Tony Jones Responds to Chad Hall's Out of Ur Post

Tony Jones responds to the Out of Ur blog post by Chad Hall that I drew attention to a couple days ago. You can click here to read it if you didn't the first time. Tony sums up:

And to Mr. Hall’s final warning, let me say this: Truly, the deconstructive tendencies in the emergent tribe may be our undoing. Or they may be the very characteristics that infuse some Christlike humility in us. In either case, I’m counting my blessings that God, and not Mr. Hall, will be the final arbiter of that decision.

Dark Knight?

Any of you out there seen Dark Knight yet? The reviews say is it perhaps the best Batman movie ever. Your thoughts?

Bob Kauflin Recommends "Albertine" by Brooke Fraser

Bob Kauflin writes about Brooke Fraser's new CD, Albertine:

...I’ve also been listening to Albertine by Brooke Fraser. Brooke is a pop star in New Zealand but also a part of the music team at Hillsong church in Sydney, Australia. When it comes to songs for corporate worship, I haven’t been a big Hillsong fan. Their songs can tend to be strong on the music side, weak on the lyrical side, and heavy on the subjective side. But Albertine is a collection of artist songs, not corporate worship songs. I’ve listened to it over a dozen times and enjoy it more with each listen.

Each song is creatively produced, tastefully arranged, thoughtfully and poetically written, and beautifully sung. “Shadowfeet,” the opening track, describes the transience of this life and declares that when “the world is falling out from under me I’ll be found in You, still standing.” “Love is Waiting” is a haunting and tender song about a woman’s commitment to withhold affection for the present because “love is waiting till we’re ready, till it’s right.” “Albertine” is the name of a girl Brooke met when she visited Rwanda. She wrote the song to tell the world about the need in that country, referencing James 2:17James 2:17 [17]So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (ESV)

This text is from the ESV Bible. Visit www.esv.org to learn about the ESV.

: Faith without deeds is dead. “C.S. Lewis Song” explores how if I never find anything in this life that satisfies me completely it must mean that “I was not made for here.” “Faithful” is a reminder to those who are enduring suffering that as I wait for God, “maybe I’m made more faithful.” The CD closes with a piece called “Hymn” where she sing that her solitary ambition is “to only dwell in Thee.”

Amazon Daily Deal - The Best of Chet Baker

Here is another great one for you entry-level jazz listeners or for those who are still not sure what they think of the whole jazz genre. Chet is easy to listen to with beautiful melodic lines and a great rhythm section. His arrangement of My Funny Valentine is a classic. Check it out the whole record for $3.99.

Young Single Men Getting Vasectomies, Skipping Condoms

Anthony Bradley points to a disturbing article about young men that are getting vasectomies and forsaking the chance to have children in the future.

Read his post here.

Osteen Profiled

Joel Osteen is profiled in Portfolio magazine. Title of the article, "God Wants Me To Be Rich".

Backstage With Poison

This is wild. I guess C.C. Deville of Poison has become a Christian. Read about it here.

Official Condemnation Of The Catholic Church

Major U.S. city officially condemns Catholic Church

A San Francisco city and county board resolution that officially labeled the Catholic church's moral teachings on homosexuality as "insulting to all San Franciscans," "hateful," "defamatory," "insensitive" and "ignorant" will be challenged tomorrow in court for violating the Constitution's prohibition of government hostility toward religion.

Resolution 168-08, passed unanimously by the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors two years ago, also accused the Vatican of being a "foreign country" meddling with and attempting to "negatively influence (San Francisco's) existing and established customs."

It said of the church's teaching on homosexuality, "Such hateful and discriminatory rhetoric is both insulting and callous, and shows a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by this Board of Supervisors."

Read the rest here.

Not The Most Subtle Billboard I Have Ever Seen

Read about the story here.

Obama's Interesting Religion

Again, not that this type of comment should sway voting, but it's just interesting to point out for a man who names Christianity as his religion.

Melinda at the Stand to Reason blog writes:

In the interview for the Newsweek cover story on his faith, Senator Obama had this to say in response to a question about whether people with different religious convictions go to Heaven:

It's a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption comes through Christ. But I'm also a big believer in the Golden Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith, but of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth. And I'm also a believer, as part of my faith, that I am a limited being, with limited understanding. And so I operate on the basis of, I operate knowing what I know for myself, but not presuming that I know everything, certainly not enough for me to condemn others, or to presume that their path is wrong.

Now, facts are either true or untrue - for everyone. Either Jesus is the Savior for everyone because He reconciles us with God or He isn't. It's not true for some of us, and some other fact is true for others.

This, of course, isn't an unusual sentiment these days - even among those who profess Christ, as the Senator does. But the only way a rational person can make such a statement is if they don't believe religion is objectively true with any factual basis. This kind of statement can only be made if religion is a different kind of conviction than the rest of our beliefs that we live and function by. Religion is a personal preference with no objective, rational, truthful basis. The evidence that this is how Senator Obama views religion is how he treats other things he believes in, like politics. He is running for president because he thinks he knows the solutions for America and he's comfortable saying that President Bush and Senator McCain are wrong in politics. Why else would you run for president and be interested in putting your ideas into public policy and law? So he's comfortable presuming he knows true things that he wants to persuade others of in politics, but not religion because religion is somehow not truthful or factual in the same way.

Sure, we can believe Christianity is true, yet also be humble about our beliefs. Humility and conviction about truth aren't contradictory. If Christianity is true, a fact, then it's only logical that we feel compelled to offer the most important solution to our human condition to everyone and anyone. And they're free to tell us what they think the solution is. What isn't rational is to put religion in the category of personal preference and still think that it's real.

