Embarking

I went to see Brian McLaren tonight with a friend at Baker Book House in Grand Rapids.  He was on a book tour for his new book in Phyllis Tickle’s series on Ancient Spiritual Practices called Finding our Way Again.  He didn’t talk a whole lot about the book, but instead talked for a bit about his last three books (The Secret Message of Jesus, Everything Must Change, and this new one) and the kernels of thought and heart that have produced them.  You can tell that McLaren is passionate about change in the world in which we live more in line with the Kingdom of God.  It’s always great to hear McLaren, not because he’s super-inspiration or charasmatic, but because he opens up the Scriptures often in a new way and his questions are challenging.  I also am particularly fond of his almost fearless (now) prophetic words towards the secular culture and towards the church, particularly the evangelical church.  He answered the typical questions I figured he’d get like “What do I say to my conservative friends who don’t like you or think your dangerous” and “what do you really think of hell and the afterlife.”  The second one, he really danced around and I wasn’t fully satisfied with, but he consistently went back to his reading of Scripture through the lens of the inbreaking Kingdom of God in peace, love, generosity, and goodness.  Here are a couple highlights for me (paraphrases):

“The evangelical church is not meant to be a chaplaincy to secular capitalistic consumerism.”

“If you read the passages of the bible literally about some things, you have to read it literally about others.”  His example here was the story of the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, in which he says, “If you read this passage literally, it seems like the way to get to hell is by being prosperous, and the way to get to heaven is to be a poor beggar with nothing.”

McLaren also talked about what the Gospel is and how it relates to things like penal substitutionary atonement and he also responded to Driscoll’s comments (although Driscoll was unnamed) attacking McLaren - the jist being that McLaren’s Jesus is too soft and sissy, and Driscoll’s Jesus who appears again in on a war-path of violence against his enemies.  McLaren was excellent on this point and gracious to his detractors as always.  I’m not going to sum it up except to say that McLaren is thinking about writing a book that responds to the misunderstandings of his critics.  On this note he talked about exclusivism, inclusivism, and universalism in terms of salvation - and I think I’ll try to post on that next.

Overall it was an uneventful but stimulating discussion as always.  McLaren speaks today at Mars Hill, in case you’re interested. 

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 5, Chuck Colsen, Breakpoint, Defending The Faith

We have bought into a lie:  we’ve transferred our allegience from truth to therapy.

Leadership lessons from the marines:

• The test of leadership is to serve your troops.
• Then you give them the bigger vision.
• Follow me.

If you are a shepherd, your job is not to pander to your people, it is to lead them.

Don’t be ashamed of truth.  Defend the law of non-contradiction.

Stop blaming the culture for everything that’s going wrong in the world today.

God’s judgement comes first on the people of God.

In our country we are in Babalyonian Captivity.

Defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

What is Christianity? 

• It is a worldview, a system, a way of seeing all of life through Jesus Christ. 
• Abraham Kuyper:  “There is not a square inch on the whole plain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not proclaim: ‘This is mine.’” [Souvereiniteit in Eigen Kring, 1180, p. 32.]
• It rests on basic truth claims.  1)  It starts with a very simple declaration, “God is.”  It is the most rational choice.  Alvin Plantinga: “The first presupposition about reality is that God is.”  2) God speaks.  The bible is authoritative and inerrant.  3) The fall.  When asked the question, “What’s wrong with the world today,” GK Chesterton said, “I am.”  4) The incarnation.  5) Conversion/ transformation is essential.  6) The Trinity. 7) Unity - we are reconciled to one another. Judgement
• The Christian view must propose rather than impose. [axiom}

