Eight Is Great!

Happy Birthday buddy...we love you!

Fortune Cookie Confusion

I enjoy a good fortune cookie (especially after my favorite: "sweet and sour chicken"). Many times I get a fortune and think, "This more of a proverb than a fortune".



Regardless of it being a fortune or one of life's deep and meaningful proverbs I'm usually satisfied with the insight of the little folded cookie. Yet I recently got this "fortune" and immediately felt jiped: It must be home-grown.


"What kind of fortune is this?" "What does this have to tell me about the meaning of life?" "Is this some sort of hippie drug reference?"


Your help in deciphering this code is much appreciated.

A New Vision For Israel

As Americans in the 21st Century it is difficult to approach and relate to Jesus outside of our own presuppositions and cultural traditions. As a result we end up shaping Jesus into a mold that looks more like our own ideologies and less like the God that stepped into human history during a specific time, place, people, and context.

Scot McKnight's book: A New Vision For Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in a National Context is a helpful resource to anyone that desires to understand what Jesus and his mission meant to those who would have heard (and seen) his message first hand. Taking into a account cultural and historical elements McKnight shows how Jesus' view of things like: God, exile, kingdom, conversion, salvation, and ethics radically spoke into the 1 century landscape and as a result what they mean for us today.

Here's an excerpt from the book as McKnight discusses the vision and hope Jesus came to bring: "That both John and Jesus had a vision for the nation of Israel needs to be emphasized: neither John nor Jesus was thinking down the road thousands of years, to our own time, when Christianity would have gone through a multitude of mutations and denominations and when the Church would be interacting with cultures and ideologies so remote from that encountered in the land of Israel at the time of Herod Antipas. Both John and Jesus had a single vision: the restoration of Israel."

The Next Evangelicalism (pt.1)

Over the next few weeks I will be posting some of my thoughts from Soong-Chan Rah's book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. As one of my professors at North Park Theological Seminary, I have been challenged and also encouraged by Soong-Chan's thoughts and insight into how the church has formed (in healthy and unhealthy ways) in a Western context.

The Next Evangelicalism is in many ways a prophetic call for the Western church to face its rampant individualism, consumerism, racism, and move on a more holistic and life-giving trajectory. Soong-Chan points out some of the pit-falls of our (Western church culture's) affinity towards things like church growth and mega churches, the "Emergent Conversation", and an imbalance in our theology of celebration over suffering.

This is an important book for those who believe in the Church, and are committed to serving her well into the 21st Century.

The Invention of Lying

What would the world be like if there were no stories to be told, no yarns to be spun, no embellishments of past adventures? How would we as human beings interact if we could only communicate based on the facts; no telling people what they want to hear (advertisers would be at a loss for words)?

This is the world in which Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) and the rest of humanity dwell. It is an existence that is plain, ordinary, and colorless.

Then one moment something "clicks" in Mark's head and he tells the world's first lie. There is no word for "lie" because it hasn't been invented (nor are people capable of such a things) and as result people believe every thing Mark says (regardless of how outlandish his words seem to be).
This movie could have gone the road of sophomoric comedy yet ends up becoming a Truman Show of sorts when Mark tells his dying mother the greatest "story" ever told: when you die you go to a wonderful mansion in the sky. Because of this story his terrified mother dies with a hopeful peace.

This great "hope" leads the rest of civilization to turn to Mark for all of life's deep and profound mysteries through which Mark becomes part Moses, part Jesus as he communicating about "the man in the sky".

Over all this movie has more to do with how we view and relate to one another on a level far below the surface making this a film that is both fun and sincere.

For those of you that have seen the movie, what questions did this raise in your mind? Was it difficult for you to hear about "the man in the sky" as a "story"? In what ways this movie accurate in its assessment of the human need to connect with "something greater"? In what ways was this movie theologically accurate/inaccurate?

Break From Blog World

I needed a little break from the blog world. I'm back (at least for now)...I hope our continued conversations and thoughts are helpful (challenging and transformational) in our pursuit of God and his kingdom among us. Peace.