indiscriminate handouts driven by guilt at having wealth. The ability to create wealth is a gift from God and I don't feel guilty about it. At the risk of heading down a rabbit trail I'll add that I have to balance this with a strong dose humility when I realize that my ability to build a business may be dependent in large part on structural imbalances in the world. Never the less, as Don Bromley so eloquently said from the pulpit this summer (and I paraphrase from memory): "It's great if you know how to create wealth...now go give it away to help the poor!"

But how do we do that without creating unhealthy dependency? Rowell proposes a “more interdependent” model where, quoteing Samuel Escobar, "churches from rich nations add their material resources to the spiritual resources of the churches in poor nations in order to reach out to a third area." He then points to YWAM as one example of such a model.

All well and good, but it doesn’t seem to me to address the core issue: How to avoid dependency? For me, answering this question has to overcome a number of ingrained biases.

Living in a wealthy society, we’ve all had experiences where we realize we were taken advantage of. The world is full of con-artists and people “working the system,” isn’t it? Likewise, for most of my adult life I had been a Reagan, trickle-down, “the welfare system propagates poverty” Republican. I emphasize “had been” because I’ve come to see that too often this perspective fails to address the real justice issues that exist in how our society is structured. Never-the-less, the fear of creating yet another systematic imbalance through hand-outs is legitimate.

But I really think we need to carefully check the prescription for our glasses when we we’re looking at poverty issues in the world. It’s too easy to forget the yellow-tint that’s formed from seeing the local dysfunctions within our own system. Regardless of your perspective on the US welfare system, it doesn’t compare to the endemic poverty that exists in much of the world. For the most part, we’re not talking about giving someone extra money they might use to by a Nintendo instead of food. Many of our brothers and sisters don’t even have running water, much less televisions!

So what’s the answer? I’m no expert and I’m only musing out loud, but over the coming months, here’s what I’ll be pondering:

Can we trust local leadership? Can we get on the same page with them regarding the problem of dependency?

If we’re dealing with an area where Christians are persecuted, should we give more? Or give less because the perception that they’re beholden to “western” money endangers them?

Is there a way to give that fosters economic development such as micro-loans, etc.?

And finally, if dependency is such a big deal, why didn’t Paul address the topic in his letters? He clearly did on the local church level, but when talking about intra-church giving his advice was to give generously. Period.

A great TV Commercial

2007-10-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

I watch so little TV that I miss out on all the good ads. This one is a few years old but I'm just now discovering it. I love it (and so did my son, Robert).

Sony BRAVIA - Balls - The Advert

It isn't supposed to be this way

2007-09-26T10:32:00.000-04:00

I came across this C.S. Lewis quote reading Dick Staub's latest blog entry on the meaning of lost:

No man knows how bad he is until he tries to be good…Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…That is why bad people know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

...we only know how bad we are until we try to be good...too true...too true...Lord have mercy.

Give the Future More Power than the Past

2007-09-17T10:58:00.000-04:00

The Reverend Robert Giannini, canon theologian with the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis, wrote a compact summary of N.T. Wright's book "Evil and the Justice of God" in the Indy Star this morning. It's a great book that I've read and discussed with my fellow Questers. Here's a thoughful quote fron Giannini:

Forgiveness, for Wright, is a matter of granting more power to the future than to the past, even though the future may be seen only dimly. It is to live actively according to the principles of a world of justice and peace that we hope humanity can someday inhabit rather than dwell in a world that remains saturated with the dregs of old evils. It is to make the moral choice to live presently as if the hoped for future has already been inaugurated.

Heinz Gets Good Resulst from User Generated Advertising

2007-09-17T09:52:00.000-04:00

How many people are there willing to spend the time and energy required to produce an enjoyable 30-second commercial? Heinz will tell you quite a few.

When several advertisers made waves this year with user-generated advertising contests for spots that would run during the Super Bowl, some people questioned whether user-generated advertising would work. Dorito's put a stake in the ground when its contest produced a winner that was very funny, despite its $1000 production costs and last minute entry.

Since then there have been other companies with no such luck like the controversial Malibu Caribbean Rum contest that had less than 100 qualified entrants despite a $25,000 prize.

Heinz, though, seems to have gotten it right. Offering $57,000 for the winner and exposure on the Primetime Emmy Awards, they received 8000 submissions. Its worth a few minutes to view the 15 semi-finalists Heinz Top This TV Challenge website. The field was strong enough that Heinz also showed the 4 runner-ups on NBC's Today Show this morning. (The runner-ups received $5,700).

The winner, "Heinz: The Kissable Ketchup" by Andrew Dodson, is cute but not my favorite. I think "Heinz Worldwide" by Jeremiah Jones is wonderful with a good beat and an international flavor.

Having played with claymation in high-school I'm partial to animation, which several entrants used. "Heinz Always sunnyside up" by Michael Thelin is pleasant and "Uncap the smile" by Joseph Garner does a wonderful job of integrating CGI into a "Toy Story" like scene. "Heinz 'Moments' Competition" by Robert Castillo has a great story but seems like a 45 second spot crammed into 30 seconds by the time its finished.

It's less clear what the ROI will be for Heinz. To get the results they did took much more than $80,000 in prize money. They had an extensive demand generating campaign with in-store promotions, announcements on packaging and an on-line and off-line advertising campaign.

Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps and Idols - New York Times

2007-08-01T10:05:00.000-04:00

...I started to write this 6 weeks ago but never posted. I either need to write faster, or more often or post unfinished thoughts...today I choose the last option...

Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps and Idols - New York Times
Today's NYT article on the popularity of television gives a fascinating perspective on the power and potential of television to influence populations. It looks at television in Afghanistan, a country where "according to the government’s latest surveys, only 43 percent of all households have nonleaking windows and roofs, 31 percent have safe drinking water and 7 percent have sanitary toilets."

Even though "a mere 14 percent of the population has access to public electricity," people find a way to electrify their lives. Nearly 1 in 5 Afghan households own a television which is all the more "remarkable" since "owning a TV was a crime under the Taliban." The times reports that city dwellers are even more addicted to the tube, citing "a study this year of Afghanistan’s five most urban provinces, two-thirds of all people said they watched TV every day or almost every day."

More interesting quotes....

“People watch television because there is nothing else to do.”
Reading is certainly less an option; only 28 percent of the population is literate. “Where else can one find amusement?” Mr. Akhgar asked.
Each night, people in Kabul obey the beckoning of prime time much as they might otherwise answer the call to prayer. “As you can see, there is truth on the television, because all over the world the mother-in-law is always provoking a fight,” said Muhammad Farid, a man sitting in a run-down restaurant beside the Pul-i-Khishti Mosque, his attention fixed on an Indian soap opera that had been dubbed into Dari.
Women, whose public outings are constrained by custom, most often watch their favorite shows at home. Men, on the other hand, are free to make TV a communal ritual. In one restaurant after another, with deft fingers dipping into mounds of steaming rice, patrons sit cross-legged on carpeted platforms, their eyes fixed on a television set perched near the ceiling. Profound metaphysical questions hover in the dim light: Will Prerna find happiness with Mr. Bajaj, who is after all not the father of her child?
“These are problems that teach you about life,” said Sayed Agha, who sells fresh vegetables from a pushcart by day and views warmed-over melodramas by night.
What to watch is rarely contested. At 7:30, the dial is turned to Tolo TV for “Prerna,” a soap opera colloquially known by the name of its female protagonist. At 8, the channel is switched for “The Thief of Baghdad.” At 8:30, it is back to Tolo for the intrafamily and extramarital warfare waged on “Tulsi,” the nickname for a show whose title literally means “Because the Mother-in-Law Was Once the Daughter-in-Law.”

What will the Afghanis see of American TV....

“We’ve just bought the rights to ‘24,’ the American show,” he said. “We had some concerns. Most of the bad guys are Muslims, but we did focus groups and it turns out most people didn’t care about that so long as the villains weren’t Afghans.”

Remembering Yahoo

2007-06-21T14:41:00.000-04:00

Yahoo didn't start out as a search engine. It was a directory. I remember browsing it in 1994 while attending the masters program in Digital Libraries at the University of Michigan's School of Information and Library Studies. It was interesting, but barely useful. There weren't that many websites to catalog back then. Worse, few of them were experimenting with Mosaic's ability to show images. Sure you could search the directory, but you were forever dependent on the catalog librarian to control how things were tagged and labeled. It was old school.

Meanwhile, various others were attempting to overcome the limitations in the search software of the day. People had designed good systems for searching through thousands of documents, like you found in many corporate databases of the day, but researchers realized quickly that searching millions of documents was a completely different type of problem. Simply parsing text quickly to find the set of documents that match the query isn't enough when the return set itself has millions of documents.

With millions of documents in your index a number of other factors come into play.One problem was keeping up the index. If thousands of people are creating web pages every day, how to keep up? This problem was a primary focus in the mid 1990's. The general solution was to design semi-autonomous robots to scour the web for content. Some like to picture these agents as spiders or crawlers, jumping from link-to-link connecting each section of their semantic web. Alta Vista was the leader in this for a while, but eventually everybody good do it well enough and the focus shifted.

People with a question don't like to wade through the weeds to get to an answer. It doesn't matter if the perfect web page exists. If it doesn't show up in the first 10 or 20 results, it might as well be invisible.

The folks at Excite were some of the first to really focus on this for the web. The problem was well known and they advanced the work of Gerard Salton
who developed the SMART information retrieval system at Cornell in the 1960's. SMART's use of vector space models to cluster documents led the way to improved ways to rank documents based on relevancy.

This is much harder than it sounds. Language is tricky. SMART would cluster documents that shared the same vocabulary and word frequency. If you found a document close to what you wanted you could conduct a new search that returned all the documents that SMART thought was part of that documents cluster. It was pretty neat and the way search is done today still benefits from this heritage.

Meanwhile, Yahoo dabbled in search but its biggest emphasis was on building the ultimate directory. There were/are large bureaucratic layers of editors and organizers and such. Fees to pay if you wanted faster service, and so forth. In fact, when Google started getting some traction in the late 1990's, Yahoo outsourced its search engine results to Google!

Whither Yahoo

2007-06-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

Gord Hotchkiss shares his perspective on the recent return of Jerry Yang to the helm at Yahoo in Yahoo Yang = Google (Page Brin)?

He has some insightful things to say about the leadership styles of the major players. Sergey Brin and Larry Page come off as the consummate micro-managers. But much like Bill Gates their collective brilliance is able to give back to the organization far more than their meddling takes away. If it helps them understand what really makes things tick, a little code slinging or architecture tweaks by the founders is a small price to pay.

Jerry Yang and David Filo, on the other hand, did not stay intimately involved at Yahoo. You can't blame them for cashing out early. They never have to work again so it only follows that they would work on things that interest them, and I doubt that search engines are their first love. As Hotchkiss points out, just the opposite is true at Google, where the search experience is a sacred cow, the center of everything they do.

This is a fateful moment for Yahoo. As long as the search experience remains the dominant factor in where people go on the Internet, Yahoo is in trouble.

Reflections on Amahoro-Africa May 2007

2007-05-24T21:07:00.000-04:00

A thought provoking article by Brian McLaren about his recent experiences in Africa...

Brian McLaren: Reflections on Amahoro-Africa May 2007:
"TIA – you hear it a lot these days: this is Africa, where God is alive and where Pentecost is perpetual, hope and joy jostling with hunger and fear like trucks and scooters in the chaos of Kampala’s traffic."

