Don't Read the Bible 'Alone'

Christopher Hall talks about how evangelicals should approach the church fathers.

Christopher Hall believes in the Reformation principle of Scripture Alone. But he doesn't think we should read the Bible alone—that is, in isolation from those who have gone before us.
Hall, one of the key evangelical theologians calling us to pay attention to the leaders of the early church, has written Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (IVP, 1998) and Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (IVP, 2002). He is currently writing Praying with the Church Fathers, the third volume in that series. He is the associate editor of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (IVP), which gathers the church fathers' observations on Scripture passages from sermons, commentaries, and letters into a verse-by-verse commentary. Hall, who is professor of biblical and theological studies at Eastern University, will present a paper titled "The Role of Tradition in Evangelical Theology" during the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting in late November.
Because this is unfamiliar territory to many CT readers, editor David Neff recently asked Hall to explain how he actually puts the Fathers to use.

Interesting interview. Hall wrote one of my favorite books called Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers and brings out several interesting ideas here.

You may be able to read this...

Hey, my domain name is not working right. If you need to get hold of me, e-mail me at coop @ jordoncooper.sk.ca. You will be able to find my domain at www.jordoncooper.sk.ca until everything is back to normal on Monday.

ugh

Had a really bad conversation with a person who didn't want to listen or even look at the facts. Mad over some emotion and I got the brunt of it. Sad thing is that it ruined the relationship. Even sadder is that I think I am relieved. Pathetic.

Halloween

Tomorrow we are celebrating Halloween again. I was hoping for warmer weather as I enjoy a lot of candy giving and seeing the neighbors and their children. Mark is going out as a Fireman this year. He has the hat, jacket, and toy fire axe all ready to go. The two Halloween's that stick out in my mind was in about 85 or 86 and it was around -40 below out. That was a lot of fun and two years ago when there was a jail break of several violent criminals in Saskatoon the night before and there were almost no children out that night all across the city. I miss the Halloween's I had in Calgary growing up. I remember them being really hot evenings, perfect for collecting bags and bags of candy. You could never have enough.

Two years ago, we had Jeb and Sharla over for the evening and Mark was dressed up as Yoda (he could barely walk so he walked like Yoda too) and was so hopped up on sugar that he could have done some of the stuff that Yoda did in Attack of the Clones. It was funny to watch. Watching Mark made me feel quite sorry for my mother and every teacher I ever had who had to teach a class of students on November 1. It must have been horrible.

Mayhem

Some fun in the Mid-West

There is a sense of disconnection in the world. There is a sense of disconnection with one another. There is a sense that mayhem is taking over.
What: A 2 day gathering of the emerging church in our present mayhem. Brian McLaren will help lead the conversation to make sense of our present reality and point us towards the future. We are gathering to say that we are not alone.
Where: Vineyard Central, Cincinnati, Ohio
When: January 9-10, 2004
Time: Doors open at 5:00 p.m. on Friday evening and the event ends at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday.
Who’s Hosting: An emerging network of missional communities in the Midwest region.
Who’s Invited: People who are passionate about being connected in the emerging church. People who resonate with words like simple, organic, community, natural, missional, relationship and Kingdom. (others?)
Format: Our gathering will be highly interactive and relationally driven. Main sessions led by Brian McLaren. Round-table conversations led by practitioners who are making attempts in the new mayhem. Community worship, monastic reflection, common meal, communion, prayer and new friendships breaking out all over.
Hospitality: We will be providing housing for a limited number of participants based on a first come first serve basis. We take hospitality very seriously and want you to feel welcome, as well as keep your costs down.

Another public service announcement by jordoncooper.com. It looks like a great time.

Summary of Jim Collins book "Good to Great"

From Fast Company

You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it's your job to get it going. You have to decide where you're going, how you're going to get there, and who's going with you.
Most people assume that great bus drivers (read: business leaders) immediately start the journey by announcing to the people on the bus where they're going -- by setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision.
In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with "where" but with "who." They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline -- first the people, then the direction -- no matter how dire the circumstances. Take David Maxwell's bus ride. When he became CEO of Fannie Mae in 1981, the company was losing $1 million every business day, with $56 billion worth of mortgage loans under water. The board desperately wanted to know what Maxwell was going to do to rescue the company.
Maxwell responded to the "what" question the same way that all good-to-great leaders do: He told them, That's the wrong first question. To decide where to drive the bus before you have the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, is absolutely the wrong approach.
Maxwell told his management team that there would only be seats on the bus for A-level people who were willing to put out A-plus effort. He interviewed every member of the team. He told them all the same thing: It was going to be a tough ride, a very demanding trip. If they didn't want to go, fine; just say so. Now's the time to get off the bus, he said. No questions asked, no recriminations. In all, 14 of 26 executives got off the bus. They were replaced by some of the best, smartest, and hardest-working executives in the world of finance.
With the right people on the bus, in the right seats, Maxwell then turned his full attention to the "what" question. He and his team took Fannie Mae from losing $1 million a day at the start of his tenure to earning $4 million a day at the end. Even after Maxwell left in 1991, his great team continued to drive the flywheel -- turn upon turn -- and Fannie Mae generated cumulative stock returns nearly eight times better than the general market from 1984 to 1999.
When it comes to getting started, good-to-great leaders understand three simple truths. First, if you begin with "who," you can more easily adapt to a fast-changing world. If people get on your bus because of where they think it's going, you'll be in trouble when you get 10 miles down the road and discover that you need to change direction because the world has changed. But if people board the bus principally because of all the other great people on the bus, you'll be much faster and smarter in responding to changing conditions. Second, if you have the right people on your bus, you don't need to worry about motivating them. The right people are self-motivated: Nothing beats being a part of a team that is expected to produce great results. And third, if you have the wrong people on the bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won't achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.