Comments:  I get what Colsen is doing, and I think defending the faith is important.  However, as you can see in previous posts, introducing people to a system or converting them to a system or a set of propositions as our manner of apologetics or evangelism is not my preferred modus operandi and I don’t think it speaks to a postmodern culture.  He’s not wrong, by any means.  I just think the strong emphasis on this type of apologetics and propositional truth defense isn’t so helpful these days, but rather something that makes us feel pretty good because we’re defending the faith, which is important, but we aren’t necessarily reaching people through it.  He quoted a lot of people I love (Alvin Plantinga, GK Chesterton, Cornelius Van Til), but we take different approaches to these things.  I also am a huge fan of both cultural engagement, of Christians living as a peculiar people in the culture, and of people understanding a Christian world and life view, especially being able to articulate how the Lordship of Christ makes my life different because of the commitments I have.  However, I still think that spending the bulk of our time defending propositions and a system to our current culture creates a barrier of entry for those outside.  Our time should be spent introducing people to the Lord Jesus, allowing the Spirit to work in their hearts, and then helping them to understand what a commitment to Jesus and a transformed life requires.  I would say that we pretty much agree on foundational elements, but we probably disagree on where to place emphasis in our current postmodern culture.  To put is succinctly, I’m less interested in contending for propositions or even for Christianity than I am for Jesus Christ.

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 5, Craig Groeschel, lifechurch.tv, IT: How Leaders Get IT and Keep IT

Intro:  We’ve all been to churches that don’t have “it.”  They’re flat.  We’ve all been to churches that have “IT.”  It is that something special of God that is so real that lives are transformed by the very Spirit of God in a special way so that people meet Jesus Christ, and want to tell their friends about it.

Sometimes you can have the same things (same people, same form), and one group has “IT” and another doesn’t.  Example:  same forms of worship, same kinds of teachers, same types of ministries.  The same can be true of teams within a church or organization.  You can have IT, but lose IT.  So, what is “IT“?  Don’t know.

Theories about IT

• God makes it happen.  It is from him, by Him, and for his glory.
• We can’t created, produce it, or manufacture it.
• It is rare that one person will bring, but it’s common for the wrong person to kill it.
• It can’t be taught, but it can be caught.
• It’s not a system or a model but can be found in all types of churches.
• Whereever you see it, you see transformed lives.
• It attracts critics.  People misunderstand it.
• “It happens!”  But often, it doesn’t.
• If you have it, it doesn’t meant you’re going to keep it.
• If you don’t have it, it doesn’t mean you can’t find it.

Early church had IT.  (Acts 2:42-47)

• Try to kill them, it grows.
• Dude falls out window, you just raise him up from the dead.
• People sell their stuff so other people can eat.

4 Qualities when IT is present

• Organizations that have IT are laser focused.  Jim Collins:  “What can you be the very best at?“  To reach people that no one is reaching, you have to do things that no one is doing.  But in order to do things that no one is doing, you can’t do what everyone else is doing. [axiom]  “Planned abandonment.” Don’t do more.  Do better.  How do we stop entertaining people from other people’s ministries?  lifechurch.tv does only five things well: weekend services, small groups, children’s ministry, student ministries, missions.
• Organizations that have IT see opportunities where others see obstacles.  They see potential when others see problems.  They believe they have everything that they need to do everything that God wants you to do.  You have it.  (Again… a Collinsism modified).  God often guides by what he doesn’t provide. [axiom]  Meaning, he’s trying to show you something through your greatest limitations.  He may have another route you need to go.
• Organzations that have IT are willing to fail.  Failure is a necessity. [axiom]  Failure is often the first step into seeing God.  Example:  Peter failed, was restored, got it, and then preached and 3000 were saved. 
• Organizations that have It are lead by people who have it.  You have to have it for your ministry to get it.  You can have it, and then ministry can sometimes kill it.  When you have it in your heart, you tend to get it around you because it tends to draw people.  If you have it inside, you get it outside.  AFterwhile you begin to think that if you get the outside you’ll get what’s inside - you misunderstand it and lose the very things that are necessary to have IT.  “I had become a full time pastor and a part time follower of Christ.  I lost IT.”  Your ministry will not have it if you don’t have it.  If it’s become more about your ministry than about His Kingdom, you’ve lost it.”