Let me make this point, too: Disagreeing with someone's religion is not condemning them. Saying someone will go to Hell isn't condemning them. It's expressing a viewpoint. We don't have control over whether someone goes to Heaven or Hell, and it's possible we are wrong. But it's God who condemns - or forgives. Not us. This common compulsion to compare disagreement with condemnation is false

Either Jesus is the Savior for everyone, or He's the Savior for no one.

Francis Schaeffer analyzed this "second-story leap" in his pointed and short book Escape from Reason. It'll provide you an enlightening perspective on discourse about religion in our modern culture, even within the church.

Truly Reformed

Ray Ortlund with a great post here:

I believe in the sovereignty of God, the Five Points of Calvinism, the Solas of the Reformation, I believe that grace precedes faith in regeneration. Theologically, I am Reformed. Sociologically, I am simply a Christian – or at least I want to be. The tricky thing about our hearts is that they can turn even a good thing into an engine of oppression. It happens when our theological distinctives make us aloof from other Christians. That’s when, functionally, we relocate ourselves outside the gospel and inside Galatianism.

The Judaizers in Galatia did not see their distinctive – the rite of circumcision – as problematic. They could claim biblical authority for it in Genesis 17 and the Abrahamic covenant. But their distinctive functioned as an addition to the all-sufficiency of Jesus himself. Today the flash point is not circumcision. It can be Reformed theology. But no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.

He concludes...

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.

Read the whole thing.

Fergalicious!!!

This is HUGE in terms of understanding the gospel:

“The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen. We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. … Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry.”

- Sinclair Ferguson, message from the 2007 Banner of Truth Conference, Our Holiness: The Father’s Purpose and the Son’s Purchase.

(HT: Shepherd's Scrapbook)

Don't Shout Me Down Now!!!

Here is a wild video: Openly gay US bishop Gene Robinson was forced to halt a sermon at a west London church after being heckled.

The thing that I find most striking about this video is not the heckling (as awkward as that was) but what the congregation did in response. They started singing. But they didn't just starting singing any song, they started singing, Thine Is The Glory. Here is the text:

Thine is the glory, risen, conqu’ring Son;
Endless is the victory, Thou o’er death hast won;
Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away,
Kept the folded grave clothes where Thy body lay.

Thine is the glory, risen conqu’ring Son,
Endless is the vict’ry, Thou o’er death hast won.

Lo! Jesus meets us, risen from the tomb;
Lovingly He greets us, scatters fear and gloom;
Let the church with gladness, hymns of triumph sing;
For her Lord now liveth, death hath lost its sting.

No more we doubt Thee, glorious Prince of life;
Life is naught without Thee; aid us in our strife;
Make us more than conqu’rors, through Thy deathless love:
Bring us safe through Jordan to Thy home above.

I find it strangely ironic that the weapon that a church would use to fight off a heckler who is protesting a gay pastor would be a song that openly champions the glorious victory and profound uniqueness of the Son of God. I'm sure the theology of this song has long ago been rejected but still they sing it. I find that very interesting. Thoughts?

(HT: Challies)

AmazonMP3 Deal of the Day - The Best of John Mellencamp - $1.99

Here is another great deal for you children of the 80's. John Mellencamp's music is actually some of my favorite from that era. Great melodies and great songwriting. Buy here for $1.99.

The New Christians Vs. Vintage Jesus - A Review

Chad Hall reviews the latest books by Tony Jones and Mark Driscoll. His closing paragraphs:

And what does Driscoll have that emergents could use? As crazy as this might sound, I think he is humble. Not in the politically correct sense of humility where nobody is ever wrong or bad or judged, but in the City of God sense that you know your place in the order of things. In my opinion, Driscoll seems to get that Christianity is the rock against which humans are broken, the fire that purifies us, the sieve through which our lives are sifted and sorted and made good. By taking a deconstructing stance toward Christianity, theology, and life, emergents seem to be getting this backward: they can’t help but to break, burn, and sift the faith.

Drunk on an overindulgence of their own intelligence and high on the hoopla of being on the exploratory edge, emergents seem headed off the road of what passes as sensible and sound Christianity. Can the Christian faith withstand the deconstructive doubts and curiosities of emergents? Of course it can. That’s not the point. The point is that emergents may not be able to survive their chosen path.

In Vintage Jesus, I caught brief reminders of why and how our faith remakes us into God’s likeness. In The New Christians, I learned just how much the emergent movement needs to take this reminder to heart.

Find these books here:

The New Christians

Vintage Jesus

Mac People Should Be Able To Laugh At Themselves

(HT: Carlos)

Christian Blogger Facebook Network

If you are a Christian blogger and have Facebook you might want to check this out.

College basketball will be better for it

After 34 years, CBS' Packer done with Final Four, reports say.

New Death Cab Video

Here is the new video for the best song on the latest Death Cab For Cutie record. (Did you get all that?)



You can buy this song here on AmazonMP3 or

(HT: Stevie Mac)

Decision Happy

"There are evangelicals who are so earnest in calling for decisions for Jesus that they seem to forget to tell people why they should decide for Jesus. I remember listening to a speaker at an evangelistic meeting whose only mention of the death of Jesus was a passing reference in his closing prayer. I was acting as an advisor to follow up on the after-meeting counseling. I spoke to a young couple who had heard the talk, gone out to the front, been 'counseled' and then brought to me. They obviously had not heard any gospel in either the address or the counseling. They had no idea about being justified by faith in the doing and dying of Christ. It seems the decision can become everything. People are exhorted to turn to Christ, to receive Christ, to ask Jesus into their hearts, and the like, even when they have been given no substantial idea at all of who Jesus was and what He has done to save us."

Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics, 173-74

(HT: Pastor J.D.)