The prevelant church culture is as Bill Hybels says, "rises and falls on the leader" and his or her (ahh forget it, in most traditions it is a "his") vision. Staff associates are generally expendable (as evidenced by the extremely short tenures of most associate and esspecially youth pastors in North America).

"Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of."

Camille Paglia on reading weblogs

Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of. Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others. People say that the best part about writing a blog is that there's no editing -- it's free speech without institutional control....
Now and then one sees the claim that Kausfiles was the first blog. I beg to differ: I happen to feel that my Salon column was the first true blog. My columns had punch and on-rushing velocity. They weren't this dreary meta-commentary, where there's a blizzard of fussy, detached sections nattering on obscurely about other bloggers or media moguls and Washington bureaucrats. I took hits at media excesses, but I directly commented on major issues and personalities in politics and pop culture...
If bloggers want to break out of their ghetto, they've got to acquire a sense of drama and theater as well as a flair for language. Why else should anyone read them? And the Web in my view is a visual medium -- I don't log on to be trapped on a muddy page crammed with indigestible prose.
...every writer must work on his or her prose to find a voice. No major figure has emerged yet from the blogs -- Andrew Sullivan was already an established writer before he started his. A blog should sound conversational and be an antidote to the inept writing in most of today's glossy magazines.
As a writer, I'm inspired not just by other writing but by music and art and lines from movies. I think that's what's missing from a lot of blogs. Most bloggers aren't culture critics but political or media junkies preoccupied with pedestrian minutiae and a sophomoric "gotcha" mentality. I find it depressing and claustrophobic. The Web is a wide open space -- voices on it should have energy and vision.

The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time

from the Guardian

Friedman: Some advice to Republicans on Iraq

If I were a Republican senator, here's what I'd tell the Bush team:
* What in God's name are you doing forcing Iraqis to accept Turkish peacekeeping troops? Are you nuts? Not only will Turkish troops in Iraq alienate the Kurds, our best friends, but they will rile the Shiites and Sunnis as well. Honor is hugely important in Iraqi society, and bringing in Turkish soldiers -- Iraq's former colonizers -- to order around Iraqis would be a disaster. "If we bring in the Turks, it will bring back bad memories," notes Yitzhak Nakash, a Brandeis University professor and author of one of the best Iraq books, The Shi'is of Iraq. "Worse, a Turkish presence in Iraq will only prompt the Iranians, Syrians and Saudis to try to increase their influence. That is no recipe for a stable country."
It's time for the Bush team to admit it made a grievous error in disbanding Iraq's army -- which didn't even fight us -- and declare: "We thank all the nations who offered troops, but we think the Iraqi people can and must secure their own country. So we're inviting all former Iraqi Army soldiers (not Republican Guards) to report back to duty. For every two Iraqi battalions that return to duty (they can weed out their own bad apples), we will withdraw an American one. So Iraqis can liberate themselves. Our motto is Iraq for the Iraqis."
* Attacks on our forces are getting more deadly, not less. Besides those killed, we've had 900 wounded or maimed. We need to take this much more seriously. We're not facing some ragtag insurrection. We're facing an enemy with a command and control center who is cleverly picking off our troops and those Iraqi leaders and foreigners cooperating with us. Either we put in the troops needed to finish the war, and project our authority, or we get the Iraqi Army to do the job -- but pretending that we're just "mopping up" is a dangerous illusion.
* The neocons need a neo-Baath. I'm glad we banned the Baath Party, but the ban was not done right. It needed to be accompanied by a clear process for people who simply joined the Baath to secure government jobs, like school directors, to recant and be rehabilitated. Just tossing these people out has purged thousands of technocrats, weakened the secular middle class and left a power vacuum filled by religious groups. Also, Iraq needs a party that can express the aspirations of Iraq's Sunni minority and give them a stake in the new state. Right now, the Sunni mainstream in Iraq isn't sure how it fits into any new order, so the worst elements are opposing us and the best are apprehensively sitting on the fence.
* "There is now a struggle for power emerging within the Shiite community," says Nakash, "between those clerics and secular leaders who are ready to give the Americans a chance and a grass-roots leadership that wants to challenge both the Americans and the traditional Shia hierarchy. This grass-roots leadership is seeking control of mosques, followers, religious authority and income from religious taxes. Iraq is rapidly moving toward the politics of militias and arms. This trend has to be stopped."
Bottom line: We still haven't established a moderate political center in Iraq ready to openly embrace the progressive U.S. agenda for Iraq and openly defend it. That center is potentially there, but because, so far, we have failed to provide a secure enough environment, or a framework for Iraqis to have the national dialogue they need to build a better Iraq, it has not emerged. We need to fix this situation fast. Instead of applauding without thinking, Republicans should be telling that to the president.

For more of Tom Friedman's advice, read the full story here. Friedman was pro-war all along but even he is seeing the problems that no one wants to talk about. Good article.