Existential Angst

2007-04-18T20:00:00.000-04:00

I rarely link to online video, but found this one to be particularly funny, though subtle.
MediaPost.com

Is it live or is it memorex? On YouTube it may not matter.

2007-02-22T23:26:00.000-05:00

Ryan Burke thought Mindy Moorman was cheating on him and decided to break up with her...in a very public way. He set up a meeting with her, hired a chorus of singers, and used Facebook to announce the "public" event.

mlive.com: NewsFlash - Breakup becomes YouTube breakthrough: "Burke, a history major, said the breakup was something of an experiment in human behavior. But he also said it was genuine — he was furious about Moorman's alleged cheating.

'It was like they were reading from a script,' said James Mundia, a manager at UNC Chapel Hill's student TV station, who helped edit the online footage. 'There wasn't a lot of passion for a breakup where there's a lot of raw emotion.

'But I guess that's YouTube. It didn't matter if it was real or if it was fake, everyone wanted it to be real. People wanted that entertainment.'"

You decide...

John Battelle's best decisons and worst mistakes

2007-02-21T22:06:00.000-05:00

Mark Fletcher has started a blog Startupping - A Community for Entrepreneurs which he describes as "a one-of-a-kind community resource created for Internet entrepreneurs by Internet entrepreneurs"

He asked John Battelle, whose Searchblog I read regularly to desribe his best decisions and worst mistakes. Here is his answer:

Either keep control, or don’t act like you have it. This was the primary lesson of The Industry Standard. I felt like this was the first large scale business I built on my own, and I acted like it. But majority control was always squarely in the hands of the company who funded it. We fought, and I lost.

Don’t skimp on hiring. Ever. I’ve hired folks who had the right resume, but I knew in my gut were not right for the culture of the business. I thought the skills/resume overshadowed the ability to work together as a team. They never do.

Do it for love, not money. This is pretty careworn, but it’s very very true. I’ve never ever started anything for money. Some folks are really good at starting companies to make money, but I’m terrible at it. I suspect most entrepreneurs are like me.

3a. But make sure what you are doing makes sense to others. Everything I’ve started or been part of starting, I’ve talked to key folks who would make or break the idea, and gotten their buy in and encouragement/help first. If folks who are critical to the idea are not interested, well….that’s a pretty good sign it isn’t going to fly. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea, but it probably means you’re not the person to do it.

Pick one constituency and stick to it. Very early on, we decided that FM would be “author driven”. We could have made the company “advertiser driven” but it struck me the core business had to do with the folks who produce the sites we work with. At Wired, it was all about the ideas. At the Standard, it was all about the journalism. One clear core driving force helps clarify decisions during the tough early years.

Don’t do something because you can. Do it because it’s good for the folks in #4."

A belated goodbye to Bruce

2007-02-11T20:23:00.000-05:00

I learned today that an old friend of mine, Bruce Reid, died late last month after a long, painful struggle with thyroid cancer. He was 44 and is survived by his wife, Lori, and three daughters.

I met Bruce the first year I cam to Ann Arbor, in 1981, and we fellowshipped together for nearly 10 years until he moved to New Jersey and we lost touch. But from reading what others said about him upon his passing, its clear that a man I saw as a role-model for my Christian walk, continued to grow in his tendency to reflect God's glory.

He was one of those rare people who are strong leaders, but so tender-hearted that they seem to lead through weakness. You want to work with them and serve them because you know they love you.

At 43, I still carry around a notion of invincibility. I'm not very limber and my bones are tired at times, but I still think of my life's end as distant place. It is sobering to think that such a great man had his legacy cut short so early in his life, only one year older than I am.

May he rest in peace until that great day when all things will once again be restored and heaven and earth are united once more. Maranatha!

Five Streams of the Emerging Church | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

2007-01-23T00:45:00.000-05:00

Scott McKight writes a nice article about the Emergent Church....Five Streams of the Emerging Church | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction: "Five Streams of the Emerging Church
Key elements of the most controversial and misunderstood movement in the church today.
Scot McKnight "

Emperors and Angels - Christmas Eve 2006, by the Bishop of Durham, Dr. N.T. Wright

2006-12-25T14:04:00.001-05:00

If the story of Christmas leaves you feeling dull and bored, wondering how the birth of a child two millennia ago could possibly affect our lives today, then last night's sermon by NT Wright, an Anglican Bishop, might shake up your perspective.

Here's a short excerpt from the start..

Emperors and Angels
Isaiah 9.2–7; Luke 2.1–20
a sermon at the Midnight Eucharist, Christmas Eve 2006
by the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright

Sing a song of Christmas, of emperors and angels;
Sing a song of Christmas, of darkness now past;
Sing a song of starlight, of shepherds and of mangers;
Sing a song of Jesus, of peace come at last.

And don’t we just want it?
[snip]
The Christmas story, like Isaiah’s prophecy, isn’t about an escape from the real world of politics and economics, of empires and taxes and bloodthirsty wars. It’s about God addressing these problems at last, from within, coming into our world – his world! – and shouldering the burden of authority, coming to deal with the problems of evil, of chaos and violence and oppression in all their horrible forms. And only when we look hard at those promises and come to grips with what they really mean are we able to grasp the real comfort and joy that Christmas does truly provide. Otherwise we are purchasing a spurious private comfort at the inflated cost of allowing the rest of the world to continue in its misery.

Eight Zhejiang House Church Christians Sentenced; Prominent Beijing Christian Lawyer Gao Zhisheng Received Verdict - Christian Newswire

2006-12-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

As we prepare to celebrate the miraculous way God stepped down into darkness and became one of us, showing us what it really means to be human, let's be sure to lift up in prayer our brothers and sisters around the world who will celebrate from inside a prison as a result of their faith.

Letting Your Soul Catch Up With Your Body.

2006-12-16T20:57:00.001-05:00

I had the pleasure of meeting Dick Staub earlier this month while in Seattle on a business trip. Catherine, one of my business partners, and I sat in on the recording of The Kindlings Muse, a podcast Dick produces weekly as a live show recorded at Hales Brewery. The topic was on creativity and God...since God is creative and we are created in the image of God, when we are creative we are following in God's footsteps, so to speak. It was quite moving.

Here's an excerpt from Dick's latest blog entry which speaks to something I, for one, really need to take to heart...

"An American traveling in Africa hired a guide to lead him through the jungle to a remote village. In the mid afternoon the guide stopped and began to set up camp for the night. The American impatiently asked why they weren't taking advantage of the remaining daylight to make it a bit further towards their destination. 'We have traveled very fast and must allow time for our souls to catch up with our bodies' replied the guide.
.....
...there are two problems with rationalizing away my pattern of influencing the many while knowing few.

First. Real transformation happens through deeper in-person relationships. Ideas are powerful, but they are not a replacement for our God-given capacity & need for a few deeper relationships.

Two. The example of Jesus reminds us that love is not an abstraction, but is actualized when we know and serve another person.

Because technology creates immediate and rapidly expanding accessibility,most of us have already surpassed our relational capacity. I am networked to more people than I can actually know and love personally.

Read the complete post at: Dick Staub: Staublog - Letting Your Soul Catch Up With Your Body.:

Change of Focus

2006-12-15T22:29:00.000-05:00

So for the past couple of years I've focused my blogging on relatively cerebral things. My plan was to capture things of interest I found on the net so I'd have a record of them. I'd also try to include some pithy comment or analysis about it, which inevitably took a fair amount of time, no doubt due as much to my being so self-conscious (i.e. prideful). So as life got busier the posts got fewer. Kind of silly since I love to write and I write pretty quickly. There's no excuse. I hope to blog more.

We'll see.

So what have I been busy doing? Well since I blogged last I visited China for the first time on a business trip. What a wild place. Gobs of people! Imagine Times Square on a busy day, but extending for miles, and you've got a glimpse of Hong Kong. 500,000 people per square mile in the heart of Mongkok, the district we stayed in. That's a lot of people. Polluted too! There's been so much industrial development in the new territories north of Hong Kong that in the fall and winter when the winds come out of the north, Hong Kong is constantly shrouded in smog blown down from cities like Shenzen. I also visited Taiwan and Shanghai.

I also went to Guatemala for the second time. Lot's more to say but its getting late.

What Was He Thinking?

2006-09-18T15:56:00.000-04:00

I must confess that I'm at a loss to explain how Pope Benedict thought his recent remarks about Islam would do anything but inflame things. I figured if I read them in context, it might help things (since the news reports were all extremely terse in this regard). I've excerpted some passages below, but you can also read the whole speech here.

I've summarized parts below since it is supposedly one of his most important speeches. It's interesting, but I just can't see how the quote he got in trouble for really adds anything to what he was trying to say and it clearly ended up distracting from the message he tried to get across.

Or did it? He's a shrewd man. Is it possible that he intended to provoke the response he got in order to highlight his point: The need for reason and dialog to enter into the discussion or religion, be it intra- or inter-cultural dialog?

He starts out reminiscing about his days teaching theology at the University of Bonn. He spoke of how wonderful it was when once a semester, all the professors would appear before the students, "making possible a genuine experience of universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason - this reality became a lived experience," and goes on to remark how, "This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two [theological] faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God."

He then makes the offending remarks...

""I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (M�nster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the 'three Laws': the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself - which, in the context of the issue of 'faith and reason', I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: 'There is no compulsion in religion'. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threaten. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the 'Book' and the 'infidels', he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached'. The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably (F�< 8`(T) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...'.

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: 'In the beginning was the 8`(oH'. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: 'Come over to Macedonia and help us!' (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a 'distillation' of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry."

He then goes on to criticize the movement to "dehellenize" Christianity and reviews three stages.

1) the reformers of the sixteenth century who "thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought," and countered this with "the principle of sola scriptura [which] sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. "

2) The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th centuries as represented in Adolf von Harnack who's "central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favour of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. The fundamental goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God."

This then leads to two principles:
a) "only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion.
b) "by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question."

He then briefly mentions stage three:
3) "In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux."

He then concludes:

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.
Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss". The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. "Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God", said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Saved from Blogger Beta Hell

2006-08-30T16:10:00.000-04:00

Heard back from Google suggesting I login to the following URL:

http://www.blogger.com/login.g?directLogin=true

It worked! Now I have no excuse.

Adios.

Blogger Beta Hell

2006-08-30T11:15:00.000-04:00

So Google has a new version of Blogger that is forthcoming and they're slowly migrating people over to it. One of the new features is that Blogger accounts will be integrated with Google accounts. As it stands, you have to sign in separately to Blogger and Google (to access gMail or your calendar, for example). All well and good, EXCEPT....

What if you used the same user ID for both Blogger and Google? What then? Well, I'll tell you. Your Google account takes precedence so that everytime you try to sign in to Blogger it takes you to the new Blogger Beta dashboard. That would be fine except if you haven't had the opportunity to migrate your original Blogger blogs (they are only inviting a select few at this time), then you don't have access to your Blogs.

I just sent a second support request (a week after no reply from my first request) so we'll see what happens. In the mean time, the only way I'm able to post here is by "forgetting" my password and then following the email link back to Blogger, reset the password and proceed. Not a recipe for frequent posting (and I need all the excuses I can get!).

C'est la vie!

Reading Paul (& Luther) today

2006-08-30T11:07:00.001-04:00

I confess that I've only skimmed the article referenced but I will get back to it in more depth. I've read a lot about the "New Perspective on Paul," especially as its propounded by NT Wright. In the article referenced here, Karl Donfried presents the most balanced counter-point I've read to this perspective. Far from the typical screed you read from reformed theologian who sling more mud than reason when addressing this admittedly sensitive topic, Donfried keeps things measured and focused on substance. In fact, I'm not sure that he doesn't make more of an argument for the NPP even while asserting to be countering it. But I'll reserve judgment until further reading.

