Missional Living can be quite frustating at times. This account is from Sam, a good friend who is serving with his wife in Eastern Europe/Western Asia.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

How a love hate relationship turns into a simple hate relationship.
Sam and the green machine.

Yesterday we were at a graduation picnic in the North of Moldova and we got rained on twice. The second time was during the meal and we just closed up and went home or tried to. The roads got wet on the surface and were slicker than snot (We wondered why Sasha kept asking if we had front wheel drive). Most of the cars in our caravan had to be pushed and everyone got so muddy. The students are all young men and they took off their shoes and pushed and got muddy and then got sprayed with mud from the cars and basically just had a good time. We ended up driving/being pushed backwards down the muddy road to get out. During all this one of my tires got damaged but since we could not even see the tires for all the mud who would know. I found out on the trip home since I could not drive above 45 mph and still maintain contact with the steering wheel. The trip home took 4.5 hours instead of 3 hours. Tire balance has to be very bad to notice on the roads here.

Good conversation with Mark Driscoll on “How to reach out without selling out”

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/The_White_Horse_Inn/archives.asp?bcd=2007-3-11

The discussion at the end is amazing!!!

-Eric M.

Dan Kimball wrote an intriguing piece last year where he muses over the difference between generational change versus worldview change. As he says, “the question is - are the changes occurring out there, mainly generational (music style, appearance, language) which changes every generation? Or are the changes bigger than that in worldview(s) and more about how people learn, specific values people have, how people think of God and the spiritual world etc.”

A few years ago Tim Keller wrote a great piece on teaching Hell in age of tolerance. I’ve reproduced it in its entirety in case the link disappears or is taken offline.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Preaching Hell in a Tolerant Age

by Tim Keller

The young man in my office was impeccably dressed and articulate. He was an Ivy League MBA, successful in the financial world, and had lived in three countries before age 30. Raised in a family with only the loosest connections to a mainline church, he had little understanding of Christianity.

Traditions - Good, Bad, and Ugly

There is nothing inherently wrong with tradition. Tradition can provide a reliable compass and connect us to the past. The problem arises when we lose sight of “why” we do something as a tradition. It’s imperative we always retain the “why” of any tradition that we follow so as to be able to always properly evaluate if it’s effectively serving its originally-intended purpose.

10 Warning Signs You May Be An Obnoxious Christian

1) You leave a salvation tract instead of tip for your waitress.
(After all, her eternal destiny is certainly more important than any immediate physical need.)

2) You insist the King James Version is the only valid English translation.
(Hey! If it was good enough 400 years ago, it’s good enough now…)

This blog was written by Craig Williams (http://tabletalk.typepad.com) in Sep 2006. Well worth reading so here it is reproduced in its’ entirety. Read and rethink church, rethink life.

Bob
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Christians in Name Only
by Craig S Williams

About a week or two ago, Bill Maher the comedian and satirist, wrote a commentary that was printed in many Sunday papers. It was entitled “Praise Allah and pass the hair gel.” The comic was suggesting that if we wanted to fly with our haircare products and bottles of liquid, that the simplest way to do so would be to convert to Islam. He was referrencing the news of the Fox journalists who were realeased by their kidnappers after they read a two sentence statement announcing their conversion to Islam.