4 Questions:

1. What are you doing that you need to stop doing?
2. What problems or obstacles might actually be potential and opportunity?
3. What has God called you to do that you’re afraid to attempt?
4. If you don’t have IT, what are you going to do to get IT?

Closing Prayer (Franciscan Prayer)

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 3 Part 1, Bill George, Finding Your True North

George quoted the following wonderful poem called Our Greatest Fear by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
[Often said to have been quoted in a speech by Nelson Mandela. The source is Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, Harper Collins, 1992. —Peter McLaughlin]

“Leadership is not money, fame, and power. Leadership is responsibility.” –Peter Drucker

• Give people the opportunity to stand up and lead.
• People are looking for meaning and significance in their work.

4 Characteristics of 20th century leaders

1. Align – people need to be aligned around the vision, not around you.

2. Empower – followership is really about helping others to unleash their power, not follow you

3. Serve – people are not here to serve leaders, but to serve others

4. Collaborators – there are so many large problems in the world today, we need to collaborate with others to bring together the best talent to solve really difficult problems.

Bill really talked alot about being true to who you are, who God has made you, how he has gifted you.  What does it mean to be true to yourself? 

Important things good leaders know:

1. The purpose of your leadership - “follow your compass, not your clock” (another leadership axiom)
2. Gain self-awarness - Why are we afraid to let someone know who we really are?  Get feedback. (from parishioners, from staff)  What are your blindspots?  See yourself as others see you.  Go into a period of self-inspection.
3. Be true to your values.
4. Follow your motivating capabilities - what are your strengths, passions, what fuels you?  What are the intrinsic motivations?  Are you allowing those to come out?
5. Build a support team around you - leadership is very lonely.  Have at least one person with whom you can share all things and be open and honest and get real feedback.
6. Lead an integrated life - Be the same person in every environment.

“Everyone I’ve seen fail as a leader has not failed to lead others, they’ve failed to lead themselves.”

“I learned a lot more working in a soup kitchen than I did working on the board of the United Way.”

When Bill was speaking, a number of times I was thinking about a book that my Children’s Ministries staff read together last year by Henry Cloud called Integrity: the courage to meet the demans of reality.  In that book, Cloud talks about what it’s like “on the other side of me.”  He encouraged his readers to ask friends, colleagues, and others who are in our lives (family, friends, co-workers) what it’s like to be on the other side of us.  How do people experience us?  That is some good feedback, so long as you’re ready to hear it and can accept honest feedback that might hurt. 

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the third installment.

Embarking:  As I was reading through chapter 16, What if I Sin in Heaven, I was struck by a fairly new thought.  You talk a lot about how pain and struggle builds patience and helps us to be formed into the people God desires.  For instance, you say, “… if God took away all the bad things in this world, then he would also be taking away some really good things, like forgiveness and courage.”  The trigger for me was when you answer Bailey’s question about why God doesn’t just stop all this pain right now, you say, “Well, I think it’s because he wants to make us better.”  Ok, this is going to sound really strange, but is it possible - and I know this sounds heretical - that God intended, or even desired (ooh that sounds bad) sin because it allowed for things - like forgiveness and courage and redemption - that would simply not exist without something to overcome?  I once watched RC Sproul and his son argue about the locus of the origin of evil, and they put it in different places… but both of them ultimately put the responsibility for evil on God - even if it was in calculating (or foreknowing as you’ve stated) that evil would be a response to his creation.  In an American court, that would at least make God liable.  Was sin and evil a part of God’s plan - for certainly he wasn’t surprised by it, given his foreknowledge?  If so, then how does that affect our understanding of God, if at all?  This was heightened for me when you said, “Even the God-man was perfected through suffering.”  In some ways, God’s glory seems dependent (ooh, that doesn’t sound good, either) upon overcoming sin and evil, and by doing so becomes more glorious than if sin and evil didn’t exist.