Here's the beginning of the article. Clicke the Title of this post to access the full thing.

Reading Paul (& Luther) today
New learnings about the apostle and his world boost our understanding

It’s a fascinating time to study the letters of Paul. Many of you have no doubt heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some may even have viewed the scrolls at one of the traveling exhibits in various parts of the U.S. Not widely known is the fact that these documents provide remarkable insights to New Testament scholars who seek a deeper and fuller understanding of Pauline theology.

The Via Egnatia near Philippi, Greece—Paul traveled this road on his voyage to Rome.

Since 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Khirbet Qumran alongside the Dead Sea (about a 40-minute ride east of Jerusalem), our understanding of “Judaism” and “Christianity” in the first century has changed dramatically. We can no longer speak about either as unified religions in sharp conflict. Rather, we’ve come to recognize the enormous diversity of Judaism—one so extensive that it unquestionably included Jesus’ earliest followers.

The last half of the 20th century saw the publication of the majority of the 900 texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which—including one of the most significant for understanding Paul’s letters—weren’t published until the 1990s. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, scholars are rethinking the complex phenomenon known as Second Temple Judaism, which is the religious world in which Jesus and Paul carried out their ministries.

But before continuing our story we need to ask: Who wrote these scrolls that are so dramatically altering our perception of the period in which the early church took shape?

In selected scrolls the authors describe themselves as the “Community of the New Covenant,” which may well have been part of a broader Essene movement, one of the Jewish groups. This language about a “new covenant” already allows for a startling observation: Among the Jews of this period, only the Essenes, Jesus and the early Jesus movement, including Paul, speak of a “new covenant.” An interesting coincidence.

Read more...

The Irrelevance of Death

2006-08-26T14:14:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a memorial service for the baby of my friends, Norman and Kristy. Their daughter, Eliyana Grace Dannug, was still born 8 months after conception. It was a beautiful service and I was especially touched by the following poem which graced the inside of the memorial card:

Now, when the frail and fine-spun
web of mortality
gapes, and lets slip
what we have loved so long
out of our lighted present
into the trackless dark

we turn, blinded,
not to the Christ in Glory,
stars about his feet

but to the Son of Man,
back from the tomb,
who built fire, ate fish,
spoke with friends, and walked
a dusty road at evening.

Here, in this room, in
this stark and timeless moment
we hear those footsteps

and
with suddenly lifted hearts
acknowledge
the irrelevance of death.

- Evangeline Paterson

New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo

2006-08-24T00:33:00.000-04:00

Regardless of your position on stem cell research, I think you'll admit that if there had been no barrier to stem cell research using embryo's, the following discovery would probably not have occured: Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo : "New Stem Cell Lines Spare Embryo"

Any artist knows that unfettered options does not necessarily lead to the most creative solution. Limits force us to stretch our minds and resolve tensions we'd prefer to ignore but benefit from resolving.

Great Commission Air

2006-07-21T00:11:00.001-04:00

I had a great lunch today with Robert and Jennifer Rice. They have ministry, Great Commission Air, that provides air transportation for Christian missions and humanitarian relief, primarily in Guatemala. This involves anything from flying supplies to missionaries serving in remote locations to flying injured or sick children to Guatemala City for urgent medical care.

Right now they're back in the states trying to raise enough support to return to Guatemala for two years. They've raised enough to cover their basic expenses (which doesn't take much down there) but still need to raise about $40,000 to cover the operational costs of flying the plane 50 hours a month.

If you're feeling generous (and/or a prompting by the Holy Spirit), take a minute and donate to their cause. You'll be glad you did.

Change faith versus politics standoff, says Christian think tank

2006-07-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

We don't have a "state religion" like they do in England, but many of the issues that led to a new book Faith and Politics After Christendom would seem to apply to the American church as well. Published by the British think-tank Ekklesia, it lays out some provocative ideas worth contemplating....

The history and ideology of Christendom, which has parallels in other religious traditions, has led to the utterly false assumption that the only options in the relationship between faith and politics are between the kind of religion that tries to dominate others, or the virtual expulsion of religion from public life and its reduction to a ‘private’ sphere.”

Neither of these approaches, often advanced by religionists and secularists respectively, is either credible or desirable, argues Ekklesia.

In Faith and Politics After Christendom, Jonathan Bartley says that if it wants to follow the subversive way of Jesus (who rejected violence, broke religious taboos, by-passed political authority, and was ultimately killed by the powers-that-be) the church should stop trying to grasp political privilege for itself.

Instead, it should recognise itself to be a creative minority, operating from the margins, with an imaginative agenda for change which it should seek to ‘get on the agenda’ by example, by witness and by cooperation with others – as in the global anti-poverty movement.

Although here in America we might quibble about resigning ourselves to a "minority" position, however creative, its well worth considering the virtue of behaving as if one were a minority voice. After all, the humility that the Creator Himself demonstrated when he walked the earth is to be our standard. Regardless of whether we are a minority or majority, we are to not to use the tools typically employed by the majorities in the world.

The Gospel of Niggle

2006-06-02T10:34:00.000-04:00

The following is actually the conclusion of a paper by theologian Scott McKnight on his Blog Jesus Creed. I've only read the last third of it, and its interesting, but I was especially taken by this wonderful summary of a story by Tolkein about Niggle.

"Which leads me now, finally, to Tolkien’s little man named Niggle. Instead of thinking our task as teachers and preachers of the gospel to be that of Prometheus or Dymer, we need to realize our task is to be a Niggle. Niggle was a little man who painted leaves but, because he was so sensitive to the needs of others around him, he seemed never to get his masterpiece done. This work began with a leaf, turned into a tree of some proportions that led its viewers into a forest on the edge of the mountains. Niggle, as I say, was unable to finish his task because he served his neighbor, Mr. and Mrs. Parish. Not that he didn’t curse them at times under his breath. But, one day the Driver came and took him off to purgatory where Niggle got his act all cleaned up. Soon the Second Voice, who surely must be the Son of God, called him to the next stage where he found his leaf and his tree and his forest and his mountain in pristine reality. What Niggle had dreamed of on earth, and what he was able only to approximate in his art, was fully realized when the Second Voice took him to what he had dreamed for.

Niggle was a dreamer who painted leaves. Ours is not to defy the gods or to take down the teachers of our tradition; ours is, like Niggle, to live out the gifts we have been given. Even if it is painting leaves, even if we are little people. Niggle’s little dream world became, according to the Second Voice, Niggle’s Parish where people came to be refreshed. The Second Voice, in fact, says that “it is the best introduction to the Mountains.”

Someday, so the Bible tells us, we shall get to the Mountain and see Him as he really is. And, when we do, we will know that our efforts to preach and teach the orthodox faith were not in vain."

Dick Staub: Staublog - Evangelical Childlike Hysteria & The Da Vinci Code

2006-04-19T10:16:00.000-04:00

If you've been thinking about how to respond vis-a-vis the DaVinci Code, Dick Staub has a great commentary today...Here's some choice excerpts:

"The editor's footnote is indicative of deeper problems. 'Editor's note: We are not suggesting that Christians necessarily should watch The Da Vinci Code when it comes to theaters; skipping it is certainly a viable option. We are only suggesting that the Christian community be willing to take part in the overall cultural discussion about the film and the book, rather than take a reactionary approach with noisy protests and organized boycotts—just as we would hope secular culture would take part in the discussion of 'our' movies, like Narnia and The Passion of The Christ.'

The footnote's very tone reveals the 'nanny state' mindset of evangelicals. Can you imagine the New Yorker reminding readers that, 'skipping a movie is a viable option?' These kind of comments make evangelicals seem like babies strapped into a high chair waiting for Dr. Dobson to tell them what to do next.

....An alternative view would say evangelicals are hopelessly conformed to culture, consuming it, marching like lemmings off the cliff, incapable of thinking independently, revealing the truth of Mark Noll's comment 'the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is so LITTLE of the evangelical mind.'

....

Hans Rookmaaker once said, 'Jesus did not come to make us Christian, he came to make us fully human.' [emphasis added] Whatever else it means, to be fully human would include the ability to reason, to participate in creating culture and to be conversant with other humans about our common condition and cultural environment. "

Read the whole commentary here: Dick Staub: Staublog - Evangelical Childlike Hysteria & The Da Vinci Code

The Meaning of Easter

2006-04-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

An Article today in the Washington Post about the Gospel of Judas quotes N.T. Wright's new book "Simply Christian" on the meaning of Easter...

"'When Jesus emerged from the tomb, justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty rose with him. Something has happened in and through Jesus as a result of which the world is a different place, a place where heaven and earth have been joined forever. God's future has arrived in the present.'"

Evangelical Christianity shifting outside West

2006-04-12T09:55:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting article on the nature of Evangelical Christianity outside of the US. If you've read Philip Jenkins' "The Next Christendom" you'll be familiar with the themes, but Nussbaum's article adds some fresh perspective that is worth reading.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/20/2006 | Evangelical Christianity shifting outside West:

Evangelicals in the global South and East are, in many ways, at least as conservative as their U.S. counterparts. But they often diverge on such issues as poverty and war.

'On abortion or gay marriage, they sound like American conservatives. But on war and peace or economic justice, they sound like the Democratic Party,' Carpenter said. 'And I have not met one foreign evangelical leader that approves of American foreign policy.'

Non-Western evangelicals may already be charting new directions with new leaders that the old bastions of Christianity are unaware of, said Mark Noll, a professor of history at Wheaton College.

'Historically, in unpredictable places and unpredictable times, you get real savvy leaders,' Noll said. 'I suspect that in Beijing, Nairobi or Cape Town, things will be very well along with innovation before Philadelphia, Chicago or London is aware of it.

'Almost everything that's significant takes place below the radar screen,' he said."

...

As the new evangelicals expand their influence and their territory, they face confrontation with other religions, most often Islam. The issue of how the world's two biggest religions will interact "is a fantastically important question," said Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School.

Muslims represent about 20 percent of the world's population, compared with Christians' 33 percent. But Islam is growing more rapidly than Christianity, largely because of faster population growth in Muslim countries, and it may surpass Christianity as the world's most popular religion in this century.

Sudan, Nigeria and the Balkans offer recent examples of violence between Christians and Muslims. But there are other examples, such as South Africa, where the two religions coexist peacefully, said Sanneh, a native of Gambia who is the author of Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West.

In Islamic countries, the Western notion of separation of church and state is largely unknown, and Sanneh said American Christians ought to better explain the advantages - to both religion and government - of keeping the two separate.

"The American experience on that is relevant to the rest of the world in a remarkable way," Sanneh said. "Americans confronted that centuries before the rest of the world."

After centuries of receiving missionaries from colonial powers in the West, evangelicals in Africa and Latin America and Asia are now planting churches in the United States and Europe. As immigrants arrive here, many bring their own brand of evangelical Christianity with them, while others start churches specifically to minister to "post-Christian" Westerners.

Lars the Lutheran

2006-04-07T16:51:00.000-04:00

I hope to finish my Russian travelogue next week. In the mean time, here's cute joke I got from a friend:

Lars, a Norwegian from Cook County in northern Minnesota, was an older, single gentleman who was born and raised a Lutheran. Each Friday night after work, he would fire up his outdoor grill and cook a venison steak.

