A Word from A Mentor

PyroManiac has a great post from a guest blogger ... one of my mentors and favorite Bible teachers. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, addresses a real concern the church should have in these days of advanced technology. First, are we being careful with the message we teach. Are we speaking the truth and doing it with excellence? Second, are we being good stewards of the great technology we have to spead that message? As MacArthur says, to whom much is given, much is required. It would be great to see John drop by Pyro's site every now and then. Or, maybe he could begin his own blog ... get a cool blogger name and enter the fray.

CalvinBall: Nostalgia for an Era Past

At our church staff meeting this morning we took a fairly random trip down memory lane laughing at the great games we used to play with our youth groups at Crossroads Bible Church (back in the old days when I was still a youth pastor). As always, the trip was covered with a misty veneer that seems to wrap itself around most memories of the "way-things-used-to-be" - the mist that makes things look better than it really was. But it does seem a bit sad that there really is no longer any "risk" to much of what we do and it that play now has to be absolutely safe ... if anyone even plays anymore! Maybe its the insurance companies, maybe its parents, or maybe its just common sense but play has eliminated some great games. We used to create take offs of classic CalvinBall or Official 43 Man Squamish (of course we rewrote and codified all sorts of new rules for this one - including the mandatory non-binding pledge to play the game with all seriousness). I remember, as a kid, being able to make up games on the spur of the moment and getting all of the Ratner Street gang to join in. I'm not sure that kids in my neighborhood today could do that. I'm not sure parents would let them? Maybe I've just become old... but that's a discussion for later.

A Book for Understanding the Emerging Church

Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church : Understanding a Movement and Its Implications by D.A. Carson is the latest book I'm reading. An insightful and helpful book for understanding the newest church trend -- the Emergent Church movement. The Emergent Church is essentially a post-modern revolt against what is labeled the "modernist" church that has spawned the megachurch, seeker church, and the like. Carson evaluates where the post-modern church brings needed correctives and points to some encouraging signs in the movement. He spends the bulk of the book exposing some of the weaknesses in the movement. We, as pastors and church leaders, ARE going to have to deal with a post-modern world. Understanding this "emerging church" is going to be vital to getting our message out clearly to today's world. Both modernist and post-modernist views have flaws and failures and are marred sin. God's eternal truth must be made evident to both kinds of thinkers.