Israel's Chief of Staff Denounces Policies Against Palestinians

From the NY Times

Israel's top-ranking soldier said that current hard-line policies against the Palestinians were working against Israel's "strategic interest" and had contributed to the downfall of the previous Palestinian prime minister, Israeli news organizations reported on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was described as "furious" about the comments, attributed to Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the military's chief of staff, Israeli television stations reported later in the day.
Several leading Israeli newspapers reported the controversial comments, attributing them to a senior military official. But during the day, Israeli reporters identified the source as General Yaalon, who made the remarks to Israeli journalists at a background briefing on Tuesday.
Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli columnist with the daily Yediot Ahronot, quoted "a military official" as saying comprehensive travel restrictions and curfews imposed on Palestinians were actually harming Israel's overall security.
"It increases hatred for Israel and strengthens the terror organizations," Mr. Barnea wrote, quoting the official.
General Yaalon also said that Israel should have eased punitive measures to bolster the fortunes of the former Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned on Sept. 6 after only four months on the job.
Mr. Abbas expressed frustration that Mr. Sharon never took concrete steps to convince Palestinians that the Middle East peace plan, initiated in June, would bring about any real improvements in their lives.
"There is no hope, no expectations for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nor in Bethlehem and Jericho," Mr. Barnea quoted the "military official" as saying. "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."

Mike Yaconelli died in a car crash Wednesday evening

From the Youth Specialties website

Early this morning, Thursday, October 30, we lost a friend, a father, an inspiration. Co-founder and owner of Youth Specialties (YS), Mike Yaconelli, was in a fatal car accident in northern California late Wednesday evening.

The number of lives touched by Mike is beyond what we could even estimate. He is the father of modern youth ministry in many minds. Through his books, speaking engagements, and YS events, he has ministered to untold thousands all over the world.

Mike dedicated his life to what God had called him to do. He believed in youth ministry, and did all he could to equip youth workers to change the lives of students. He lived with a passion that was unmatched. He was the incarnation of his book titles, Dangerous Wonder and Messy Spirituality; he lived a life of wonder and amazement at God’s grace. He never claimed to be perfect; he just lived as he was—a man after God’s own heart.

News link about the crash

History's overexposure

Caterina Fake has a brilliant post about history's overexposure and our own memories.

But the image of history's overexposure stayed with me as I slept. When I woke I was thinking of great calluses that have formed on the body of history -- Waterloo, the JFK assassination, September 11, and the frailty and solitude of our own, personal memories; a vast, unknowable empire of memory of stories told by other people, such as that suffered by Kublai Khan in Invisible Cities. I've been thinking about this since I posted about the man's wife eating duck in Beijing, and Michael's comment about the scene in Citizen Kane in which the accountant recalls a woman getting on a ferry -- whom he as thought about every week since then for 40 years.

I lay in bed half asleep trying to remember things I hadn't thought of for a long time, and that effort produced memories of a party I attended in Narragansett, RI circa 1993 for my friend Nicole's younger sister's high school graduation; a boy in a house across from our hotel in Aleppo, holding up things one by one -- a pair of pants, a ball, a toy, a shoe -- laughing and gesturing, communicating in an obscure language of things.

Maybe that's why we keep these bizarre things called weblogs. Something to keep some of our memories in and something to look back at and bring back even more memories. Some of my earliest memories go way back when we lived in a single trailer in Rainbow Lake, Alberta. I remember the yard and our hideous brown couch and watching Sesame Street when I was just three or four. Tossing a red and blue football with my Mom. A sermon growing up about Fonzie. Getting a quad stuck up to its handlebars in the mud. My first shutout in hockey (can't remember my first goal, only my third) and getting shot at while in college but a person who intended to kill us (great story but maybe not for the blog). A couple generations ago, those memories seemed safer. Maybe because we didn't travel as much and leaving home meant moving a couple sections down the lane to start my own farm. Since Mom died and the Cooper's dispersed, I am not even sure where home is. Maybe this blog is home.