Since it was Lent, the Catholics were prohibited from eating meat on Fridays. The delicious aroma from the grilled venison steaks was causing such a problem for the Catholic faithful that they finally talked to their priest.

The priest came to visit Lars, and suggested that Lars convert to Catholicism. After several classes and much study, Lars attended Mass and as the priest sprinkled holy water over Lars, he said, "You were born a Lutheran and raised a Lutheran, but now you are Catholic." Lars's neighbors were greatly relieved, until Friday night arrived, the wonderful aroma of grilled venison filled the neighborhood.

The priest was called immediately by the neighbors and, as he rushed into Lars's yard, clutching a rosary and prepared to scold Lars, he stopped in amazement and watched. There stood Lars, clutching a small bottle of water which he carefully sprinkled over the grilling meat, and chanted: "You were born a deer and raised a deer, but now you are a walleye."

Russia Pictures

2006-03-25T17:31:00.000-05:00

I haven't had a chance to finish my travel log...yet...so in the mean time, here are some URLs to sets of pictures I've posted to the web:

General Pics of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod
Ministry activities
Pics from the conference

Hopefully I can finish the travel log next week.

Cheers,
Bob

Russia: Day 4 (Tuesday)

2006-03-15T21:16:00.000-05:00

Since our original plan had been to take the overnight train Monday night instead of the express train, Kevin and I didn’t have a reserved room at the hotel until Tuesday night, so we slept in the Wolf’s living room (which would become Emily’s bedroom after left…she slept in Stephanie’s room this night).

The Wolf’s have a 2 bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a large apartment complex overlooking the Volga. No elevator so you get a nice workout going to and from.

Tuesday morning, Kathy fixed us all a wonderful breakfast and then we went for a walking tour of downtown “upper” Nizhny (Lower Nizhny is on the other side of the Volga).

Compared to Moscow, Nizhny was a spiritual oasis. We could sense an immediate difference in the people. More smiles and a more relaxed atmosphere. It would be wrong to say they are “open” spiritually, it is still very, very “rocky” soil, even compared to Ann Arbor, but compared to Moscow it was a pleasant surprise. We could see why the Wolf’s picked Nizhny. It’s third largest city in Russia (St. Petersburg is second) and strategically located a reasonably short distance from Moscow and closer than Moscow to Perm and Ufa, two other locations of Vineyard churches (more on that later).

Nizhny was a closed city during the communist regime because it was the center of the military industrial complex in Russia (tanks and MIGs were/are made there among other things).

The meeting hall the church rents is in a great location, right in the heart of the major pedestrian street, with a bus and trolley stops just outside.

After we checked in to the hotel, we went to an orphanage the church ministers to. It was great fun interacting with all the kids, who ranged in age from 4 or 5 up to young teen-agers. Many of the kids had one parent, sometimes even two, but were there because their home situation isn’t acceptable for one reason or another.

We brought a video to watch with the kids using the new projector we brought over for the church. Unfortunately, the video hadn’t been previewed. The Wolf’s knew it was evangelistic but after the gospel got presented for the 5th time by the various puppet characters, they were worried they might “cross the line”. The orphanage is at least partially state-funded and they must be careful not to push the limits if they want easy access to build relationships with the kids, which is important.

So we stopped the video after 15 minutes and it was an awkward moment…time for quick thinking and I won the “gumby” award that day for flexibility by immediately leading the kids in a game of “Bob Skazall” (aka Simon Says).

Kevin led the second round (it’s harder than it looks to think of ways to trip them up) and then we went to the gym to shoot hoops, play with some of the toys we brought and otherwise interact with the kids.

Tuesday night we had dinner with the Wolf’s and then off to bed.

Russia: Day 3 (Monday)

2006-03-15T21:06:00.000-05:00

Truth be told, I’m writing this section on my trip home (I wrote the Friday-Sunday’s entries on the train from Moscow to Nizhny). When you’re on a trip like this its next to impossible to carve out down time to reflect. You’re in a foreign country you’ve probably never been to and there’s so much to see and do in so little time. None the less, I paid the price of not really having a Sabbath. God was merciful, and I was able to make the most of the hour here and hour there we had to stop and reflect. But I was scheduled to give two talks on Saturday, and I didn’t feel truly ready until I left for the conference that very day. They went well, though, and that was one of the primary reasons I was on the trip…so I guest that’s OK.

Monday.
Dave Wolf showed up at our hotel in Moscow around 9:30 AM. He took the overnight train from Nizhny, sleeping in a railcar with 55 others, so he could spend the day with us and then help us navigate the rail system back to Nizhny. This is just a small example of his servant’s heart. He, his wife Cathy, and their daughter Stephanie are truly wonderful hosts and servants.

After the breakfast, we headed downtown for a tour of St. Basil’s and the Kremlin. To be honest, both were a disappointment. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected a cathedral built by Ivan “the Terrible” to be a spiritually uplifting experience. After all, he is purported to have blinded the architect to make sure he couldn’t build a more beautiful cathedral for someone else (which he figured was the merciful thing to do instead killing him…like he did his favorite son in a fit of jealous rage.) Likewise the Kremlin for the most part gave us all the creeps. Lots of beautiful imagery, but all the churches (and there are seven of them within the Kremlin) are actually quite small inside, intended for the Prince or Tsar and his entourage. And of course there is the lingering spirit of fear and oppression which lingers over Moscow, only exceeded by the spirit of materialism that is really simply fear in another form (can’t get left behind or…).

Ate a quick lunch at Sbarro’s in the mall just off the Kremlin. It was ironic to us that the bastions of soviet communism, Red Square and the Kremlin are now surrounded by the ultimate capitalist symbol…the mall and a huge billboard for Rolex watches.

Then back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the train station. Thank God Dave was with us. We were greeted by this “friendly” porter who was very “kind” to help us get our bags from the car to the train. He even knew a short-cut around back that got us to the train platform without going through the terminal. Dave asked him three times how much it was going to cost. At first the guy couldn’t say until he saw the bags, and then when they did come it was go, go, go to the train. Then the hammer fell….”that will be 2800 rubles” he says (~$100!). Yeah right. No way, we say, but the guy is firm in his price. Thankfully there were more of us than him and Dave spoke Russian so he could negotiate peacefully. In the end I was able to play bad cop to support Dave. The guy came down to 1500 rubles and Dave seemed like he might concede and I just said “No way”…I have nothing against paying for good service. The bags were heavy. He was a big help, but $10/bag was still to much and it was clear he was trying to take advantage. In the end we gave him 1000 rubles and walked away, half expecting the guy to return with “friends” but in fact, we’re told he still got the better of us compared to the prevailing rate.

In comparison to the boarding process, the ride itself was uneventful and enjoyable. It took 5 hours and we were greeted in Nizhny by Dave’s family and the smiling faces of Sergei, Mischa, and Marina…the first truly smiling faces we had seen since Church on Sunday.

Then we had the meal we had all been waiting for…Russian MacDonald’s…ah…I can still savor the flavors ;-) Seriously, Elena had told us all how much better MacDonald’s was in Russia….maybe, but fast-food is fast-food. But…as we were to learn several times over the course of the next few days, the concept of “fast, friendly service” is not something easily found in Russia. The people are nice enough, but you really don’t realize how good you have it until its gone

Russia: Day 2 (Sunday)

2006-03-15T20:46:00.000-05:00

Slept well Saturday night and met for breakfast at 8 AM. Great breakfast buffet included with the room. Omelettes, cold cuts, casseroles, etc. Then off to Moscow Christian Center. Vladimir, the pastor, had broken his leg the week before so he was unable to meet with us and asked Kevin to preach the Sunday sermon. He sent Lumilla, a nice older woman, to meet us at the hotel and escort us by metro. She spoke no English. Took us about 40 minutes inlcluding a 20 minute walk. The church meets in a
military school so you’d never know there was church meeting inside. (In fact they’re not allowed to advertise the address on flyers).

The service was nice. First song was “Celebrate,” which we used to sing at Cornerstone all the time. The worship team consisted of two young women singing, a guitar player and a keyboard which had some drums programmed to match the songs.

Kevin did a nice job preaching on leadershp and it seemed well-received. Julia, the worship leader, and his translator did a great job. Turns out her parents run “The School of Tomorrow” which is a Christian school program that teaches bilingually. The use of English is a big draw for Russian parents so many non-christian, even muslim parents send their kids there. Julia told us the story of how her parents spoke only English in her home until she was 5 and she was very disappointed to learn that her father was not American. We met them, Len and Olga, after the service and I’ll want to stay in touch with them since they have opportunities for people to come and teach for a month or two.

Vladimir’s wife, Elena, also works at that school and thankfully she spent the rest of the day with us. We had spend the whole trip to this point watching the Russians but not having any opportunity to talk with them because so few spoke much English. Elena came to Moscow at 17 and married Vladimir 5 years later. They both got saved as a result of the big influx of foreign missionaries that came in 1991. As she told us, “The smiles and hugs arrived with the American missionaries.” The Russian people had been imprisoned spiritually up to that time and there was an outpouring of interest in spiritual things. Unfortunately there was a lot of “hit-and-run” missionary activity with little raising up of local leadership. After a few years, when the American missionary was ready to leave, Vladimir and Elena were handed the leadership role of their 1000 person congregation. They were both engineers under the soviet system and were overwhelmed by the experience. We still got the impression that they were lonely for fellowship from others who could relate to the struggles of leadership. It is very difficult to be a leader here because the people have been so abused by poor leadership and are averse to any hint of “control”.

We went back to the hotel and got there just as Jesse and Steve arrived, which was great. We then headed to the Pushkin museum and spent an hour there. Small collection but they had some nich Matisse and some Van Gogh’s which were a pleasant surprise. Then we wen to the the Cathedral fo Christ the Redeemer. A beautiful cathedral which was built in the mid-1800’s to celebrate the defeat of Napolean, torn down by Stalin in 1931 and replace with a swimming pool and then rebuilt for $200 MM in 1991 using “new Russian” (read mafia) money. This was the start of the Russian equivalent of Lent and they were in the midst of a service when we arrived. To our surprise the homily was being presented by Alexy, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church (equivalent to the Pope). Elena said it must have been a secret he would be there or the church would have been so packed we never would have been able to get in. Quite a treat.

We then had a wonderful dinner at Moo-Moo, one of a small chain of restaurants serving Russian food cafeteria style. We had a great time talking with Elena about her experience growing up under the Soviet system (she’s 42) and the changes that came about in the 1990’s and continue to this day. They really seem to be struggling with the rapid changes going on. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The elderly in particular are having a hard time. Under the Soviet system they were esteemed. They paid their dues and were seen as the stabilizing force in society, caring for children while women worked (by necessity). Now, they survive on $70/month and the youth could care less about them. All the young are working hard to “make it to the top,” working three jobs to have the latest things. They pay relatively big $ to buy fashionable things. They may only have one or two sets of clothes which they wash each day, and they may fast for a week to save enough to buy the nice clothes.

Greetings from Moscow

2006-03-07T15:06:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in a while as I've scrambled to get ready for a trip to Russia to participate in a leader's conference hosted by the Nizhny-Novgorod Vineyard. My next few posts will be a travel log of the trip...

Friday we picked up Emily at 12 and headed for the airport. Got there at 1, after stopping for lunch, 5minutes before Kevin. First hurdle was fitting both my computer backpack and the bag with the projector into the Embraer mini-jet. No problem. Made our connection at JFK and headed for Moscow sitting three across in the center aisle. Kevin and Emily both got reasonable sleep, maybe 4-5 hours, but I had my typical difficult time and slept a few minutes here and there.

