Feelin' hot, hot, hot

The chiller for the building is down.

And to think, just yesterday, people were complaining that it was too cold in the office.

John 3:16

Great thoughts by Mark Horne on John 3:16, especially when coupled with these quotes from B.B. Warfield.

It always makes me sad when Reformed folks sacrifice this passage on the altar of limited atonement (or rather, their particular formulations of it).  The above provide a great corrective to this tendency.

Even More Good Music

I just realized Pierce Pettis is releasing a new album on August 3rd!

It's called Great Big World  and was recorded mostly live in the studio. It should be a treat!

Just one more reason I'm proud of my home state-- Alabama has some talented folk, I tell ya.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

I'm still keeping hope alive that this film might not utterly disappoint me.  Who knows?

Hatian Village in Georgia?

Today, I stumbled across a recent AJC article  (sorry, you have to log in--I included excerpts below) about a  Hatian village in Clayton, Georgia.

Apparently, at a camp run by the General Presbytery of Atlanta, they have set up a Global Village, where groups can pay for a chance to experience life in a Third World country. It's faux-poverty smack in the middle of rich America--  $140,000 houses are being built just across the road from the village-- and participants can hear the sounds of contractors with electric nail guns while they make bricks with their hands . I imagine that's a striking juxtaposition for many.

 Originally organized as a way to train church groups for short term mission trips, the participants eat, sleep, and work in an area that resembles some of the poorest places on earth. Overall, I'm not sure what to think about this concept. It's educational, definitely, and provides a great opportunity for kids (and adults) to see the way the rest of the world lives. It just seems to me that the money be better spent by actually sending it to the people who live in those impoverished places, rather than re-creating their poverty in the middle of suburbanite Georiga and charging people to visit. But that's just me.

What do y'all think?

Here are some excerpts from the AJC article:

Clayton camp's Haitian Village lets visitors experience life at subsistence level

By KevinDuffy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Published on: 07/18/04

Visitors to the Global Village at the Calvin Center experience what it's like to live without electricity or running water, to sleep in a cramped bunkhouse on a thin mattress under a mosquito net, to make bricks and then use them in the slow process of building a simple dwelling.

A brick house being built at the Haitian village is the size of a closet in most Atlanta homes.
When finished, it will be 8 feet by 8 feet and less than 7 feet tall — its actual size in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a per capita income of about $400, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Whoever chooses to stay in the house will sleep on a straw mat on the scraped earth.

The village's other six buildings — two bunkhouses, a latrine, a shower, a kitchen and the brick-making shelter — are equally humble. The kitchen is simply a brick latticework building with a countertop holding two grates, below which wood and coal are burned. The small shower building is topped by a 55-gallon drum, which has to be replenished every day with hand-carried buckets of water. Users open a faucet to get wet, usually in the evening because the water is heated by the sun.

The first building in the Global Village went up three years ago. The Haitian section is mostly complete. Still to come are Kenyan and Nicaraguan villages, a typical shantytown and a Palestinian house, which is partially built. The bulk of the work will be done by visitors to the village so they can experience what it's like to build your own dwelling.

"This opens their eyes that the majority of the world doesn't live our lifestyle," said Hein Vingerling, [a native of Holland and a former business executive who runs the Global Village]. He frequently visits Haiti on his own and now helps run feeding centers and an orphanage there.
During his trips, Vingerling noticed that travelers working for church missions often clung to their habits, sometimes offending their Haitian hosts. "I've seen people literally freak out from the lack of proper sanitation," Vingerling said. He figured there was a need for a mock Third World to prepare travelers for the real thing.

Several hundred people, primarily from church groups in the Southeast, visit the village each year, paying about $50 per person per night to briefly experience the hardships billions of people deal with every day.

 

Coming Soon ...

... to a 286 CGA Enabled PC Near You 

Man, this gives me fond memories of all those Sierra games I played back in the day. 