Zimmer vs. the Boss Steinbrenner

from the New York Times

The Yankees lost the World Series in Game 6 on Saturday night, and once again there is no joy. There is one less coach, too. A few players arrived at Yankee Stadium to clean out their lockers yesterday, and Don Zimmer, the 72-year-old bench coach, came to clean up after his Yankees career.
On Saturday, Zimmer said he would quit. A day later, he reiterated his decision to leave the Yankees and went into detail about his rift with Steinbrenner. It was more about a lack of respect from Steinbrenner than anything else. "No question," Zimmer said. "Or I'd still be here."
"He's no longer the Boss," Zimmer added. "He called me Zimmer for 25 years, I called him the Boss for 25 years. Today he's Steinbrenner, he's no longer the Boss."
Steinbrenner commented yesterday only through a brief statement, but Zimmer gave an impromptu news conference in a stairwell at Yankee Stadium. He described a feud with Steinbrenner that began last year after the Yankees were eliminated in the first round of the postseason by Anaheim. Zimmer said Steinbrenner accused him of being the source of information that was leaked to reporters. Soon, Zimmer said, Steinbrenner stopped speaking to him.
"I'd go to the racetrack in Tampa where I go frequently and George is there, and he just quit talking to me," Zimmer said. When the Yankees reported to spring training, Zimmer said he was told Steinbrenner had taken away his rental car.
In the middle of this season, Zimmer stood up for Manager Joe Torre when Steinbrenner criticized him for the team's struggles. "I just thought the comments were unfair," Zimmer said. "There were just so many things; I mean, how much can you take? I just thought it was time to move on. It's a tough way to leave, but that's what I want to do."
Zimmer said he would not reconsider and he would not return: he's quitting the team and the franchise after eight seasons.
"I won't be back," he said. "When I say I won't be back, I ain't coming back to work for Steinbrenner or be around him. They could have a day for me and the answer would be no and only because of him."
Twenty minutes after Zimmer left the Stadium, Mel Stottlemyre, the Yankees' even-keeled pitching coach, emerged from the clubhouse. He said this was the most taxing of his eight seasons as a Yankees coach, although he had not made up his mind about whether to return.
This was his "most stressful year," Stottlemyre said, because of problems with the pitching staff and the bullpen early in the season and because of what he called "off-the-field happenings."
"Normally you just kind of let them go by," Stottlemyre said, "but in my case, I felt personally abused because of some things that happened during the course of the season where it was a tough situation for me."
The unpleasantness started in April. Torre and Stottlemyre decided to send the struggling José Contreras, a Cuban pitcher signed in the off-season, to Class AAA Columbus. Steinbrenner overruled that decision and sent Contreras to Tampa, Fla., to work with Billy Connors, the organization's pitching guru.
"That has bothered me, it still bothers me a little bit, but I'm over that bridge," Stottlemyre said.
Without mentioning Steinbrenner by name, Stottlemyre alluded to an incessant pressure to win, leaving little room to enjoy what most people regard as achievements. What's considered a great season for most teams is regarded as a failure for the Yankees. And failing to reach the World Series or reaching the World Series but not winning could be grounds for dismissal.
That standard is ridiculous.
"Some people will feel like we went out and won games and that was success," Stottlemyre said. "Some people will feel like we got into the World Series and that's successful. And there are some people that think that if you don't win the whole thing, sometimes four games to none, it's unsuccessful. I don't think I need to say anymore.
"We didn't win the World Series, but I'm not walking away from here today feeling like we had a nonsuccessful year."

The more I think about Steinbrenner, the more I think of Roger Neilson, who could be called the anti-Steinbrenner. Roger Neilson never won any championships but was respected by his friends, family, players, opponents and almost everyone he ever came into contact with. Like many other men throughout history who lose sight of reality, he will be given his credit for his achievements but will remembered by very few fondly or with respect. Steinbrenner loved to win while Neilson was loved by others. Take your pick on what you want.

A note to the Boss

from MSNBC

“You analyze your deficiencies and try to shore up your weaknesses,” says general manager Brian Cashman, who could be fired or stripped of power. “We’ll try to improve our defense, try to improve our success on the offensive side, and obviously now we’re going to have some holes on the pitching side and the bullpen in middle relief.”
That’s a lot to fix after spending $180 million on this year’s club. The problem is, the only short-term solution is to spend more.
Including pro-rated portions of signing bonuses, the Yankees have committed approximately $95 million to eight players next season, $93.5 million to seven players in 2005 and $80.5 million to five players in ’06. As one agent says, “Even the Yankees are fast approaching the point where resources will actually matter.”

If I am a New York Yankees fan, I am nervous right now.

Hmmm, Thunderbird

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know about my constant struggle with spam. I have tried a lot of products but I think that I may have found the perfect one. Mozilla's Thunderbird. If you don't know what Thunderbird is, here is a short description

Thunderbird is a free, open-source and cross-platform mail client for most operating systems including, but not limited to, Windows, Linux and Macintosh. It is based on the Mozilla codebase. It is a robust and easy to use client, similar to competing products like Outlook Express, but with some major advantages such as junk mail classification.

It is the junk mail filters that make it so amazing. Within a day or two, it has captured most of the spam I am getting. It is free and a safer alternative than Outlook Express. I am in the process of ditching Outlook for it but am looking for a more suitable calendar program. Anyone recommend a really good PIM?

Taking WiFi to New Levels

From Yahoo! News

For the laptop-toter checking e-mail on the run or while sipping a latte at Starbucks, Wi-Fi is a nice convenience. But for some Himalayan villagers in Nepal, a long-range wireless network is the only connection to the rest of the world.

Since late summer, an 802.11b wireless network has enabled a group of rural villages to send and receive POP mail and use a Web cam to teach high school classes over the villages' intranet. No roads span the distances between these villages, but now farmers looking to discuss trades can hold Net meetings rather than spending two days hiking across mountain terrain.

The inspiration for this project is Mahabir Pun, a native Nepali determined to bring better education and technology to his fellow villagers. After spending two years writing three letters a day to American universities, Pun was accepted at the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he received a master's degree in 1992. He then returned to his small home village and, shortly after the village got electricity in 1998, set up its first high school computer lab. The lab's old Pentium systems were assembled from donated parts and ran Windows 95 or 98. But with no phone line, the villagers could not access the Internet.

In mid-August, Pun and a team of volunteers began the three-week process of constructing the wireless network connecting five villages that have populations of from 500 to 1,000. Robin Shields and Sage Radachowsky, who had been volunteer teachers in Pun's village, along with two undergrads from the University of California at Los Angeles, Mark Michalski and James Pearson, helped Pun set up the network.