SPIEGEL:  These are big and difficult questions, and for my full and nuanced treatment of the problem of evil I recommend readers to chapter six of my book The Benefits of Providence.  There I develop and defend the “soul-making” theodicy which says that God’s purpose in evil and suffering is to make us more mature disciples of Christ.  (For biblical grounds for this, see James 1:2-4 and 1 Peter 1:5-7, among many other passages.)  As for God’s sovereignty over evil, I don’t think it can put any more bluntly than it is articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which asserts that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass.  And why does he ordain what he ordains?  To bring glory to himself.  That says it all, I think.  And while it is a difficult teaching to accept, I think it is biblical.

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the fouth installment.

Embarking:  You seem to walk on some potentially dangerous territory with some evangelicals when you say, “…if fetuses and infants can be saved, then belief in Jesus Christ must not be necessary for salvation.  So whatever must be necessary for saving faith, it can’t be belief in Jesus.” [p. 198]  “One lesson here is that we must reject the narrow concept of explicit faith as necessary for salvation.”  [p. 199] And then again when you open up salvation to those who have an implicit faith limited by the amount or type of information or understanding they receive this side of heaven.  If I were CS Lewis, I would tend to agree with you, since he opens up salvation to a post-death experience in his Great Divorce (although admittedly, almost no one survives the trip to heaven from hell and goes further up and further in).  Most people would at least say that faith in the God of Abraham is the same as faith in Jesus, but in those cases, Moses, Abraham, David, and Elijah all knew Yahweh - who even then was the same Trinitarian God.  Can you make any type of biblical case for salvation outside of faith in the Trinitarian God - whether people encounter Christ or not?  A couple things come to mind: 

1. We are post Jesus, so we’re in a different situation than the OT people.  
2.  Would Paul open salvation to those he talks about in Romans 1, but who never encounter Christ?  
3. On what grounds can we possibly open up salvation for those who have not heard the gospel?

SPIEGEL:  I addressed this in my response to one of Roger Overton’s questions on the A-Team blog last Friday.  To answer your specific questions, in reverse order: 3) my main basis for believeing God can save some who haven’t heard the gospel is consistency with the fact that infants (who die) and O.T. saints never heard the gospel but they (or many of them) are saved, which shows in principle that hearing the gospel (or having explicit beliefs about Jesus Christ) is not a necessary condition for salvation; 2) yes, I think Paul would allow for this-see my comments on the A-Team blog for my reply to the counter-argument from Romans 10:14-17; and 1) to say that our temporal location, relative to the life of Jesus, changes the criterion for salvation is arbitrary and groundless.  This is one reason why one may not hear the gospel.  Note that it is temporal in nature (applying to those who lived prior to Christ coming to earth).  Another is spatial (applying to those who don’t hear the gospel because of their geographical location-that is, they happen to live in places where the gospel has not been preached).  Now if God can show mercy to some who are temporally removed from the gospel (as we must believe from Scripture), then why can’t he also show mercy to some who are spatially removed?  To say that one is decisive while the other is not seems utterly arbitrary, particularly since Scripture makes clear that God transcends both time and space.

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the third installment.

Embarking:  On page 181 you intimate that there might be others - humanlike other persons - not from this planet.  Two question:  1) Is this inspired by CS Lewis and his Space Trilogy?  2)  What do you really think about the possibility of extra-earth non-angelic beings (and is that what Jesus means when he says, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep-pen”)?

SPIEGEL:  While this is a highly speculative matter, if I had to take a side on this issue I would guess that there are indeed extra-terrestrial intelligences out there-perhaps, for all we know, hundreds or even thousands of different civilizations.  So I suppose my intuitions would be like Lewis’s here.  And I would base this hunch on, among other things, God’s vast creativity.  He has made such a plethora of creatures on just our planet that it would only stand to reason that he would show his extensive creativity regarding living forms throughout the universe.  Also, I think there is something to the intuition expressed by one of the characters in the film Contact:  If ours is the only planet inhabited by living things-among hundreds of billions of galaxies out there-then “that’s an awful waste of space.”  As for Jesus’ comment about other “sheep,” I don’t know what this refers to, though it might indeed refer to extra-terrestrials.  But, let me reiterate, I don’t have a firm view here.  I just lean on the side of credulity when it comes to extra-terrestrial life forms.

