Out at night in Philly

I was at the pool tonight, and I saw some folks from church. Ann Slater told me her brother-in-law from Philly was a reader and a fan, so I thought I'd mention it here.

Wazzup Philly?

Secular Madness!

I have this thing for Sixpence None the Richer, and since they broke up and turned out their Greatest Hits CD, I figured we'd never see them again until they turned 60 and had a reunion tour. And for me, it was never really a Sixpence thing: it was a Leigh Nash thing. I have no idea why -- her lyrics aren't the kind of lyrics I usually care anything about, and her pop style is usually like garlic and wolfbane for me, but somehow she wins me over. I think it's her version of "Babe in the Straw" which sets my point of reference, and I judge the rest of the stuff by how I receive that one song. Maybe her music makes me feel young in a good way -- not in a "I feel like I'm in college" kinda way because my college years were terribly mis-spent.

Anyway, I got this e-mail about a week ago from "her people" that she has produced a new CD -- totally unsolicited. They asked me (well -- full disclosure here: it was a mass e-mailing to a bunch of bloggers, and my blog was on the list) to review the CD for a free copy of said disk, and booyah to that.

Anyway, this is not that review -- I'll have to listen to the disk a couple of times before I can give a "review". Today I can just give a "recommendation": buy it. In fact, you can buy it by clicking on the image above. Is that cool or what?

It's not "christian music". There's no "Jesus is my [cliche]" songs on this CD. And to be honest, there's no silver fishy on this CD either -- no crypto-Christian metaphors that will subvert pop culture. It's pure secular madness, and I'm associating myself with it. I'd have to sell 100 of them from the above link to make $50, so I'm not in it for the money. I just like Leigh Nash.

If you want to listen, you can listen in here. It's flash-driven, so if you have a skinny connection you will probably be sad to click thru. The rest of you should go and sample, and then come back here and buy.

It's not Vivaldi: it's pop music. If that makes your ears bleed, don't say I didn't warn you.

double-secret technorati tags:Leigh Nash

Preach it

Preach it twice in case somebody missed it the first time.

double-secret technorati tags:Mark Driscoll

Sympathy, yet not so much

I ran into this whilst on patrol in the deepest, darkest blogosphere, and one hates to link to the site for fear of reprisals and all.

It draws a 2-fold reaction from me, the first of which is honest sympathy. Does anyone not know that I'm pretty bent out of shape over the condition of the American church? For example, when Angus here says

I tried to explain that my question did not indicate that I believed the modern church was denying Christ, but that it had begun to make conscious choice the agent of change in the continuum of salvation. Thus, allowing man to control the way God encounters his people, essentially, turning him into a candy machine. Further, the subconscious emanations of a fallen and depraved race – such as we are – would begin to manifest themselves in a way that places the locus of control for any human to God /God to human interaction completely in human hands.

I'm with him: he's right, even if I hate to use the word "locus" on a blog because most people will hit "NEXT BLOG" when they see such a thing.

He's right that the American church -- in all its Addams Family incarnations across denomination or the denial of the usefulness of the same -- has a problem becuase it denies the presence of God in things in a really subtle way.

And, given that he's in a megachurch setting (so it seems by his post), it's unlikely that he's going to lead a one-man reformation of that body. Right? Who would argue with that? If the church has a senior pastor and 17 "associates", and levels of teachers and assistants and blahblahblah under that, not likely that he's going to lead reformation and change the lives of those poor, lost souls who have placed the locus of control for any human-to-God/God-to-human interaction completely in human hands.

And yet, what exactly does that say about our blogospheric colleague Angus? You know: for example, does he belong to the church (in general, and to this church in particular) because it fits his (apparently-expanding and more-sanctified [no sarcasm there, OK?]) view of what the church ought to be, or does he belong to the church out of obedience and out of reverence for God? Hasn't Angus abandoned one mostly-bad way of thinking about church for another which is not really that much better -- which is the church shopper view of how we ought to fellowship as believers?

I don't think Angus has called these people heretics: he has only said, "not for me, thanks." But in that, he has done exactly what he is complaining about in the fashion of the contemporary church -- that is, instead of wearing the Tommy golf shirts and khakis which the church is advocating, or even the stuff at the Aeropostale church down the street, he's choosing the homeless chic waredrobe so many today see as what's right, given the cultural context. he hasn't given up being trendy: he's changed trends.

If the 8-letter word of internet anathema wasn't so ill-thought of, I'd say exactly what I thought about that. Isn't what's missing in the church today real faithfulness? How does one claim to exhibit real faithfulness by walking away?

If one is actually the one with the right Gospel-centered, Christocentric answer about what the church ought to be, I think -- IMO and all that -- that he has a responsibility to God to be an example to those who are taking the bus tour to luke-warm waters. Even if those people are his pastors and elders.