As if building a wireless network at elevations of more than 7,000 feet weren't difficult enough, each piece of equipment had to be hauled up a vertical mile to the mountain-top villages. Twelve smartBridges air Point Pro Outdoor access points are connected to the dial-up ISP 22 miles away in Pokhara, the nearest city, which has a population of 95,000. Solar panels and wind generators provide power for five access points. The team bought the APs at manufacturer's cost for the project, and three more have since been donated for future use.

To span the several miles between villages, the access points use special high-powered (100 milliwatt compared with conventional 40 milliwatt) antennas. The antennas, Pacific Wireless (news - web sites) PMANT24 24-dB-gain directional antennas, are designed specifically for 2.4-GHz systems and were also provided at manufacturer's cost. The project was partially funded by a grant from the Donald A. Strauss Scholarship Foundation.

via Smart Mobs

Evidence says more than one suspect

From Canada.com

Evidence uncovered at the scene of Cecilia Zhang's abduction has police investigating the possibility that more than one suspect was involved in the nine-year-old girl's disappearance.
''Right now we're keeping all of our avenues open, but the scene would indicate that there's a good potential that there was more than one suspect involved in this abduction,'' Det. Sgt. Dave Perry has told America's Most Wanted.
In pre-recorded segments for the popular TV crime show, Perry - a lead investigator in the search - and Sgt. Jim Muscat, who serves as the police spokesman on the case, discuss the abduction of the gifted nine-year-old pupil.
''We would love whoever has Cecilia to call us tonight, to let us know where we can find her,'' Muscat says in a clip from Saturday's broadcast, segments of which were shown Thursday on Toronto TV station CP24.
Cecilia's parents are also shown delivering a heartfelt message to their only child.
''Cecilia, we are hoping you can watch this show,'' Raymond Zhang says with wife Sherry Xu by his side.
''Be strong, and we will do our best to get you back soon.''
With the search for Cecilia well into its second week, police were still trying to determine a motive for the abduction and had launched an aggressive poster campaign.
After two days of canvassing two areas in nearby Brampton where a couple of mysterious phone calls were apparently made to the home of the little girl, police shifted their efforts Wednesday to getting more than 1,700 flyers and posters in bus and subway stations.
The flyers and posters, in English and Chinese, feature a picture of a smiling Cecilia and her description - four-foot-11 and 70 pounds, with black hair and blonde highlights. They also emphasize a $50,000 police reward for the safe return of the girl to her family.
Cecilia was discovered missing from her Toronto home Oct. 20 when her mother went to wake her for school. A broken screen window at the rear of the two-storey home suggested forced entry, and police have ruled out a random abduction by a predator.
Instead, investigators have been probing the case as a possible kidnapping for profit.
Earlier this week, police canvassed patrons of a rural general store and a doughnut shop northwest of the city, where two calls were made to Cecilia's home from pay phones on the morning of her disappearance.
The bizarre case attracted the attention of America's Most Wanted, which sent a film crew Tuesday to Cecilia's home to film an episode focusing on the search for the Grade 4 pupil.

New pictures

Some low quality Worship Freehouse pictures are online. The better ones (Amanda Johnson's) will be coming soon. I also posted some pictures on my fotoblog of Mark at the park.

ETS Leadership Issues Recommendations on Kicking Out Open Theists

From CT on the ETS debate over Open Theism

In a surprise move one month before the Evangelical Theological Society is scheduled to again discuss open theism (the belief that God neither knows nor usually predetermines human actions), the society's executive committee issued differing recommendations on whether two major proponents of the theory should remain members.
Last year, ETS founding member Roger Nicole brought charges against Clark Pinnock and John Sanders, claiming they published books that violate the society's doctrinal statement.
Calling itself "a grand jury of sorts … [with] no binding power upon the Society," a majority of the executive committee recommended that charges be sustained against John Sanders, and recommended to ETS members that they vote for his dismissal from the group at their annual meeting next month.
However, after Clark Pinnock offered to change a controversial passage in his 2001 book Most Moved Mover, the executive committee unanimously recommended that he not be removed from the society.

It continues with this about Clark Pinnock

The chief complaint against Pinnock, who retired from McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, mainly focused on a footnote on "unfulfilled" prophecies, especially its assertion that " "contrary to Paul, the second coming was not just around the corner (1 Thes. 4:17)." Pinnock said that his language in that note "Unintentionally and unfortunately … strays beyond what I was getting at, and is thus objectionable. … I do not believe that God's prophets ever err. They always tell the truth when all is said and done."
While Sanders's conversation with the committee convinced some members that he did not truly believe in Scripture's inerrancy, Pinnock's explanations in a later meeting the same day had the opposite effect, the committee said, convincing them that he agrees with the society's standards of doctrine. A rewriting of his footnote, along with an explanation of the changes, satisfied even Nicole.
The committee's recommendations all but guarantee that Pinnock will not be excluded from membership at the November 19 meeting. Last year, the vote to challenge his membership at all passed by a narrow 171 to 137 margin—which, ironically, was 11 votes wider than the 166 to 143 decision to challenge Sanders's membership. In a post card to Howard after reading the recommendations, Nicole wrote, "I expect that the annual meeting will not dismiss Pinnock, but that there may be an adverse 2/3 vote for Sanders. I am sure that both of these men will henceforth be more careful about what they write!"
All sides of the debate emphasize that the November vote is not a referendum on the truth of open theism or whether it is an acceptable theology for evangelicals. In 2001, ETS members overwhelmingly passed a resolution criticizing the doctrine. The statement, "We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate, and infallible knowledge of all events past, present, and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents," passed by a 70 percent margin, with 11 percent of members abstaining.