Landed in Moscow at 11 AM local time and get through customs quickly. Sergei, who goes to Moscow Christian Center, met us at the airport and drove us to the hotel and showed where the metro station was and the market. The room Kevin and I shared was quite nice, even compared to London. When you check in you get a pass which you exchange for a key with the woman who is stationed on each floor. There’s someone there 24 hours a day and when you leave, you give her your key and she gives you back your pass.

The market was a great experience. Miles of stalls with trinkets, clothes, antiques, wooden carvings. Got birthday presents for Robert and Adrienne and an antique icon of Michael the archangel.

Then headed for dinner in Arbatsky. Took the metro which is quite amazing. It was crowded every time we rode it, morning, evening even Sunday. Even though it was pretty cold, maybe 20-24 F, the streets were filled with vendors and musicians performing. Very fun. Went to an Uzbek restaurant we found in my DK guidebook and had a nice meal. Then headed to Red Square which was very beautiful at night.

Impressions: Everybody is very fashionably dressed. Lots of fur coats. Casinos everywhere. People walking around drinking beer everywhere. Classic scene was a young woman sitting on the subway with a full-length mink drinking a MGD.

When we returned we checked email and learned that Jesse and Steve had missed their connection in Paris and were not coming into until the next day (they’d taken a later Air France flight while we flew Delta).

Going Beyond Telerance

2006-02-21T16:35:00.000-05:00

N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham (and one of my favorite theologians) recently addressed the British House of Lords on the topic of laws that restrict "hate speech." You can read the whole speech here:VirtueOnline-News Moral Climate Change in Britain - by N. T. Wright

Here's two excerpts, one from the opening and the other near the end:

I think it would be a mistake to confine our attention today to the Danish cartoons and their aftermath, regrettable though all that is, or indeed to the recent court cases. These fall within a larger moral and social landscape. We are faced with moral climate change, which is comparable to other forms of climate change and equally dangerous.

The 1960s swept away the old moral certainties, but getting rid of them has not made us happier or safer. Hence, the invention of new quasi-moralities out of bits and pieces of moral rhetoric; the increasingly shrill language of rights; the glorification of victimhood, which enables anyone with hurt feelings to claim high moral ground; and the invention of various "identities," which demand not only protection, but immunity from all critique. It was this messy but potent combination of neo-moralities that generated the religious hatred legislation, of which your noble Lordships, rightly in my opinion, took a dim view recently.

It is not just the invention of new moralities that should concern us; it is the attempt to enforce them-to enforce, that is, newly invented standards that, in some cases, are the exact opposite of the old ones. How else can we explain the attempted ejection of protestors, whether from a party conference or even, yes, from Parliament Square?

How else can we explain the anxiety not only of religious leaders but also of comedians when faced with the proposed religious hatred legislation? How else can we explain the police investigation of religious leaders, such as my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester or the chair of the Muslim Council of Britain for making moderate and considered statements about homosexual practice?

And the crux of his closing, which I think makes a particularly excellent point on the difference between tolerance and true freedom:

I can tolerate someone standing on the other side of the street; I do not need to engage with them. Tolerance all too easily supposes that all religions are basically the same and that they can all be discounted for purposes of public life. Thanks to the 18th century, that is what many people still believe. But tolerance is a parody of something deeper, richer and more costly for which we must work-a genuine and reciprocal freedom. It is a freedom properly contextualised within a wise responsibility. It is freedom not to be gratuitously rude or offensive-I totally agree with what the noble"

The School of Suffering

2006-02-10T22:34:00.000-05:00

I heard a story tonight about a Romanian Pastor, Joseph Tson, who was arrested for propaganda. It was a great story which I'll share once I find a good reference to it. In the mean time, I found this article by Pastor Tson on how God uses suffering to strengthen us, comfort others and bring him glory. Well worth the time to read...The School of Suffering

BBC NEWS | Middle East | What the Muhammad cartoons portray

2006-02-08T12:12:00.000-05:00

With all the furor over the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, I thought it was of interest to read some background on the situation and learn just what the cartoons depict. This article from the BBC does just that without reprinting the cartoons themselves. BBC NEWS | Middle East | What the Muhammad cartoons portray

It's not about charity. It's about Justice.

2006-02-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

Jesse's blog referenced Bono's homily to the National Prayer breakfast yesterday. It's well worth viewing or reading but here are some highlights I especially resonated with...

It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

And that’s too bad.

Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150, 000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, “mother nature”. In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.

It’s annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

You know, think of those Jewish sheep-herders going to meet the Pharaoh, mud on their shoes, and the Pharaoh says, “Equal?” A preposterous idea: rich and poor are equal? And they say, “Yeah, ‘equal,’ that’s what it says here in this book. We’re all made in the image of God.”
...
Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market… that’s a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents… That’s a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents… that’s a justice issue.

And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject.

That’s why I say there’s the law of the land… and then there is a higher standard. There’s the law of the land, and we can hire experts to write them so they benefit us, so the laws say it’s OK to protect our agriculture but it’s not OK for African farmers to do the same, to earn a living?

As the laws of man are written, that’s what they say.

God will not accept that.

Mine won’t, at least. Will yours?

[pause]

I close this morning on … very… thin… ice.

This is a dangerous idea I’ve put on the table: my God vs. your God, their God vs. our God… vs. no God. It is very easy, in these times, to see religion as a force for division rather than unity.

And this is a town—Washington—that knows something of division.

But the reason I am here, and the reason I keep coming back to Washington, is because this is a town that is proving it can come together on behalf of what the Scriptures call the least of these.

This is not a Republican idea. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not even, with all due respect, an American idea. Nor it is unique to any one faith.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ (Luke 6:30) Jesus says that.

‘Righteousness is this: that one should… give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives.’ The Koran says that. (2.177)

Thus sayeth the Lord: ‘Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord will be your rear guard.’ The jewish scripture says that. Isaiah 58 again.

That is a powerful incentive: ‘The Lord will watch your back.’ Sounds like a good deal to me, right now.

A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it… I have a family, please look after them… I have this crazy idea…

And this wise man said: stop.

He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing.

Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.

Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing.

And that is what He’s calling us to do.

Faith, Hope, and Love

2006-01-18T12:59:00.000-05:00

Reading 1 Thessalonians the other day I noticed for the first time how Paul combines faith, hope and love in his greeting to them:

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thes 1:3. NIV.

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What an elegant way to describe the way of Jesus. We don't work and labor to earn God's love. Our work springs from faith, our labor from love and we endure the hardships that inevitably come undergirded by the hope we have in Jesus.

Don't get me wrong, in our performance oriented culture, many of us struggle to understand grace. We do in order to please and work to earn recognition.

But too often, our attempts to overcome this result in no work, no labor, no endurance.

More on Exclusion and Embrace

2006-01-17T17:47:00.000-05:00

As I continue to work my way through Volf’s “Exclusion and Embrace” I am struck by both the clarity and complexity of the challenge he tries to resolve. Clear in so much as Christ has demonstrated a simple challenging way for us to follow…the cross, where he embraced all of us, sin and all, and excluded only the powers of darkness and, I suppose, those that cling to darkness as if it were light. Complex in so much as the practical outworking of the crucified life in our lives is complicated by the complexity of society today.

I suspect that in many regards, I am over complicating things. So often complexity is a foil we create to avoid facing simple, but painful demands on our lives. Yet the problem is not just a matter of me individually, but rather me within my community (in the broad sense of the term). Is it enough to just “take up my cross” within the context of my little corner of things? No. We are called to “go” and make disciples and announce the Good News that Jesus is Lord along with all its many wonderful implications.

Which brings me back to my wrestling with the various frameworks now being used todeal with the problems of the world such as family, church, community, nation state, etc. Most would agree that Jesus taught the fundamentals of non-violence (eg. Turn the other cheek, love your enemy). But did He mean to apply it universally, from the individual up to the nation-state. If not, where is the line drawn?

How does Paul’s admonition to the Romans about the state wielding the sword fit in? Does it matter that Paul was writing early in the history of the church. The Romans brought peace, but not in the way that Jesus brought peace. As Christ’s ambassadors are we not called to help extend His kingdom using His kingdom principles?

Which brings me back to the use of “non-violence” in socio-political situations. I’ve never looked into it in any depth but I found the Nobel acceptance speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave to be a fascinating read. He succinctly describes the problem of modern man as a “poverty of spirit” where the “internal life” has been lost in the “external life” or, quoting Thoreau “improved means to an unimproved end.” He then goes on to describe the principals of non-violence and then points out one of the greatest challenges of its proponents:

Nonviolence has also meant that my people in the agonizing struggles of recent years have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others. It has meant, as I said, that we are no longer afraid and cowed. But in some substantial degree it has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part. The movement does not seek to liberate Negroes at the expense of the humiliation and enslavement of whites. It seeks no victory over anyone. It seeks to liberate American society and to share in the self-liberation of all the people.

On a related note, I thought the NYT article on pregnancy counseling centers did a good job of highlighting a non-violent, even non-political way to address a pressing social issue.

The Lure of Cyberspace for Youth

2006-01-11T23:14:00.000-05:00

As the father of a young boy who loves to play on his computer, I'm sensitive to the dangers that lurk in "cyberspace." Even a simple search for a website that links to one of his favorite online games—Mini Putt III—is complicated by the many sites that host both innocent and tawdry games along with various online banners innappropriate for a five-year old.

Indeed, I sometimes wonder if any computer usage is appropriate for one so young. I see how addicting it can be among teens, even how addicting it was for me when I was young (though of course when I was teen Asteroids was "hot" and the only computer games I played early on were flight simulators). For now, I trust the limits we place on the time he spends and games he plays will engage his mind without stunting his creativity.

I'm also glad I have a few years to prepare my son for navigating the world of MySpace and webcams. What prompted this post was an article from the NYT. It was one of the top-10 read articles last year. WARNING: it contains discussion of an adult nature about a very sad phenomenon—young boys who get paid to pose by predators in front of their webcams. On the other hand, there is a happy ending, of sorts, as the focus of the article has left the "business", turned state's witness, entered the witness protection program and returned to the faith of his childhood.

Regardless of whether you decide to read on, please consider lifting up Justin in your prayers. It will not be simple for him to overcome the scars of his coming of age in such a perverse environment.

Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World - New York Times

Iraqi Invasion Redux

2005-12-27T15:03:00.000-05:00

Two years later many Americans, including this one, are questioning their earlier support of the invasion of Iraq. For me the struggle has not been one of second guessing the "evidence". It's easy to do so in light of the many errors, even perhaps misrepresentations, regarding what the situation in Iraq was. But as I read Michael Novak's recent letter on the "First Things" blog I'm reminded of how little evidence was really required to support our efforts based on traditional "just war" theories. (It's worth reading Novak's original Vatican lecture referenced in the letter to learn more about the "just war" theory).

No, I'm still convinced that the threat of biological/chemical attack aided and abetted by Saddam was quite real. Having worked for a biotech company and learned in some detail the mechanisms of such an attack, I am regrettably still convinced this is a real possibility. It just won't be supported by the same players.

And this gets closer to the heart of my questions surrounding the invasion: Does even a "just war" ever accomplish anything in the long run? Surely it is not sufficient, but is it necessary?

