Her Best Life Now

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Red_eye_osteen_2It appears the whole Osteen airline incident has sparked a feeding frenzy for the movie rights on the story. 

Fortunately for all of us, I have prevailed.

For people like Joe Thorn who haven't even heard of this incident, you can read about it here, or here, or maybe here, or here.

Confessions of a Reformission Rev.

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Driscoll_confessions_250I just received my pre-publication copy of Mark Driscoll's new book Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church.  Mark asked me a couple of months ago if I would read and review this book and another one on emerging church theology (esp Scripture, Trinity and atonement).  It will include stuff from Doug Pagitt, Karen Ward, Dan Kimball, and John Burke.  Each are writing sections and then commenting on & critiquing one another.

So I hope to begin the Confessions book very soon and plan to blog on it sometime after the holidays.  I'm not sure when I will get the theology book, but I'm looking forward to that one too.

Technorati Mini

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Do you obsess over who is linking to you and wish you could know as soon as possible?  Well someone is always willing to do the work to feed your obsession.  Enjoy Technorati Mini which updates every 60 seconds automatically.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Technorati Mini may be habit-forming. Do not operatea motorized vehicle while using Technorati Mini. May cause excitement and/or nostalgia for Web 1.0. Minors should discuss using Technorati Mini with their parents. Technorati Mini may annoy popup-blockers. Do not taunt Technorati Mini.

Photoblogging

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Snow and Stairs

You might have noticed on the left sidebar that I now have a photoblog and a Flickr site for some more artistic photographs I'm taking.  This is a fairly new art for me, so I'm doing a lot of experimenting with colors and shapes and perspectives.  I will basically put up one pic a day on the photoblog, and Flickr houses most of my stuff that you can peruse.  Enjoy.

You can also subscribe to my Flickr RSS 2.0 or Atom feeds.

Emergent's Tony Jones at SBTS

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Tony Jones writes of his trip to SBTS (Boyce College, really).  He met with some of the college faculty including two guys I know, Randy Smith and Jimmy Scroggins.  I'm very glad to see that something connected to SBTS is at least in dialogue with EC (Emergent) guys.  I believe that's a good sign.

Also, notice Tim Keller finds his way into the comments on Tony's post on inerrancy and atonement issues.

Side note: I think the best thing that can happen to SBTS/Boyce (or conservative evangelicalism) and the EC is if they mate and have tons of offspring.  Then we will fill the earth with a bunch of (hopefully credobaptistic) Tim Keller's.  Oh, a man can dream.

Piper Resources

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Piper_handsMonergism is doing some great new stuff, including adding a page of John Piper resources that gives easy access to tons of stuff: books, mp3's, sermons, essays, stuff by topic, etc.  Bookmark it and use it often.

By the way, we need to name this Piper picture.  My best three: "The Piper Moose," "Piper plays paper football," or "Piper asking God for a 'high ten'" 

NetVibes

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I've been using NetVibes for a while now and I like it.  It's a homepage that has modules for gmail, flicker, and any site with a feed (like a blog, CNN, or whatever).  Give it a look.

Emergent, Jews and Justice

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It seems Emergent (the organization) is muddling the Christocentric nature of Kingdom work (see Doug Pagitt's blog as well).  In other words, it looks like Emergent (Tony Jones, Brian McLaren, et al) is treating collaboration on social justice issues between Jews and Christians as equally valid Kingdom work.  Doesn't that give social justice primacy over faith in Christ so that Kingdom work can be done without faith in Christ?  Or is this worse in that Emergent is attributing spiritual life to both groups?

If we are talking about working together to help those who can't help themselves instead of sticking to the same political routes, that's fine.  But it seems much worse than that.  Read some excerpts.

Synagogue 3000 (S3K) and Emergent have announced a ground-breaking meeting to connect Jewish and Christian leaders who are experimenting with innovative congregations and trying to push beyond the traditional categories of "left" and "right." This will be the first conversation that brings them together to focus on the enterprise of building next-generation institutions. 

[...]

S3K Senior Fellow Lawrence A. Hoffman, (_Rethinking Synagogues: A New Vocabulary for Congregational Life_, forthcoming 2006) stressed the importance of building committed religious identity across faith lines. "We inhabit an epic moment," he said, "nothing short of a genuine spiritual awakening. It offers us an opportunity unique to all of human history: a chance for Jews and Christians to do God's work together, not just locally, but nationally, community by community, in shared witness to our two respective faiths."

Brian McLaren...

"We have so much common ground on so many levels...We face similar problems in the present, we have common hopes for the future, and we draw from shared resources in our heritage. I'm thrilled with the possibility of developing friendship and collaboration in ways that help God's dreams come true for our synagogues, churches, and world."

Tony Jones...

"As emerging Christian leaders have been pushing through the polarities of left and right in an effort to find a new, third way, we've been desperate to find partners for that quest," he said. "It's with great joy and promise that we partner with the leaders of S3K to talk about the future and God's Kingdom."

Without a bunch of explanation for how this isn't what it seems to be, I reckon this to be very bad news.

(HT: Mike Noakes)

Narnia: My Take

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So I watched Narnia yesterday with my lovely wife, my four kids, and my 9:15am popcorn.  A lot of folks are blogging the heck out of this movie and I'm not going to try to do anything fancy or long.  But I thought it would be helpful to share some thoughts, both good and bad.  If you are going to watch the movie, I encourage you NOT to read on.  Experience it for yourself first.

**Spoilers Coming**

Over the last three weeks I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kids.  We enjoyed it very much.  And if you have never experienced a movie after reading the book, it's definitely a different experience.  I think it makes enjoying the movie (for an adult) much more difficult.  Plus, as we read I tried to imagine how the movie would handle certain things, and that led to some satisfying elements, but also some disappointments.