Weekend with Eugene Peterson

Winn Griffin has a remarkable post about a weekend he and some of the Allelon folks spent with Eugene Peterson

The NASA Photographs of the California Fires

Frightening

...Economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, will slow down and might even become negative...

More from Affluenza

What if Americans started buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, driving them less and keeping them longer? What if we took fewer long distance vacations? What if we simplified our lives, spent less money, bought less stuff, worked less, and enjoyed more leisure time? What if government began to reward thrift and punish waste, legislated shorter working hours, and taxed advertisers? What if we made consumers and corporations pay the real costs of their products? What would happen to our economy? Would it collapse, as some economists suggest?
Truthfully, we just don't know exactly, since no major industrial nation has yet embarked on such a journey. But there's plenty of reason to suspect that the road will be passable, if bumpy, at first, and smoother later. If we continue on the current freeway, however, we'll find out it ends like Oakland's Interstate 880 during the 1989 earthquake--impassible and in ruins.
Sure we cant deny that if every American took up voluntary simplicity tomorrow, massive economic disruption would result. But that won't happen. A shift away from affluenza, if we're lucky enough to witness one, will come gradually, over a generation perhaps. Economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product, will slow down and might even become negative. But as economist Juliet Schor points out, there are many European countries (including Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) whose economies have grown far more slowly than ours, yet whose quality of life--measured by many of the indicators we say we want-- including free time, citizen participation, lower crime, greater job security, income-equality, health, and overall life contentment--is higher than our own. Such economies show no sign of collapse. And their emphasis on balancing growth with sustainability is widely accepted across the political spectrum. As former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, a conservative, put it:

It is true that the Dutch are no aiming to maximize gross national product per capita. Rather, we are seeking to attain a high quality of life, a just, participatory and sustainable society. While the Dutch economy is very efficient per working hour, the number of working hours per citizen are rather limited. We like it that way. Needless to say, there is more room for all those important aspects of our lives that are not part of our jobs, for which we are not paid and for which there is never enough time.

So says Affluenza. Good book and I want to believe this paragraph but I can't. The problem is that not everyone shares the opinions and worldviews of the Dutch. Someone is going to come and clean their clocks on price and profit and then there will be less and less Dutch companies that will be able to compete in a brutal global workplace. That's the problem. Already economists are forcasting long term pain for the EU as its immobile workforce is left behind by companies moving to the Pacific-Rim and other places that have cheaper manufacturing abilities. In a globally connected world, it isn't always up to American's (and Canadians) to decide all of their values anymore. There is a reason why Thomas Friedman says that countries have lost much sovereignty in today's world and our leaders are more like governors who vie to attract investment of multinationals (Team Canada trade missions anyone?) rather than a sovereign head of state (and risk the flight of foreign capital). I am not an anti-globalisation, I am just saying that the rules have changed and I think the authors of Affluenza may have missed some of the changes. As Peter Drucker points out, capitalism is defined by greed and if American companies don't respond, some Canadian or Japanese or Aussie company will and that will result in job losses. It would take for a reorganization of the world economy for this to happen and I can't see it happening soon. That's the tension. Jihad vs. McWorld or as Friedman puts it, the tension between the Lexus and the Olive Tree. As long as there is greed in the world, someone will find a resource to exploit.

Test driving a new blog

Not me. Him

3 signs of a dysfunctional organization

Does your church or organization dysfunctional? Here are three clues from Fast Company.

You've got leaders who fake it. The discrepancy between what leaders say they want and what they really want often causes company dysfunction. You can't ask employees to do anything you're not willing to do yourself.
You've got bosses who like to point fingers. The remedy is to put your trust in the people you hire and give every employee sincere responsibility. Hands-on, my-way-or-the-highway entrepreneurs won't find this easy. But that's how the business gets better.
You've got a CEO who doesn't set priorities. Company leaders must set the mission and the agenda. A hands-off policy can only go so far.

Wow, I know of a couple of pastors that share all three characteristics and consider them virtues. There is an extended article on bCentral

Dave Winer

has an interesting post/mini essay. In it he shows some grace to someone that hurt him in the past and even in the future and in it shows himself to be the bigger man. Cool.

UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics

Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?

Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, the American Enterprise Institute after that, and many others, from the Manhattan Institute to the Hoover Institute at Stanford.

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

Why haven't progressives done the same thing?

There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better.

What this means is that the left in the United States will need more than a few blogs and Meetup.com to beat the Republicans in the forseeable future.
Full story here. via Megnut

The redesign that didn't happen

Over the next couple of weeks, this site will be slowly converted and rebuilt in Dreamweaver. I was thinkin about redesigning the site but I am pretty happy with it now and other than some tweaking, it will probably stay as it is now but with more CSS and less html.

Election Debate Coverage

The race to voter apathy continues.

Bill Moyers Interviews Union Theological Seminary's Joseph Hough

Bill Moyers talks to Joseph C. Hough on the intersection of politics and religion, and why he thinks it is the duty of Christians, Jews and Muslims to join to fight growing economic inequality, why he's critical of how some political pundits are using Christianity to justify their actions, and why he suspects that the time for a non-destructive, civil disobedience may be near.