I've never been a pacifist, and I'm not one now. At least not yet. But if "just war" is necessary but not sufficent to bring about peach, we surely lack the remaining ingredients in the world today. Of course I don't expect to find the "solution." To my friends who would point out that answer is surely Jesus Christ, I would respond:

Yes. You are absolutely correct, and we are to abide in Him so he may abide in us which makes us a key part of the answer. Yet this brings me right back to where I started: How am I to play my part in the answer? Did Jesus fight a "just war"? Did he not teach that our battle was not against the Roman Empire which, like Saddam Hussein, held together its infamour Pax Romana through brutality and oppression? Isn't the battle against the powers of darkness who fuel the Cult of Personalities so prominent among the political powers then as they are today?

For now my questioning is leading me to read Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. I'm only 1/3 of the way into it but I can see why Brian McLaren gave it such high marks. Volf, a Croatian theologian now teaching at Fuller Seminary, has experienced first hand the horrors exclusion in the name of piety (such as the Serbian Orthodox ethnic cleansing in the Balkans).

One the things I'd like to do this coming year is read more studiously, or at least to capture notes from my reading. I love to read, and I read a lot, but sometimes I wonder if I'm not reading too much. Perhaps by taking the time to capture things as I go, I'll moderate the pace and retain more of what I do read. We'll see.

Guatemala Part 2

2005-12-25T19:40:00.000-05:00

My primary activity was helping to build a block house for a widow, Thomasa, and her family (six children and two parents). You can see the home they have been living in the background on the left and the nearly completed replacement on the right.

Here is a group shot of the building team on the left and Thomasa and three of her children inside their old home weaving, their primary means of income, on the right.

One of the most amazing things was to see how hard the family worked. The girls, who think were about 10 and 12 carried wheel-barrow load after load of sand. Here is Thomasa's mother carrying one of many loads of blocks to the job site.

Highlights from Guatemala

2005-12-20T22:45:00.000-05:00

Jesse reminded me that I haven't posted anything on my trip last month to Guatemala...so here it goes part one of multi-part post (this is also a good chance to test out posting pictures).

I went as part of a 10 person team. Six of us were from the Ann Arbor Vineyard and four from First Presbyterian of Brighton. Our mission was to support the work of Teri Litrell who is a full-time missionary in Vasquez, Guatemala (and the aunt of John Starkweather, a member of the A2 Vineyard).

Teri has established a clinic in Vasquez where she trains local Mayan women to be nurses and serves as a general advocate for the people. Here she is with some of her students (and Esther Brunson from Ann Arbor).

We stayed with the family of Sefarino and Maria, who took Teri in some 12 years ago after she first came to Vasquez. Through the years, the support Teri has received has enabled her to build "Sefi" and Maria a nice building complex with room for the loom, a clinic, a classroom/chapel and several guest rooms as well as space for the extended family (pictured below).

I was honored to be able to deliver the Sunday sermon the day after we arrived. It was a humbling experience. The people were very warm and friendly, but by the time my words were translated into Spanish, by Teri, and then Quiche (prounced kee-chay), by Pastor Obispo, it was very difficult to get into any kind of rhythm. It also tripled the time, so my nice 20 minute sermon dragged on past an hour. On top of this, the kids ran around freely and the adults, who primarily spoke Quiche, chatted during the english and spanish parts. This all took some getting used to, but all in all it was a very valuable experience.

Jesus skeptics on the run - Los Angeles Times

2005-12-18T17:02:00.000-05:00

Here is a nice editorial discussing Anne Rice's new book and the shift in scholarship away from Jesus-Seminar style skepticism to acceptance of the Gospels as plausibly true.

css thesis: sites, that's all.

2005-12-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

For my web design savvy friends, this site lists dozens of beautifully designed sites which utilize CSS. Check it out!.

Dick Staub: Movies - Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire

2005-11-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

Since I don't have time to investigate Harry Potter myself (and thankfully Robert, only 5, is still a little too young for it...though he is eating up the Chronicles of Narnia), I'm always interested in a reasoned debate on the propriety of it. Dick Staub is usually pretty good at accomplishing that. (Follow the title link to read Dick Staub's views.)

A Message from God: Effective Immediately

2005-11-16T10:17:00.000-05:00

Got this from Dick Staub's culture watch... (BTW...I'll post some reflections from my trip to Guatemala next week after I catch my breath).

From: God

To: You

Effective Immediately,

Please be aware that there are changes YOU need to make in YOUR life. These changes need to be completed in order that I may fulfill My promises to you to grant you peace, joy and happiness in this life. I apologize for any inconvenience, but after all that I am doing, this seems very little to ask of you. Please, follow these 10 guidelines.

1. QUIT WORRYING:

Life has dealt you a blow and all you do is sit and worry. Have you forgotten that I am here to take all your burdens and carry them for you? Or do you just enjoy fretting over every little thing that comes your way?

2. PUT IT ON THE LIST:

Something needs done or taken care of. Put it on the list. No, not YOUR list. Put it on MY to-do-list. Let ME be the one to take care of the problem. I can't help you until you turn it over to Me. And although My to-do-list is long, I am after all... God. I can take care of anything you put into My hands. In fact, if the truth were ever really known, I take care of a lot of things for you that you never even realize.

3. TRUST ME:

Once you've given your burdens to Me, quit trying to take them back. Trust in Me. Have the faith that I will take care of all your needs, your
problems and your trials. Problems with the kids? Put them on My list Problem with finances? Put it on My list. Problems with your emotional roller coaster? For My sake, put it on My list. I want to help you. All you have to do is ask.

4. LEAVE IT ALONE:

Don't wake up one morning and say, "Well, I'm feeling much stronger now; I think I can handle it from here." Why do you think you are feeling
stronger now? It's simple. You gave Me your burdens and I'm taking care of them. I also renew your strength and cover you in my peace. Don't you know that if I give you these problems back, you will be right back where you started? Leave them with Me and forget about them. Just let Me do My job.

5. TALK TO ME:

I want you to forget a lot of things. Forget what was making you crazy. Forget the worry and the fretting because you know I'm in control. But
there's one thing I pray you never forget. Please, don't forget to talk to Me - OFTEN! I love YOU! I want to hear your voice. I want you to include
Me in the things going on in your life. I want to hear you talk about your friends and family. Prayer is simply you having a conversation with Me. I want to be your dearest Friend.

6. HAVE FAITH:

I see a lot of things from up here that you can't see from where you are. Have faith in Me--I know what I'm doing. Trust Me; you wouldn't want the
view from My eyes. I will continue to care for you, watch over you, and meet your needs. You only have to trust Me. Although I have a much bigger
task than you, it seems as if you have so much trouble just doing your simple part. How hard can trust be?

7. SHARE:

You were taught to share when you were only two years old. When did you forget? That rule still applies. Share with those who are less fortunate
than you. Share your joy with those who need encouragement. Share your laughter with those who haven't heard any in such a long time. Share your tears with those who have forgotten how to cry. Share your faith with those who have none.

8. BE PATIENT:

I managed to fix it so in just one lifetime you could have so many diverse experiences. You grow from a child to an adult, have children, change jobs many times, learn many trades, travel to so many places, meet thousands of people, and experience so much. How can you be so impatient then when it takes Me a little longer than you expect to handle something on My
to-do-list? Trust in My timing, for My timing is perfect. Just because I created the entire universe in only six days, everyone thinks I should
always rush, rush, rush.

9. BE KIND:

Be kind to others, for I love them just as much as I love you. They may not dress like you, or talk like you, or live the same way you do, but I
still love you all. Please try to get along, for My sake. I created each of you different in some way. It would be too boring if you were all identical. Please, know I love each of your differences.

10. LOVE YOURSELF:

As much as I love you, how can you not love yourself? You were created by Me for one reason only--to be loved, and to love in return. I am a God of Love. Love Me. Love your neighbors. But also love yourself. It makes My heart ache when I see you so angry with yourself when things go wrong. You are very precious to me. Don't ever forget....

Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: How Emergent Are You? McLaren's Seven Layers of the Emergent Conversation

2005-10-28T11:28:00.000-04:00

You have to stick with this past the middle to get to the good part. But its short.

Off to Guatemala tomorrow so I may not blog for a couple of weeks (though I hope to fire off some thoughts before I go).

Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy

2005-10-26T11:06:00.000-04:00

Today's blog link is dedicated to Mark, who is forever trying to convince me the importance of living in the present "since it is the only time there is."'

Unless You Become a Child

2005-10-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

Another nugget from the Daily Dig...

"One thing children certainly accomplish, and that is that they love and wonder at the people and the universe around them. They live in the midst of squalor and confusion and see it now. They see people at the moment and love them and admire them. They forgive and they go on loving. They may look at the most vicious person, and if he is at that moment good and kind and doing something that they can be interested in or admire, there they are, pouring out their hearts to him. Oh, I can write with authority. I have my own little grandchildren with me right now, and they see only the beauty and the joy of other people. There is no criticism in their minds and hearts of those around them."

Source: Dorothy Day, "Selected Writings"

A Short Commercial Break

2005-10-18T22:41:00.000-04:00

I googled my company name and was surprised to find the following link to the QT video of a talk I gave on the Intersection of Biotech and IT a couple of years ago. I spoke a little too quickly and said "uh" more times than I should have but it was fun to watch again. I really enjoyed my short stint in the world of Biotech. (If you care to watch it, you might want to download the powerpoint presentation from my site since you can't see the slides well in the video.)

How to Rapture Safely...

2005-10-06T17:18:00.000-04:00

Here's a cute piece of satire....Rapture safety cards....including instructions for exiting the church for those that don't get taken (since all the usher's will be gone ;-)

Leo Tolstoy: The Imp and the Crust

2005-10-04T08:49:00.000-04:00

When I look back on my college years one of my biggest regrets has been not taking more "great books" literature classes. Perhaps I can make up for it as I grow old. In the mean time, I've enjoyed the little snippets of Tolstoy I've received in my "Daily Dig". Enjoy.

Leo Tolstoy: The Imp and the Crust

Church Marketing Sucks

2005-09-29T21:09:00.000-04:00

Found this quote by Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids:

"Remember what Jesus always wanted to know?" he asked. "What's the fruit we're producing? Is justice being done? Are people sharing their possessions? Are the oppressed being set free? Are relationships being healed? To me, that's the point. Everything else is just chatter." ...

"My theory of church growth is simple," said Bell, leaning across the table to deliver the coup de grace. "People drive a long way to see a fire."

Found the quote on a cool blog—Church Marketing Sucks run by the communications director for the Foursquare denomination (started by Jack hayford, I think).

Alas my reason for searching for Rob Bell was to find his great sermon called the "Theology of Breathing" for my friend Paul, but the Mars Hill website appears to be out of commission.

More tidbits from Kierkegaard

2005-09-28T16:03:00.000-04:00

I found this quote particularly poignant ...

Christendom and Counterfeit Christianity by Soren Kierkegaard: "No one can be the truth; only the God-man is the truth. Then comes the next: the ones whose lives express what they proclaim. These are witnesses to the truth. Then come those who disclose what truth is and what it demands but admit that their lives do not express it, but to that extent still are striving. There it ends. Now comes the sophistry. First of all come those who teach the truth but do not live it. Then come those who even alter the truth, its requirement, cut it down, make omissions in order that their lives can correspond to the requirement. These are the real deceivers."

Bottom Up vs. Top Down

2005-09-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

Following is an email I sent in response to a prophetic call for prayer. I had no problem with the contents of the call, per se, but there seemed to be something missing. I have received positive feedback from several people who received the mail so I decided to post my comments here. At the end I've also appended some further thoughts.

It does appear that troubled times are ahead, yet I am struck by the lack of focus on what I see clearly as the primary focus of God throughout his dealings with Israel and the church—justice for the poor and oppressed.