1. Characters: Both Lucy and Tumnus were played very well.  Brilliant.  Edmund was good, Susan was just okay, Peter was fine, the Beavers were fun, Father Christmas was better than I expected, Maugrim was pretty good, the White Witch was pretty good, and the professor was just right.  Some of the characters were a bit overdone, I thought (Susan sticks out to me here), but generally speaking the characters were good. 

2.  Effects: The effects were fine.  There were times when they looked a bit more fake than they needed to, but that isn't a big surprise.  I expected that from the very first teaser I saw months ago.

3. A Few differences between book and movie: Rumblebuffin was missing, at least in character.  There were a few random giants.  When they fled the Beavers' house they left through a tunnel, which was a nice addition for a movie.  There were plenty of other differences, but these stuck out to me.

4. What I didn't like: Edmund's insatiable desire for Turkish Delight (after the first bite) was missing.  He wanted more, but he just looked selfish.  The point was the White Witch's food could never satisfy.

The connection between the kids (or anyone else) and Aslan was poorly done.  When Lucy and Susan are laying on his dead body and just distraught (which was good), it wasn't developed enough ahead of time.  For example, in the book when Mr. Beaver said "Aslan is on the move" it's followed by some great description of what happens inside the kids as they hear this news.  They "felt something jump" inside them, "Peter felt brave and adventurous," and so on.  Someone needed to develop the heart-leaping aspect of hearing about and knowing Aslan, but it was missing.  This was the biggest disappointment for me.

One thing that I was looking forward to most other than seeing the general plot unfold was the roar of Aslan after resurrection which bent the trees.  Why was this not included?  From the book...

"And Aslan stood up and when he opened his mouth to roar his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it.  And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind.

I also thought they missed a great opportunity to show Aslan (Lucy and Susan aboard) running through the trees and such.  They showed this, but it was stunted.  From the book...

"That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia."

One last thing, the narration quality of the book was missing.  And so it became the adventure of four kids rather than the adventure any kid can have.  I feel Lewis intends a more universal, YOU can find Narnia.  You can be a king.  You can have adventure and be brave and just, etc.  I wanted the movie to make me go home and start looking for branches in the back of my closet, but it didn't so much.  It could have been done better, I think.

5. What I liked: It was nice to see what Turkish Delight looks like, though I'm still not sure it looks all that delicious.

I liked how we saw a close up on the face of Aslan when he was executed.  I didn't like the book at this point.  He seemed to die too fast in the movie, but for a kid movie it needed to be fast I suppose.

For all the problems in developing the Aslan-children connection, I liked how Lucy and Susan were portrayed after the killing of Aslan, laying on him for some time.  The broken stone table was well done also, shaking the earth.

For the absence of the battle in the book, the movie needed it.  It was done pretty well, though Edmund looked pretty clueless the whole time. 

Side note: Liam Neeson has become quite the redeemer.  Oscar Schindler (purchases Jews), Qui-Gon Jinn (rescues Anakin), and now Aslan (saving Edmund and Narnia).   Hmmm.  I liked his voice with Aslan.  If it would have been Matthew Broderick (The Lion King) I would have walked out. :)

My overall take is this: If the book didn't exist and the movie came out, I would be telling everyone of great, redemptive kids movie that everyone needs to see.  And so I cannot help but to promote it and encourage everyone to go.  It's good.

So to be clear, I did enjoy the movie very much.  We will buy the DVD when it comes out.  And the movie, for it's weaknesses, is completely worthwhile.

Disney Executive Planting Churches

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Wow. 

Al Weiss, a top-ranking Disney executive, is planting churches—doctrinally sound ones, and lots of them.

As chairman of the board for newly formed Vision USA, Mr. Weiss aims to raise $300 million over the next 10 years for aggressive church planting in 50 of the country's most influential cities. The project is well underway in Orlando, where several million dollars of grant money will help open eight to 10 churches by the end of the year. Preliminary efforts have also begun in Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Nashville, Charlotte, New York, and Washington, D.C.

[...]

Vision USA's basic model for each urban market is simple: Network Christian business leaders with local church-planting experts. Chan Kilgore, pastor of CrossPointe Church in Orlando, has helped locate and train doctrinally conservative pastors. "Our greatest challenge isn't the financial resources. It's finding great men to plant," he told WORLD.

To solve that problem, Mr. Weiss aims to build a large church-planter training facility on 40 acres of donated property in Orlando. Gregg Heinsch, an experienced church planter and former youth pastor at John Piper's Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, will serve as training-center dean.

Each church founded on Vision USA funds must pour 5 percent of its budget back into the project for further local planting efforts. Vision USA president Steve Johnson believes such give-back commitments will create self-sustaining, church-planting networks throughout the country. "This is not a bureaucracy where it's top down," he told WORLD. "We're just trying to empower local movements."

Though affiliated with the Baptist General Conference (BGC), Vision USA has partnered with a range of denominations willing to affirm the Lausanne Covenant, male eldership, and Reformed theology—most recently aligning with Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle and founder of the nondenominational Acts 29 church-planting network, is among a growing list of prominent leaders to join Vision USA, each hoping to combat the roughly 2,500 church deaths in the United States every year. "Church planting is hot right now," he told WORLD. "For years, guys wanted to get out of seminary and go get a church that had a nice salary and would call them pastor. Today, young entrepreneurial guys don't want to take over a church. They want to start one."

Read the whole article from World Magazine.

(HT: Goodmanson)