Did I mention these guys are geniuses?  I may have finally found an "in" to meeting them.  Sunday, Sunday ... someday.  Stay tuned.

 

question

Does anyone use the term "New PerspectivISM" BESIDES the most shrill of its critics?  Personally, I always thought the term sounded dumb.  Though, I guess labelling always make things easier.

Guitar Face!!
 
I'm not sure who I'd vote for, especially on an issue of this magnitude.  I foresee many sleepless nights of pondering.

the greatest of these

This a great and convicting bit of blogging by Rob Schlapfer.
 
(It also looks like he has removed all the discussion from the recent ruckus with AOMin.  Definitely the best and most mature thing he could have done.)

Update (7/28/04):  Well, after another interchange with Dr. White, it looks like Rob has completely scrapped his blog.  Probably for the better, since the exchanges were starting to get pretty silly.  And to his credit, White has removed relevant posting from his own blog.  I just hate that Rob's post mentioned above is gone.  It was non-specific and very relevant to the current state of Internet theological turf wars.  But again, very classy move on Rob's part.

A Good Year for Music

Albums I can't wait to be released:
 
Sandra McCracken -- Best Laid Plans -- August 3rd
(Yay! "Age After Age" on a real album, finally. My reward for finishing this semester, I hope!)
 
Caedmons Call -- Share the Well -- October 12th
(World influences, Randall's songwriting, an endorsement from Derek-- what more could you ask for?)
 
Andrew Peterson -- Behold the Lamb  -- Sometime in the fall
(Self-penned Christmas musical with a bunch of talented folks adding their voices and instruments. Nuff' said.)
 
I'm saving my pennies now. :)

Another blog of someone we've met in real life

(I just had to add this when I saw that he has a weblog now).  

Andrew Peterson -- He writes and performs "insert amazingly fabulous complementary fantastically cool adjective here" songs. He lives in Nashville with his wife and adorable kids.  There's a long story about how Team Redd first met on a roadtrip to hear him play.

P.S. His amazing Christmas musical is coming on CD this fall. Buy it.

Blogs of people we've met in real life

(Maybe we should make this a category on the left one day.)
 
Jen -- Allison's best friend from Birmingham. She is spending six months in Rio as a missionary pharmacist.
 
Lane -- Husband of Allison's good friend Mary. Both musicians, they live in Nashville but are planning a change in locale very soon-- to California!
 
Richard -- Fellow message board frequenter who lives with his family in Virginia.  Gaines met him on various concert roadtrips back in the day.
 
Kelly --  She and her husband are English techers in Honduras.  Allison worked with her at Riverview. 

See what homstarrunner does to me?

The new They Might Be Giants song on homestarrunner.com is catchy. I've never really listened to them, and it's sad that my first thought upon hearing it was "the harmonies sound like PFR." Anybody rememeber them? Probably not. Well, "Experimental Film" made me wonder what the rest of the new TMBG album is like.

Last night at Bible study, when we mentioned the Homestar video, some friends said they thought They Might Be Giants  had written some kids songs that were kind of frightening.  Upon checking out their homepage, I discovered this site. I'm not sure what to think just yet.  Check out the TMBG coloring book.  It's weirdical, man. And oddly enough, reminds me of a mixture between homestarrunner's children's books and their Sweet Cuppin Cakes cartoons, but much more deranged.

Speaking of, we saw a new building sign in downtown ATL on Tuesday night: "Homestar Mortgage." Gaines almost had a heart attack when he saw it. Add this to the growing list of reasons why we should get a digital camera someday.

Some thoughts on musical style

In light of recent controversy over using updated hymns in worship services, Kevin Twit, of Indelible Grace music fame, speaks out in a recent Modern Reformation article (the link doesn't seem to want to work, so just go to the MR site. It's on the first page, as a web exclusive).
 
It's a great word for those seeking compromise in the "worship style wars."
 
Of course, I may just be biased since we sing many IG versions of hymns in our church... they fit well with our available instrumentation. And the older members of our church really seem to like them, too!