MOYERS: Can a secular democracy, in a pluralistic society, where there are many faiths, including people of no faith, can that democratic government be expected to represent the religious, prophetic imperatives of people like you?

HOUGH: Well, maybe so, maybe not, Bill. But I'm getting tired of people claiming they're carrying the banner of my religious tradition when they're doing everything possible to undercut it. And that's what's happening in this country right now. The policies of this country are disadvantaging poor people every day of our lives and every single thing that passes the Congress these days is disadvantaging poor people more.

MOYERS: I don't think even conservatives dispute that the inequality is growing in this country. You somehow sense that inequality is more profoundly disruptive and dangerous than others.

HOUGH: I think some inequality in terms of economics is necessary. That doesn't alarm me a great deal. It is the obscene degree to which economic inequality has taken hold in America that I think is highly questionable. There is no justification under Heaven for some corporate executives to make 1,000 times as much as their average worker. Their contribution may me great. But it's no less than Peter Drucker, my colleague at Claremont for 25 years, said…

MOYERS: Management guru par excellence.

HOUGH: Management guru and certainly nobody's fuzzy headed liberal. Peter Drucker says, "This compromises the integrity of a corporate executive. Why?" Because it does not accept, and it does not in any way acknowledge the incredible contributions of people who work at various levels, the various constituencies of a corporation to its well being. It is driven by other factors than acknowledgement of who contributes to the well being of the corporation.

Now Bill, I'm not naive. Nobody believes that everybody can be exactly the same, get the same. But there's certain bare minimums, what Amartya Sen, my favorite development economist calls. A Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen calls the capability to function in society. And Sen says that no society can claim to be fair if there are substantial number of its citizens who are not receiving enough assistance or income to have the capability to function. Now, what does that mean? It means to buy food, to have a place to live, to have their children educated, to get reasonable health care and a job.

And we want to ask the people of our traditions to join us is asking every single political leader we encounter, "What are you gonna do in order to help make this happen?" Let's make that the litmus test of whether or not we're gonna vote for a particular leader.

It's not a partisan issue. I mean, my God, who in the world could possibly stand up and say, "I'm a Christian. I don't think we should really give much attention to the life of the poor." Some do. But I don't think it's a party line thing.

I mean, I'd like for this debate to be carried on in such a way that we could, and here I'm talking about Abrahamic traditions. We could ask ourselves "What changes in the direction of this country are necessary if it really is gonna make a claim to be a democracy?" We're not asking it to be a theocracy. A democracy. That's what it's about. Politically, that's what it's about.

Thanks Karen!

PayPal Link

Umm, I added a PayPal Donate Now link to the site. Don't know if I like it or not or if it is cheesy or not. If you have an opinion, I would love to hear it. Feel free to blast me in the comments below. Thanks.

Shaq vs. Kobe

Eric McErlain has been following the Shaq/Kobe debate. It isn't pretty. The Lakers are in trouble is this doesn't get resolved. Personally I don't know how you can match this up without trading Kobe for Iverson. Kobe does have some choice words for Shaq and while they probably should not have been said in the media, some of them ring true.

You can get your own ticker at CodeAmber.org

Some blogroll thoughts

Here are my thoughts on the blogroll. 1) As many have said, it doesn't really drive that much traffic to sites despite belief to the contrary 2) I don't like it as a design component. It is a pain to work with 3) A LOT of hurt feelings have come over me not adding people to the blogroll but you can't add everyone and whenever I add someone, I get e-mail that says, "why didn't you add me". Not fun 4) I like sites that don't have them.

Brand Your Website's URL With a Favicon

Ever since I have switched to Firebird for my web browsing (and it has been wonderful), I have been noticing that a lot more sites have custom icons in my browser's location bar so I decided to create one for jordoncooper.com. The big J is a little lame but my site doesn't have a real logo. If you a better idea that can be seen in a 16x16 pixel icon, let me know in the comments below. I am up for anything.

If you want to add one to your site, here is a great tutorial and here is a discussion of why it doesn't show up all the time in Internet Explorer 6.

Some Labyrinth Thoughts.

I realized today how much work it was to do the Labyrinth for the Worship Freehouse and how tired I was. A lot of people experienced God Sunday night which fulfilled our goal for the Freehouse and we broke even financially which is always a bonus. We learned a lot and if we do it again, we would do something differently but it was very good. Todd and Cathy put in a lot of work and so did Mike. Oddly enough I never experienced the Labyrinth, I was too busy doing other things. I will have to wait until next time I guess to see what it was like (or I can just do it online). It is probably for the best that I didn't do it as I had some extremely discouraging conversations during the evening which kind of put a damper on the evening. Not all people can get their mind around the values of the Freehouse. If I get some time during the fall, I think I am going to write an essay on the values of the Freehouse. I'll pass it around to those who are involved and then if they say okay, I'll publish them here and there. Those that get them, don't need an explanation, those that don't, can't understand our explanation.

What War is Good For

What early church leaders thought of Christians and the military.