We can talk about how that works if anyone is interested, but people who go church shopping because they just realized that they have spent some time as a pew-sitter because of their realization that their pastor can't pick them out of a line-up, with all due respect, haven't changed their diet: they have only changed their meal schedule.

double-secret technorati tags:churchseekerBHT

A sober voice

Pay attention to this:

How could such an answer have been given? I'm sure in well meaning sincerity. But how could it have been soberly accepted by thousands of messengers? I can only conclude that it must have been due in part to our cheapened understanding of conversion, debased practices of evangelism, worldly attitudes about being "judgmental" and an addiction--a drunkeness, if you will--to numbers. I don't think it came about by careful reflection on the Bible's teaching on what it means to be born again, to be made a new creation, to consider the fruit of the Spirit in contrast to the works of the flesh. We were not thinking of II Peter 1. We not calling people to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith, as Paul urged the Corinthians. We have not with a sober love called them "sinners" in need of repentance; we have called them "members" and assured them that they are saved. Or we've called them "prospects."

Read it all. It's a great pastoral summary of hat exactly is at stake in the SBC right now.

double-secret technorati tags:Southern baptists

a few of my favorite things

I've been using Google Analytics for some very sophisticated stats analysts the last 2 months, but the best part so far is the downloadable data. To show you how keen it is, here's a table of my top 50 refering sites. I have even left the grumbling plebians' links in the list just to show you how cool this is. For those who want to know, this is ranked by number of referrals since the first week of July, 2006.

rank	Source	Type	Visits
1	(direct)	(none)	3221
2	teampyro.blogspot.com	referral	2667
3	boarsheadtavern.com	referral	798
4	founders.org	referral	494
5	blogger.com	referral	365
6	spurgeon.org	referral	283
7	bloglines.com	referral	281
8	dougwils.com	referral	264
9	google	organic	248
10	internetmonk.com	referral	236
11	sitemeter.com	referral	184
12	fide-o.blogspot.com	referral	168
13	voiceofvision.blogspot.com	referral	156
14	calvinistgadfly.com	referral	148
15	faithclassics.blogspot.com	referral	139
16	challies.com	referral	136
17	carla_rolfe.blogspot.com	referral	133
18	haloscan.com	referral	123
19	iseedaylight.com	referral	107
20	google.com	referral	95
21	evangelicaloutpost.com	referral	95
22	bibchr.blogspot.com	referral	91
23	4ever4given.com	referral	85
24	theupwardcall.blogspot.com	referral	84
25	phillipjohnson.blogspot.com	referral	76
26	mongrelhorde.blogspot.com	referral	72
27	hipandthigh.blogspot.com	referral	71
28	goodbrownie.blogspot.com	referral	66
29	doulogos.blogspot.com	referral	66
30	stillreforming.blogspot.com	referral	65
31	purgatorio1.com	referral	64
32	englishmusings.blogspot.com	referral	57
33	reformatabaptista.blogspot.com	referral	49
34	pecadillo.blogspot.com	referral	49
35	totalleader.wordpress.com	referral	44
36	onanazurefield.blogspot.com	referral	43
37	teacherdave.blogspot.com	referral	43
38	jmoorhead.blogspot.com	referral	40
39	dsl.sbc.yahoo.com	referral	38
40	stephennewell.blogspot.com	referral	37
41	stevenjcamp.blogspot.com	referral	36
42	technorati.com	referral	34
43	freestgeorges.blogspot.com	referral	34
44	timsuffield.com	referral	33
45	theworldfrommywindow.blogspot.com	referral	32
46	unitelater.com	referral	31
47	pastorgarryweaver.blogspot.com	referral	29
48	iamchief.blogspot.com	referral	29
49	strangebaptistfire.com	referral	29
50	adrian.warnock.info	referral	29

Notice, btw, that the nefarious Dr. Warnock is at the bottom of the dog pile -- and if you check his archives, you can see that I am funneling far more readers to him that he is to me. I'd call it unjust if I thought he was doing it on purpose.

I almost forgot ...

ey: this weekend? Spend the Lord's day in the Lord's house with the Lord's people. You deserve it.

to koine a phrase

For those following my support of Daniel B. Wallace at TeamPyro, you might find this t-shirt amusing. Now on sale at the pawn shop.

Take a break

Read this. Say a prayer for the man's family and himself. That's a great way to show love for one another.

Research and Methods

Those of you following the SBC move to reinvigorate Prohibition may or may not be familiar with the argument that the Greek word "oinos" doesn't really mean "wine" the way we mean "wine" today. The source for that is usually cited as Robert H. Stein's research on that subject.

With many thanks to my friend johnMark and the indefatigable army of reformed baptist internet research assistants at #prosapologian, I am happy to provide you with a copy of "Wine Drinking in New Testament Times" by Robert H. Stein, from Christianity Today, June 20, 1975.

You might want to take an extra 10 minutes at lunch to read it -- because that's all it will take.