Not that anyone cares about the Emmys

But I thought it was cool that "Arrested Development" was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, with actor Jeffrey Tambor, who plays the incarcerated Bluth family patriarch, getting a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. The show also received 5 others nominations.

I simply cannot wait until this show comes out on DVD.

I swear, I'm really trying to cut back on starting new books while I'm still working through (multiple) others. But, Wright's The Meal Jesus Gave Us was too tempting to resist. In my defense, it clocks in at a mere 82 pages. Plus, Allison read it and said it was really good.

She was right.

I think I've got this straight: "N.T. Wright" publishes scholarly works on various subjects, whereas "Tom Wright" addresses writings to more of a layman audience (i.e., "for everyone"). I think this is great, because the guy is obviously a brilliant thinker and scholar, but he is very capable of communicating on a more general and, more importantly, pastoral level. His book on "the Jesus-meal" (as he refers to it) is no different. It is a great little survey on the origins, meaning and implications of Holy Communion.

Some interesting notes: Wright seems to identify with the Calvinistic view of the Sacrament over those of Rome, Luther or Zwingli. But, instead of viewing the Supper as a matter of the Spirit transporting the believer into Christ's presence to be nourished by Him, Wright views it in terms of "time," where the past (where the climactic work of Christ on the cross occurred), present (where we now sojourn), and future (the final outworking of Christ's work to restore the fallen creation) converge in the meal. The meal provides the believer with a foretaste of the fully-restored creation.

I also found in interesting that he advocates paedocommunion, largely due to the connection to the Passover feast.

I love it when things go better than expected, even in the relatively small stuff. For example: we placed an order with Amazon last Thursday to redeem a gift certificate (woo hoo!). The confirmation screen indicated that it would ship on July 14 and arrive between July 16 and 19.

The box arrived yesterday (the 12th).

Of course, this may cause me to re-adjust my reading priorities. We got Bainton's biography of Martin Luther, Here I Stand, and Tom Wright's The Meal Jesus Gave Us, which Allison is already devouring (yes, that was intentional). We also got Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning by Doug Wilson, but that is more likely to give Al problems with book-reading prioritization than it will myself.

Tim Gallant's blog has a separate section for "Bookshelf Arrivals." That might not be a bad idea, since we've gotten some pretty cool books lately that might not make their way into their respective reading queues for awhile.

Now repeat the mantra: So many books, so little time.

So Good!!!

Wow. The Brothers Chaps have outdone themselves with this week's update to Homestarrunner.com.

It is chock full of Decemberween in July goodies. I'm not too keen on the puppets, but who can argue with a holiday-themed Teen Girl Squad, Strong Bad's children's book or episode of Sweet Cuppin' Cakes?

And if that isn't enough, the Homestar guys' recent collaborations with They Might Be Giants has yielded a music video, just in time for the release of TMBG's new album.

So good!!! There, I've said it again.

Some Apologies and Clarifications

Fantastic comments from John Frame on his previous statements about Norman Shepherd's accusers, as well as a plea for much greater caution in using the label "enemy of the Gospel" against theological opponents.

back in the day

I was sorting through some old CD's this weekend, and I had a delightful trip down memory lane. I had forgotten how good Counting Crows' Recovering the Satellites was, or exactly how much talent was lost when Michael Hedges died.

I also dusted off the EP by Ethan Pierse (aka Tim Pigman). Whatever happened to that cool little guy? I wonder what he's up to these days. Apparently not updating his website.

Not-so-fun fact: Of the four acts from the Awakening Records SF2K tour, only Justin Rosolino is still making music. To my knowledge, the other three are no longer making music in the same capacity: Zoubek & Bryant and Dog Named David have both disbanded (although some individual members have gone on to solo aspirations), and Mr. Pierse/Pigman has vanished. Heck, even Awakening Records has evaporated. Alas, the harsh and unforgiving world of independent acoustic music.