We need to open our eyes to the real sore that Katrina revealed—a city in America where 1 out of 4 people were impoverished, mostly women, children and elderly! This has nothing to do with the Supreme Court or the political government. It has to do with the church!

Here's what Ezekiel told Israel led to the destruction of Sodom:

Ezek. 16:49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen."

For too long the enemy has seduced us into thinking that we need to change our government to bring about revival. THIS IDOLATRY! Only God can bring about revival and he's not interested in the federal government nearly as much as our self-government. When this inward change happens, the changes we hope for in the outward expression (political government) will fall naturally into place.

This inward change, though is NOT primarily focused on external issues such as homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Homosexuality is a symptom of internal brokenness in our society. It is a sign that the moral order of creation is breaking down. We can prune the tree all we want, but until we GET TO THE ROOT, nothing will change.

For too long the enemy has blinded us to the simple message God has given us:

Micah 8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. 9 Listen! The LORD is calling to the city— and to fear your name is wisdom— “Heed the rod and the One who appointed it. 10 Am I still to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures and the short ephah, which is accursed? 11 Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights? 12 Her rich men are violent; her people are liars and their tongues speak deceitfully. 13 Therefore, I have begun to destroy you, to ruin you because of your sins.”

Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God...If the church will focus on this statement and all its myriad implications, then revival will come. Jesus did not spend his time railing against the injustice of the Roman government. He challenged the Jewish leadership, yes, but He did not bring about the downfall of the Roman empire through political action, he did it by becoming "obedient to death—even death on a cross!"

Hallelujah! He will complete the work He has begun. Let's pray for revival in our hearts that we may apply His simple call to take up our cross and consider other more highly than ourselves. This is what turned the world upside down in the early church and it will do it again.

Maranatha

The feedback I got was not all positive. In particular my pointing out the risk of political activism sliding into idolatry was offensive to some. My intent was not to accuse anyone in particular of this, but to warn us all against something that I, myself, have fallen into in the past (indeed, since anytime we shift our focus away from God we border on, if not commit idolatry, I am sure I still fall into it in various areas of my life...Praise be to God that He has sent His Son to free me from this bondage!).

As I pondered this further, I came to the following conclusion: God works from the inside out, from the bottom up, but we try to reverse this. Jesus did not try to overthrow the Romans or the Herodians by direct confrontation (top down), but by reconstituting Israel around Himself, one disciple at a time (bottom up). Throughout the gospels and the rest of the New Testament the focus is on how we treat each other on an individual basis. We start in Jerusalem and spread to Samaria and then to the outer parts of the world. This is not nearly as rewarding as the sense of power one feels when standing with a group of 500,000 other chanting for a change at the top, but as HisStory proves, it is far more effective over the long term.

This is not an anabaptist call for withdrawal from political involvement (at least not yet). You should vote. You should engage with the world and make your views known. You should pray fervently for political leaders!

But if we really want to change our political and justice system, we need to do from the inside out. If it worked in the midst of the authoritarian Roman regime, surely it will work in our democratic governement that is "of the people, by the people, for the people."

"How can you worship a homeless Man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?"

2005-09-04T00:09:00.000-04:00

A good article on the “The New Monasticism” in on Christianity Today’s website this week.

I’ve lived in community, of sorts, when I was younger, and Adrienne and I have always enjoyed opening our home to others (we’ve had someone else living with our family about a third of the 15 years we’ve been married). Still, our experiences are a far cry from a true “intentional community” like those discussed in the article. The challenges are many, especially for married folk with kids, but its clear that God continues to foster communities in His church and the new models that are emerging hold promise for more than monks and nuns.

Here are some excerpts to whet your appetite for reading more…

…when those of privilege can give it up to live among those in need, it mirrors Christ coming to earth. "We have lost that incarnational concept. Jesus relocated down here to become a human being so we could be touched by him."

....

A June 2004 conference officially marks the birth of the new monasticism, and participants wrote a voluntary rule for the many and diverse communities… Drawing from church tradition and borrowing the term new monasticism from Jonathan R. Wilson's book Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World (Morehouse, 1998), participants developed 12 distinctives that would mark these communities, including: submission to the larger church, living with the poor and outcast, living near community members, hospitality, nurturing a common community life and a shared economy, peacemaking, reconciliation, care for creation, celibacy or monogamous marriage, formation of new members along the lines of the old novitiate, and contemplation.

These marks connect like-minded communities, new and older, to each other. They also provide a discipline and structure some observers say communities a generation ago lacked. "The marks show the common threads that connect Christian communities that might otherwise be seen as scattered anomalies, rather than vibrant cells of a body," says Claiborne, who is becoming a spokesman for the movement.

One of the challenges any community faces is affordable housing for the group, but going to live among the poor opens up opportunities that simply don’t exist in suburbia. So for example:

For years, Claiborne says, the Simple Way tried to get the city to condemn an abandoned home at the end of their street, which had become home to drug dealers, users, and prostitutes. "It was unacceptable," Claiborne says. They petitioned the city to condemn the building and allow the Simple Way, which is registered as a nonprofit organization, to buy and rehab it. The city said it would cost $30,000 to buy it and take two years to process the paperwork.

But they weren't going to let red tape slow them down. While they worked with the city to gain ownership of the building, Simple Way members walked across the rooftops down Potter Street and entered the house through the roof. Inside, they found trash piled to the ceiling, walls and floors caving in, drug paraphernalia, and pornography. They cleaned it out, room by room.

Before their cleanup efforts made much progress, two people were murdered on the corner. The story made the evening news, and the local alderman, feeling pressure, promised to do something. The building was immediately condemned, canceling $150,000 in liens, and the house put up for auction. The Simple Way bought it for $14,000, and three days after gaining ownership, the building was clean.

The article also includes some important warnings about the imbalances that can occur:

It's always a good thing when people decide to live out their love for Jesus in radical ways, says Ron Sider, professor at Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Baptist). Many young people, he says, "look at society and the church and see an incredibly individualistic community and, in spite of some exceptions, still largely unconcerned for the poor."

However, in intentional community movements, one sometimes senses an element of guilt that is used to manipulate suburban youths into giving their lives to work with the poor. "And the flip side of that [guilt] tends to be self-righteousness projected on everyone else," says Jenell Williams Paris, who lived in community during college and graduate school from 1991 to 1999 and now teaches anthropology at Bethel University in Minnesota.

"I heard speakers give prophetic messages, part of which I now understand as shaming messages to white, middle-class evangelicals. I heard, 'White people aren't doing anything. Evangelicals don't care," Paris says. "I took that personally, and I thought, I don't not care; I just didn't know."

A summer with Bart Campolo's ministry gave her the conviction to work on behalf of the poor and influenced her life down to the person she married. However, Paris says, "That sense of shame and guilt was driving me for eight or ten years. Now I listen closely when evangelical social justice speakers come to my university. It's important to help students engage with justice issues out of love, not just out of white guilt."

Community living is also difficult, especially for families, to sustain over the long term. "The whole [American] culture is set up for married people with careers and kids to live in houses and to be mobile as a unit," Paris says. That can cause problems for communities that include married couples and their children, who at some point feel the need to move on to create a life for their family.

This sort of rhythm "reinforces the love-them-and-leave-them pattern," says Don Stubbs, director of recruitment for Inner City Impact in Chicago. Inner-city hopelessness is so deeply rooted that ministry takes years of building one-on-one relationships before it is effective, Stubbs says. Community living can be "sexy" ministry, but Stubbs says he would rather find workers committed long term to the urban setting.

…Hmmm…

Building the World of Tomorrow

2005-08-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

Pat Robertson's recent proposal for dealing with Hugo Chavez has caused quite an uproar. He's apologized for calling for assasination but his general attitude points to one of the clear "meta-narratives" of modern evangelicalism, which I used to adhere to, but now find increasingly objectionable. Here's a quote from the reply I received from CBN after I posted my feelings on their website. Pat Robertson says:

We are in the midst of a war that is draining vast amounts of our treasure and is costing the blood of our armed forces. I am a person who believes in peace, but not peace at any price. However, I said before the war in Iraq began that the wisest course would be to wage war against Saddam Hussein, not the whole nation of Iraq. When faced with the threat of a comparable dictator in our own hemisphere, would it not be wiser to wage war against one person rather than finding ourselves down the road locked in a bitter struggle with a whole nation?

The brilliant Protestant theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lived under the hellish conditions of Nazi Germany, is reported to have said:

"If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."

Some are quite offended that Mr. Robertson would dare compare himself with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. To me it simply points to his shallowness. I'm no expert on Bonhoeffer but the little reading of him I've done (Life Together) indicates a profoundly deep thinking man. He was accused by Hitler of participating in a plot to assassinate him and while the evidence is inconclusive, I found the following discussion of his life and his views on pacifism revealing of the dilemma he faced:

BONHOEFFER, CONVINCED sufficiently of the arguments for pacifism that he arranged to visit Gandhi in the mid-1930s (something he was unable to do), eventually supported a plot to assassinate Hitler. He simply could not accept the personal perfection of withdrawal. In doing that, one "sets his own personal innocence above his responsibility for [humanity], and he is blind to the more irredeemable guilt which he incurs precisely in this," Bonhoeffer wrote.

Of the elites and never a populist, Bonhoeffer left the immortal phrase that it was essential "to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled-in short from the perspective of those who suffer."

One thing is clear, to me at least: Bonhoeffer was far closer to the situation in Germany, and the evil more starkly apparent, than Pat Robertson's perspective on Venezuela. More importantly, Robertson's comments on the war "draining vast amounts of our treasure" and the call to "take out" Saddam (not assassinate, mind you, Pat makes it clear that there are numerous ways to "take out" a leader), go to show where his heart is.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

To my main point about modern evangelical meta-narratives: we have been far too quick to resort to natural means to fight the battle. Or perhaps the problem is that we have been too focused on fighting "our" battle and not the Lord's. In any case, the article that prompted this ramble is more about Brother Roger. I love his thoughts on the role of the humble and obscure in bringing about a future of peace and trust...

SojoNet: Faith, Politics, and Culture: "Brother Roger was well-known for his letters, many of which were addressed to young people. 'So many young people all across the earth carry within them a yearning for peace, for communion, and for joy,' he wrote in one such letter last year. 'They are also mindful of the untold suffering of the innocent. They know all too well that poverty in the world is on the rise. It is not only the leaders of nations who build the world of tomorrow. The most obscure and humble people can play a part in bringing about a future of peace and trust. However powerless we may seem to be, God enables us to bring reconciliation where there are oppositions and hope where there is anxiety. God calls us to make his compassion for human beings accessible by the way we live.'"

Breaking down the Walls of Division

2005-08-24T11:52:00.000-04:00

I was moved by the NYT's story on Brother Roger Schutz (At His Funeral, Brother Roger Has an Ecumenical Dream Fulfilled"), who was senselessly stabbed last week by a disturbed Romanian woman looking for attention. Here are some excerpts:

Brother Roger Schutz pursued many ecumenical dreams in his long life, but in death one of them came true: At a Eucharistic service celebrated Tuesday by a Roman Catholic cardinal for Brother Roger, a Swiss Protestant, communion wafers were given to the faithful indiscriminately, regardless of denomination.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Vatican's council for the unity of Christians, who celebrated the Mass, said in a homily, "Yes, the springtime of ecumenism has flowered on the hill of Taize." Beyond religious divisions, Brother Roger also abhorred the division between rich and poor. "Every form of injustice or neglect made him very sad" Cardinal Kasper said. Brother Roger's community and friends, including President Horst Kohler of Germany and the retired archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, attended the liturgy in the vast wooden monastery church at Taize, while thousands more followed it on a huge screen in fields outside the church. Brother Roger was 90 when he was stabbed to death by a Romanian woman, Luminita Solcan, 36, during an evening service in the church one week ago. His successor, the Rev. Alois Leser, a Roman Catholic priest from Germany, prayed for forgiveness: "With Christ on the cross we say to you, Father, forgive her, she does not know what she did"

Here's another link to an article with more details on the history of Brother Roger and some quotes from varioius Christian leaders.