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the second installment.

Embarking:  I have questions about the pathos of God.  When you speak of people who have already died [p. 168], you say, “they don’t feel sad at all, only happy.”  What about God?  Particularly this God who is outside of time (which I also have questions about), who experiences creation, the fall, the death of Jesus, the resurrection, and the exaltation simultaneously??? Does he feel sadness at any point in time?  And how can he feel sadness or any other type of pathos (from anger to envy - present in the Bible) if he is outside of time?

SPIEGEL:  I affirm that God both transcends time AND that he has genuine emotions.  While this combination of views is often seen by contemporary theologians as incoherent, I think it is both reasonable and true.  My “escape” from the incoherence charge is achieved through affirming that God is omnipathic.  That is, I think God experiences the emotions he does eternally.  This route enables us to affirm both the immutability and the pathos of God.  I do believe, however, that some emotions are primary in the divine life, most likely the passion of joy.  For a full discussion and defense of this notion of divine omnipathos, I invite readers to check out chapter 5 of my book The Benefits of Providence (Crossway, 2005)

Welcome to the Gum, Geckos, and God Blog Tour!  I was delighted to be invited to participate.  I not only enjoyed reading the book, but interacting with Jim has been fun, too.  Jim Speigel is Philosophy Professor at Taylor University in Indiana. (Also, Jim and his wife just launched a new blog as well, called Wisdom and Folly.)  I had a hard time confining my questions, so I asked Jim a series of questions.  I’ll be posting a new one every couple of hours, and I hope you find these engaging.  Here’s the first installment.

Embarking: My question comes from pages 20 and 21.  You are talking there about how you realize that no matter how hard you try, you cannot shield your kids from the evils of life.  Then you talk about Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy (a favorite of mine as well), the Black Riders, and the intent of “this present darkness” and the rulers of this age to hurt, intimidate, and influence your children against the Kingdom of God.  Then you mention that you didn’t realize how your training in philosophy - what you call “the study of wisdom” would prepare you to be a better parent.  The question, then, involves your appropriation here of Tolkein, and later Star Wars and your mention of art and the aesthetic in the spiritual formation of your children (see p. 131).  I love your appropriation of art and aesthetics to develop a creative imagination for what it might be like to in another person’s shoes to better live out the Golden Rule.  Throughout the book, we can see clearly your appropriation of both philosophy and your training in biology, but can you tell us a little more about the use of art and aesthetics in such things I imagine as training children in a biblical worldview, increasing their sensibilities to beauty and its malformations, and strengthening them for engagement with the world in which we live?  And beyond children, how can we increase and imaginative vision that boosts morality practically in our churches today?  (By the way, I think such creative imagination and imaginative teaching is seriously missing from our arsenal for a number of cultural reasons, particular in the Protestant and evangelical manifestations of Christian faith.)

SPIEGEL:  The category of beauty is crucial to a Christian worldview, and both adults and Christians should have a strong aesthetic sensibility.  This is so for several reasons.  First, we believe that God is the Cosmic Artist.  He created everything, and he made his creation beautiful.  Now as we struggle to comprehend both God and the nature of the universe, the concept of God as artist will help us in both respects, especially as we encounter confusing or mysterious aspects to the world and the divine nature.  Since good art has many layers of meaning and needs to be interpreted, we can better understand why there would be so much mystery in the world given that God is an artist.  Beauty is often confounding, even in human-made art.  How much more so, then, in divine art?

