My New Favorite Thing

My new favorite thing is having something that I've written quoted back to me as good advice.

Also carving pumpkins, I like those too!

me in three months!

A Book Review and Dust on my Laptop

I just finished reading They Like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball (who I haven’t really liked since I saw him at the National Youth Workers Convention, however Bill had the book on his desk and I was avoiding doing other things, so…). I did like this book, not really earth shattering for me, but it’s nice to have someone else articulate the things I am feeling. Here are some of my thoughts mixed with Kimball’s:

• The Church has to draw us in and allow us to be something we can’t be on our own. Not something we simply attend to or passively absorb.


• Christ is the center of the Church (the head of the body if you will) both in dogma AND form. The worship should be an unapologetic gathering of Christians, Christ-followers, or Jesus people, whatever title you prefer. I can’t overemphasis form and means here; they matter tremendously both in the ‘end product’ they create and they culture they communicate.


• The goal isn’t to get non-Christians to “go to church”, but to participate in the life of the church as a community. Perhaps, we should consider coming worship gatherings as a later step. This means we shouldn’t be gearing the worship gatherings to non-Christians, if that is the only thing we do that we can invite people to participate in we are in trouble.
• The Church is Jesus! We need to read the gospels a lot more

On a lighter note, why does my laptop attract so much dust? I’m sure there is a simply explanation involving electric fields and magnetism… maybe wikipeda has an answer?

Meditations on The Road

I've been going through a lot of fiction lately, the residual effect of three years of forced theological reading. The latest book I read is call The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The story is about a father and son in a post-apocalyptic America - pretty heavy stuff. I picked it up because it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. Parts of it are devastating, other parts are painfully hopeful.

I finished it last night and have been thinking about the book since then. In the end it is our love for each other, the goodness at makes us human, that separates us from the tide of chaos that consistently laps at the edge of our civilizations and lives. One of the books nameless characters says to the boy of his father, "She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time."

We can't forgot who sustains us, who created us, who came to live with us in the world, and who call us to shine like stars. There are things we cannot do, because to do them denies and destroys our very ontology. Sin doesn't just separate us from God, sin separates us from ourselves.

Remember, it is the breath of God that fills us all.