Happy Tu B'Av - Holiday of Love and Romance

2005-08-20T09:19:00.000-04:00

"Since Biblical times the 15th of Av has been celebrated as a holiday of love and affection, and in modern Israel it is celebrated as a sort of “Valentine’s Day” (though it is a much older and sober holiday that St. Valentine’s Day)."

Learn more...

Did they find evidence of David's palace?

2005-08-14T20:11:00.000-04:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "n what could turn out to be the archeological find of the century, a prominent Israeli archeologist claims to have uncovered the ancient palace of King David near the Old City of Jerusalem.
The 10th Century BC building discovered by Dr. Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem's ancient City of David, following a six-month dig at the site, has stirred international interest, igniting a debate in the archeological world whether the building is indeed the Biblical palace built for the victorious King David by King Hiram of Tyre as recounted in Samuel II: 5."

Worshipping at the IHOP

2005-08-05T23:10:00.000-04:00

Adrienne I dropped in at the IHOP in Atlanta tonight. Not for pancakes, but for prayer and worship. The International House of Prayer - Atlanta : houses prayer and worhsip services 24 hours a day nearly 7 days a week.

We showed up a little after 8 PM and sat down in the "prayer room" which is more like a sanctuary with about 200 seats and stage for musicians. One young woman sang and played piano while another worshipped harmoniously. The singing was sweet and melodic and the Holy Spirit was clearly present. We were two of maybe half a dozen people in the prayer room with a few others off in a side room practicing guitar. Later exploration revealed a fellowship room with video games, pool tables etc., and a kitchen. Didn't see the recording studio, but their website claims to have one.

All-in-all and annointed way to spend an evening.

Imagine if you could join with others for an hour of prayer and worship any time the Spirit moved, night or day! Think about it....well?

Are you ready to make it happen?

Two faces of Human Instinct

2005-08-04T18:14:00.000-04:00

When the Air France jet skidded off the runway this week in Toronto, two faces of human instinct were on display.

Inside the plane, pandemonium broke loose as Survival instinct took over passengers, experts say

A primeval, and sometimes ugly, survival instinct swept over some of the desperate passengers of Air France Flight 358 when they found themselves trapped in the burning plane … It was for a time, as several passengers described it, everyone for himself or herself….Stephanie Paquin, a 17-year-old returning from a student exchange in France, said "people were just pushing. They didn't care about anyone else." After fleeing through the emergency exits, "everyone was trampling everyone."

The experts point to this as evidence of a primal instinct built into us over the eons:

"We have a bunch of primitive reflexes in which we exhibit behaviour like animals in certain situations," said Steven Taylor, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, whose research focuses on trauma and anxiety.
… Often people will "later feel embarrassed" for their behaviour.

Yet, another instinct drove one man who was driving by the airport at the time of the crash to drive toward the crash, against the rush of other cars fleeing the seeing, scale the barbed wire fence and lend a hand becoming the The hero of Flight 358

As terrified passengers fled the burning Air France jet, Guy Ledez stood atop a muddy ravine, pulling survivors from the wreckage.

He then ran on board the burning wreckage of Flight 358 to make sure no one was left behind. The 37-year-old airport rental car manager says he didn't have time to stop and think of danger when he witnessed the crash on a routine Tuesday afternoon.

"I looked down and there's just a sea of people trying to get up," he said. "I had two babies passed to me." He and another bystander - whose name he never learned - pulled survivors to safety and then went down to help elderly passengers up the ravine.

Not knowing whether injured survivors remained on board, he said, the two men scrambled up the emergency slide at the tail of the plane. Each took an aisle and did a sweep to make sure nobody had been left behind.

All 309 passengers and crew had remarkably escaped serious harm.

The other unknown good Samaritan jumped out and landed safely. Just as Ledez headed toward an exit, he heard an explosion from the back of the plane, one that ultimately ripped the aircraft into pieces.

He jumped and ran for his life. Only then did he realise how much danger he had escaped: "That sort of woke me up," he said. "That's when the reality set in."
…

"There was no thinking involved, just, 'I gotta go help', so boom, I did it," he said.

One the tensions Christians must grapple with lies between the total depravity of man, which speaks of the capacity and even propensity towards evil inherent in all of us, and our role as image bearers of God, created as good creatures, yet now fallen. Must we strive to empty ourselves of every ounce of human will to make room for God? Or do we seek to subject to and join our will with His will to achieve His purposes? Saints have grappled with these questions for millennia with no clear answer, and the two faces of human instinct shown in Flight 358 does little but highlight the tension. Perhaps that is as it should be.

Peace.

Choosing Poverty: Jesus and the Redistribution of Capital

2005-08-01T21:20:00.000-04:00

Paul Metler reminded me today that I hadn't blogged in over a month. Not that I haven't been reading and thinking a lot, but I haven't been writing a lot.

Anyway, here's a provocative piece to chew on....
Choosing Poverty: Jesus and the Redistribution of Capital: "Choosing Poverty
Jesus and the Redistribution of Capital
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The Original Unity of Man and Woman

2005-07-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

I first came across this when preparing a sermon on the bride of Christ for my classwork. My friend Paul sent me some of this writings which spoke of the Hebrew for man and woman is/issa and how the woman was like but different from man. I did a search and came across this from Pope John Paul II. I had never read anything by him before and, quite frankly, I was blown away by the depth of his writing. I can see why they made him Pope.

There really isn't a "pull quote" from it that does it justice (you'll just have to read it for yourself...click on the title of the entry for the link) but the suffice it to say I find the text far more beautiful and meaningful than I did before.

It is clear, too, that the text emphasizes the equality of woman with man. This may come as a surprise to some, but the more I study the scriptures in depth, the more I realize the inadequacy of the typical evangelical approach to reading the Bible literally. So for example, without an understanding of how ancient Hebrews expressed themselves and talked about the world it is impossible to know the literal meaning of God forming Eve from Adams rib.

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

2005-07-11T21:55:00.000-04:00

This was passed on to me by my friend Paul. Similar to the Meatrix (see my earlier post)....funnier, though maybe not as educational. However, I should have put a warning on the Meatrix post...it mayn not be suitable for young eyes (I had to stop it before it scared my young nephew). Store Wars is more paletable (sp?) for yound eys. Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

Time to Forgive Debts

2005-07-07T07:02:00.000-04:00

This whole article is worth reading, but I was particularly interested to read the following explanation of a parable that has always puzzled me, the parable of the dishonest steward in Luke. The historical context provided below makes sense of it for me...

Time to Forgive Debts: ..." the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1-39), also revolves around the peasants' status in Jesus' time. Due to the extortions of King Herod— as well as those of his son and the Roman occupant — most of the older proprietors had lost their independence. Forced to mortgage their property in order to pay their taxes, they had been driven into semi-slavery. The taxes in oil and wheat that they paid to their masters often amounted to half or more of their harvest.

The peasants' conditions in Israel were aggravated by yet another evil: the owners' absenteeism. A hierarchy of middlemen (toll-gatherers, publicans, customs officials, stewards, and managers) had the task of collecting debts. They extorted from the sharecropper arbitrary sums of money that exceeded the rent, debts, and taxes they actually owed. The poor were always in the wrong. They could rely on no one because the stewards presented falsified accounts to their masters. With the help of these accounts, they were able to accumulate what Jesus called "unrighteous mammon." It was by constantly seeking these unjust riches that the stewards lost their genuine riches, namely, the friendship of their fellow citizens.

This parable tells how a landowner discovered the dishonesty of his steward. Not only did the steward plunder the sharecroppers, he also stole from his master to whom he showed falsified records. Once his cheating had been discovered, the steward began to feel the pangs of conscience. He understood that he would never be able to reimburse the entire amount of his swindling. But he decided at least not to require of the sharecroppers exaggerated amounts they had not yet paid. He then erased the amount by which he had unjustly increased their debts. Jesus describes him calling the debtors together and reducing their debts to their correct amount: fifty measures of oil instead of a hundred, eighty measures of wheat instead of a hundred, etc.

Such a decision certainly increased the steward%u2019s insolvency. It forced him into poverty. But by acting as he did, he would acquire genuine riches, that is the thankfulness and friendship of his previous victims. Poor among the poor, man among men, he would be received as a brother in their homes. That, says Jesus, is the nature of God's kingdom. The point of the parable? Jesus says, "Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves" (Luke 16:9). That is, put the Jubilee I'm announcing into practice. By liberating others from their debts, you set yourselves free from fetters that bind, which keep you from being ready for the coming of God's kingdom of justice.

The most remarkable part of the parable is the praise for the steward's shrewdness that Jesus puts into the mouth of the landowner, who symbolizes God. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, God is the one who takes the initiative. God is the first to cancel our debt, and so he expects us to do the same. In the parable of the dishonest steward, it is man who takes the initiative. He is the first to put the Jubilee into practice by obeying the messianic call and remitting the debts of those who are debtors to God, as well as debtors to himself. Consequently, God praises this man for practicing the redistribution of wealth even before being touched by divine grace. He was able to read the signs of God's kingdom and understand that the rule of unjust riches is over."

Independence Day

2005-07-05T11:20:00.000-04:00

I wish I had the time to write more on my feelings about this, but this quote from John Stott will have serve as a proxy for now...
Independence Day: "In The Unforbidden Fruit, John Stott says that Christians have this to add to the Declaration of Independence: "Those who pursue happiness never find it. Because joy and peace are extremely elusive, happiness is a will-o'-the-wisp, a phantom, and even if we reach out our hand to grasp it, it vanishes into thin air. God gives joy and peace not to those who pursue them but to those who pursue him, and strive to love. Joy and peace are found in loving and nowhere else."

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

2005-06-21T12:32:00.000-04:00

Here's the transcript of the Stanford commencement address Steve Jobs delivered this year. 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
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I found it particularly engaging as I realized the parallels in our lives. Like Steve, I was adopted and like him, I dropped out of college when I felt guilty that my parents were spending outrageous sums of money for my out-of-state tuition at UM and I had no idea what I wanted to do. By the time I went back to school a couple of years later, the Macintosh had been introduced. In his speech, Jobs speaks of how a calligraphy class he took after he dropped out led him to build typography into the Mac. I learned a little typography as editor of my yearbook in High School, but it was using the Macintosh that really helped me learn to use type creatively. Thanks, Steve, for dropping out and connecting the dots.

All Things New

2005-05-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

I've really enjoyed the readings I get sent by the daily dig. Here's today's quote and the story that it linked to..

And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” - Revelation 21:5

A darkness has come over Christianity in regard to this matter of renewal. We are so easily contented, so quickly satisfied with a religiosity that makes us appear a little more decent. Yet this cannot be all there is to our faith: Everything—everything—must become new. Not just a little taste of something new, but all things new. C. F. Blumhardt.

The Cop and the Bank Robber

The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy

2005-05-23T10:03:00.000-04:00

Sunday, our pastor Ken spoke of the importance of creed, but more importantly, the connection with the One the creeds point to. This story from Leo Tolstoy makes the same point...
The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy