In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

by Alexander McCall Smith

"There were many such stories, and he understood just how important they were, and listened with patience and with respect. A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?" (189)

TheResurgence

I've listened to three of these podcasts from the Resurgence conference, part of the Acts29 church planting group. Wow. Each one has been enormously encouraging, inspiring, and educational, not to mention plain old fun.

VBS

Remember Vacation Bible School? We're almost done with ours. Tomorrow is the last day. Why does my mind go first to attendance in reporting how it went? Is this part of the nature of VBS? "Turnout"?
We used the Children's Desiring God curriculum, God Always Wins. Simple, clear, repetitive: kids ate it up and it was easy to teach. They don't do much with visual aids and multi-media, but you can't beat them for content.

Barth and Bultmann

Here is a humorous and insightful fictional conversation between Karl Barth and Rudolph Bultmann.  Anyone among us who has ever attempted to read Barth, or spent any time in an evangelical understanding of John and knows some of Bultmann's idiosyncrasies, will enjoy the dialogue: Barth and Bultmann: an imagined conversation.
For those who may be intrigued by Barth enough to examine him further, the same author, Ben Myers, has a series of posts entitled: Church Dogmatics in a Week.  I found Barth exactly as Bultmann in the fictional conversation above did.  Nonetheless, an introduction to his thought in the form of a summary of his dogmatics would be helpful, and probably necessary in today's theological climate.

Old Trophies

Hey all you High school heroes, what did you do with your old trophies? We're encountering another batch of large, gaudy trophies from our illustrious High school careers (yep...another batch. *sigh*). Please advise.

cha-cha-changes

I've finally switched over. Normal Christian Blog is now three columns of love. Interested?
Here's where I downloaded the template: Thur's templates.
Here's a link to info you'll probably need before you're done: a layout solution.

Billy Graham and the "can-do" spirit

Calvinists who are more Kingdom-minded than partisan have a great deal of love and respect for Billy Graham. He's preached the good news to millions. God bless him.

But I couldn't help feeling a little, I don't know the word, mad, betrayed, misunderstood, frustrated, when I read the following statement in Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan:

Emerson believed the universe was good. Most Americans think so too, though not always for Emerson's reasons. At any rate his emphasis on the power of the will, on inspiration, on an open-ended future, has always appealed to us. Sometimes we have vulgarized his affirmative doctrine. It is but a step from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Norman Vincent Peale or Billy Graham. (148-149)

Fadiman means here, and I think clearly perceives, the direct theological line from man-affirming paganism to the positivism of Peale and the Revivalism of Graham. That doesn't lead me to have buy any "i hate billy" buttons. It greives me. Our anti-Christ Americanism is far deeper than just our consumerism. It reaches into our identities as Americans, our "can-do" spirit. No, friends. We can't do squat apart from God's grace. So next time you start feeling R. Waldo's ghost haunting your plan of action for the day, "can-do" your tail into the Holy of Holies and give it up to God.