Second, God himself is beautiful.  Scripture frequently refers to the “glory” of the Lord, but rarely do Christians-especially evangelicals-recognize that the term “glory” is an aesthetic concept.  So when we consider the truth that God does all things for his “glory,” we discover that the meaning of everything is ultimately aesthetic-for God to demonstrate the beauty of his being.  It was through reading Jonathan Edwards’ The Nature of True Virtue that I came to this realization, and it has transformed the way I think about and apply theology.  I now see, as Edwards points out, that even moral concepts are subcategories of the aesthetic.  For example, virtue is a kind of moral beauty.

Third, God’s primary special revelation-the Bible-is itself a work of literary art.  This not only reveals God’s high regard for aesthetics but it also implies that a sound biblical hermeneutic must be aesthetically savvy.  And those of us who handle Scripture in a leadership capacity-as theologians, biblical scholars, preachers, youth ministers, etc.-must learn something about aesthetics if we are to maximize our effectiveness.  Minimally, I think this implies that Christian leaders should regularly “consume” good art, in the form of quality music, film, literature, etc.  This point answers your last question, I think.  We, as a church, will develop a stronger “imaginative vision” as we become more aesthetically literate.  Christians should be connoisseurs of all kinds of art forms.  As churches become more aesthetically trained, a number of salutary effects will follow, from increased discernment to greater creative ability among Christian artists themselves.

Finally, to address something you allude to in your question, in Gum, Geckos, and God I explain why aesthetic development is a boon to moral-spiritual development, particularly as regards our ability to apply the Golden Rule.  Since application of this rule requires a strong imagination (as one tries to imagine what it is like to be person X in a certain situation), the more we can develop our imagination, the better we will be at applying the Golden Rule.  Well, of course, this rule is at the heart of a Christian ethic, so it follows that the more imaginatively skilled one is, the more morally mature one will be-other things being equal, of course.  In other words, whatever one’s state of moral-spiritual formation, it can only be improved through aesthetic development.  Here we see, then, a strong recommendation for training in the arts and aesthetics.

I’ve been away from blogging for awhile now.  For those of you who read regularly, I apologize for not writing.  I don’t share much personal/ family stuff here, but for a long time now, my family has been very sick and I’ve been on a couple of vacations.  We’ve had a number of crazy illnesses, including all 3 kids each having pneumonia twice.  We’ve had an average of about 2.5 doctor, hospital, or ER visits per week since November, and it’s been wearing us down.  In addition, our house got struck by lightening and our dog almost died twice.  (No, I’m not joking).  I don’t talk much about spiritual warfare, but nothing else explains it.  Yesterday I was talking to a doctor from the Infectious Disease Clinic at Devos Children’s Hospital, and told him to continue to run tests, but that I was asking a lot of people to pray for us. 

I’ve been continuing to read as much as I can, which isn’t enough, and continued to think.  I had a lot of ideas for posts, and then they got lost along with the sleep that seemed to disapate right before my opened eyes.

Recently, I’ve been reading some critics of what are called either postfoundationalists/ postconservatives like Stanley Grenz, John Franke, Roger Olson, et al.  I’m interested in the conservative evangelical response to projects which seek to take postmodern thinking seriously while also holding strongly to evangelicalism and scripture.  I’ve been reading all sides, but I tend to tip towards the Grenz, Franke, Olsons as well as some of what James KA Smith, Carl Raschke, Kevin VanHoozer, John Stackhouse, and others like them would say.  I like to read the critics because it helps to clarify and challenge my own thinking. 

I’ve also been toying with some article and book ideas, but haven’t recently found the time to write with the kids’ being sick and life in general.  Some space/ time to write would be awesome.

Anyway, I’ll be back with what are, I think, some interesting posts coming from my interchange with Jim Speigel on Gum, Geckos, and God starting on Monday.  I couldn’t limit my questions to one, so we’re going to go back and forth a bit on a number of questions.  I hope you enjoy it… and the book is a lot of fun to read.