Filed under: Personal
I wonder if I will become a quarterly blogger…not one blog in 3 months!!! That is pathetic. So, I have established that I am not good at book reviews, seeing that I can’t stay with it long enough to actually review the entire book. Maybe I will just comment from time to time on books that I have already read so that I don’t have to worry about weekly posts. Even though I have not been blogging at all, I have managed to stay quite busy. Our new church plant is going well and we are finally in a public meeting area…a Seventh Day Adventist School in Erie. Our plant originally started in Brighton but due to various circumstances we decided to relocate to Erie. We are loving our meeting space and we are making new contacts. We have begun to meet weekly for prayer which is one of the most exciting things that I have been a part of in my ministry. Whenever God’s people commit themselves to prayer, God does amazing things in them and through them.
I am currently on a vacation with my family in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. We have not been on a family vacation since January of 2003 and we are really enjoying ourselves. Andrew, my 5 year old, is learning how to swim and is doing a great job. Aysia is taking in the beach and the lazy river that circles the multiple pools at our resort. Tyler, is just happy to play in the kiddie pool and isn’t all that impressed with the ocean…I think he doesn’t like the sand. We will be posting some pictures when we return. I will link to them.
I have been doing a lot of reading lately on spiritual gifts and miraculous ministry. I looked at this issue about 3 or 4 years ago in some depth but never came to any conclusions. I have spent a lot more time this go around and still have not come to any definitive answers. I do believe that I have concluded personally that I believe that all the gifts are still present. But where they are to be found in biblical function, I am not as confident. I have also re-engaged my quasi-love affair with theonomy. The topic is fascinating to me and I always find myself coming back to it again and again whenever I consider the social implications of the gospel and the Church’s mission in the world. I am attempting to read through Gary North’s Tools of Dominion as well as re-reading David Chilton’s refutation [Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators] of Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. I am reading the second edition of Chilton’s book as well as the 20th Anniversary edition of Sider’s book. I believe that the current surge within Emergent groups regarding social theory [ie. Brian MacLaren] as well as the continued publications of Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne, and Greg Boyd is the same Anabaptist theology that the Reconstructionists have thoroughly addressed in literally hundreds of books and articles. I would love to see some of these “new” guys deal with the Theonomic argument. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, do a quick search on the terms: Theonomy and Christian Reconstruction [try to read the favorable things as well as the critical and believe me, there is much more critical stuff out there than commendable] and then look at the current books published by the authors listed above on the topic of politics, economy and environment…I just don’t want to take the time to link to everything right now…I am on vacation, remember.
That is enough for now I think. I will try to post a little more often. Feel free to comment or ask questions on any thing I have written.