Exerpts from Search to Belong

Public Belongers Are Committed and Participate. We tend to validate only those ways in which we want people to participate. In truth, people participate in many ways.
I mentioned the Hoosiers earlier. I am a huge Indiana University men's basketball fan. I belong to the team publicly. To them I may be nameless, but I am not a stranger. I've adjusted my schedule to see games, both in person and on TV. I buy a special cable package to see games not broadcast on regular TV or standard cable. I wear official IU garb. I am not hesitant about praising or arguing in favor of the team. I am a committed public belonger.
It is simply not true that people who belong only in public space are "on the fringe." Nor is it true that we somehow need to get them to move "closer" to get them to be committed."
Were we to validate that space people inhabit--whichever of the four spaces it may be--we will find countless people who are actively committed into the shadows or written off entirely.
Public spatial belonging is not about anonymity. And anonymity has little to do with commitment. People can--and do--experience connectedness at different levels, and when they feel connected, they explore the possibilities of significant, committed participation.
Consider Jesus' encounter with the soldier, a centurion in the Roman army of occupation.

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. "Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering."
Jesus said to him, "I will go and heal him."
The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and that one, 'Come,' and he comes. I say to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."
When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! It will be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour.

Jesus is a master of permitting people to belong to him in all four spaces. He offered to come to the centurion's home. Why didn't the centurion want Jesus to come? He had his reasons. Matthew says he felt he did not deserve it. Luke says the centurion did not consider himself worthy.
Whatever the reason, Jesus accepted the centurion's statement; he did not insist on coming closer. He allowed this centurion to be a part of the "family" in public space. The centurion did not want to be intimate with Jesus. The centurion was not after a personal or a social relationship. He needed Jesus to accept him in a public space and yet help in a significant way. Jesus honored that request.
True community can be experienced in a public space. Public space is not mere togetherness:, it is connectedness. It is family. An essential key to developing community is the maturing of our competencies to growing significant, committed public belongings.
What would this look like in our congregations? Can we be comfortable with people belonging to Jesus and the church in public space? Can we give the help, home, and home in the space where they choose to belong? Without pushing them to come closer?

From pages 43-44 of The Search to Belong

More from The Search to Belong

We must discover the language the moves our definitions of community forward while at the same time give our culture a lexicon people can use to express their community experience. Our language needs to connect to an authentic piece of a personals community puzzle, so that when they see, hear, and feel our "words," they see, hear, and feel "welcome."
"Our task," according to Michael Ignatieff, "is to find a language for our need for belonging which is not a way of expressing nostalgia, fear and estrangement from modernity."

Page 28 :: The Seach to Belong

The Search to Belong :: "The Back Forty"

I mentioned in my comments that this week would feature Joe Myers' book The Search to Belong: Rethinking Intimacy, Community, and Small Groups so here are some exerpts from it.

Tim grew up on the family farm, was the only one of the children to remain, and now owns the land and the buildings that represent so much of his life. His siblings are scattered around the world. OVer the holidays the family returned, and Tim took a walk down the lane with his older sister, Pam. Their talk turned to reminiscing about old times an the journeys their lives had taken. Pam had travelled; Tim had not. Pam and her husband had shared several adventures. Tim had stayed at home.
Tim expressed the feeling that his life had been a series of safe decisions. Pam was suprised. "But you take risks," she insisted.
"Don't you worry about the crops? You plant and then pray that the right amount of rain will come and at the right time. Doesn't that worry you?"
"Oh, no," Tim answered quickly, "I don't worry about that."
Sensing he was not telling her everything, she probed. "What do you worry about?"
"I worry about being alone."
Being alone. That was something that never concerned most farmers of the past. The family stayed home. AS life progressed, no one ever thought about being alone. The kids were given plots "on the back orty" to build a home and raise a family. When mom and dad could no longer work, the boys took over and cared for the land and the old folks as well.
Not so today. And this cultural shift is a major factor in our struggle to belong. People are trying to find their place in this world for the "back forty," for a place to belong. They are searching for family.

You can purchase the book at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca. Joe has launched a pretty good book website at www.languageofbelonging.com which features some excellent discussion in the message boards.

Isenberg on the Future of Money

Some commentary on the future of money

Well, the money system already is under attack for anybody in the class formerly known as "Middle" who has children, according to The Two Income Trap, a jaw-dropping empirical study of 2200 U.S. families that went bankrupt. Here's an excerpt from the book:

The families in the worst financial trouble are not the usual suspects. They are not the very young, tempted by the freedom of their first credit cards. They are not the elderly, trapped by failing bodies and declining savings accounts. And they are not a random assortment of Americans who lack the self-control to keep their spending in check. Rather, the people who consistently rank in the worst financial trouble are united by one surprising characteristic. They are parents with children at home . . . Our study showed that married couples with children are more than twice as likely to file for bankruptcy as their childless counterparts. A divorced woman raising a youngster is nearly three times more likely to file for bankruptcy than her single friend who never had children.

These are the bedrock citizens who play by the rules in the wealthy United States. Then there's the undeveloped world, but the Future of Money Summit ain't goin' there either.

via Boing, Boing

Pain, pain, pain

I have a sore neck and shoulder. Not enough to go to the doctor about (yet) but sore enough to make everything more strenuous then breathing a pain in the, well, neck. Painkillers aren't helping and this morning, Wendy put on some molten lava that is branded as Rub A535 Sport Ultra Heat on my shoulder and neck which only burned my skin but didn't help. I may have to try Robaxacet but that leaves me so groggy, my day is shot.

Losing the blogroll