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I've never understood the fascination with Mixed Martial Arts, which seem to be awfully popular among a lot of Acts 29 types… (or maybe just for the Acts29 founder?) Daniel Kirk pretty much nails the point of my discomfort.
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"Religious / clergy-based leadership often behaves like an overbearing conductor, not partnering with the orchestra but managing and controlling the musical conversation. Talgam concludes, “The worst damage I can inflict on my orchestra is to give them a clear instruction, for it prevents the sectional ensembles from listening to each other.” The global-virtual ecclesia is listening to each other – moving their focus away from the podium, towards a harmonious priesthood of the commons."
Interesting analogy and thoughts here.
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Henry was right, says author Richard Mouw, in his view that the church should not address political or economic specifics:
"The church is obliged to "declare the criteria by which nations will ultimately be judged, and the divine standards to which man and society must conform if civilization is to endure."
"…A constant theme in his writings was that the church as such has neither the competence nor the authority to address political or economic specifics. He would usually add, though—probably with the memory of Nazi Germany in mind—that there may be "emergency situations" in which the church would have clear mandate from God to address specific evils. But in the normal course of things, the church should leave it up to individuals to take a very general mandate to think and act Christianly in the public arena."
This is too good not to pass along: a skewering of the typical TV news segment. Two minutes of brilliance!
Yesterday I traveled with five coworkers from Cedar Rapids, IA to Wichita, KS, to participate in our quarterly update meeting with the FAA.
Normally, commercial travel to Wichita from CR means taking a flight connecting through either Chicago O’Hare or Dallas-Fort Worth. For a Wednesday morning meeting you’d need to leave CR early afternoon on Tuesday, spend hours in airports, 3 – 4 hours actually flying, spend the night overnight in Wichita, then reverse the procedure on Wednesday afternoon to fly home, possibly making it home in early evening… assuming the weather is decent and all the flight connections happen.
To counter this massive hassle and resulting lack of productivity for several engineers, enter this fine little piece of hardware: the company Hawker 800 XP.
It’s fitted out nicely on the inside, too, similar to this:
Being able to fly on our company jet made our itinerary for the trip to Wichita run something like this:
- 0715: Arrive at company facility at CR airport
- 0716: Announce myself and get name checked off on the manifest
- 0725: Walk out onto the tarmac and board the plane
- 0730: One of the pilots points out the emergency exits to me, the first-timer
- 0735: We take off. Once we climb out, we cruise at 36,000 feet and nearly 600 MPH
- 0840: Land in Wichita. Climb off the plane and walk across the street to the FAA office.
- 0900 – 1230: Meet with the FAA
- 1230: Walk back across the street to the airport
- 1245: Board the aircraft and take off again
- 1300: Eat a box lunch after we’re back up at 36,000 feet
- 1405: Land back in CR
- 1415: Get off the plane after being towed into the hangar
- 1435: Arrive back home
It’s still stunning to me – we went down to Wichita, had a half-day meeting, came home, and didn’t even use the full workday.
I am now spoiled to commercial air travel forever.
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"As I indicated in the first post in this series, I think authenticity is important, even indispensable in Christian communities. But it is not a sufficient rule of practice to tell us either how to act (because we’re being authentic) or how we shouldn’t (because doing a particular action wouldn’t be authentic).
Our rule of life is not who we are, but who we are being made to be in Christ, and the road he has led us on by which to get there: the way of the cross, which is the way of death, which is the formative narrative that determines what our life in community looks like."
I promise I won't start linking every post, but this series from Dr. J. R. Daniel Kirk is really good stuff. Quickly becoming a favorite blog of mine.
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Geof is upfront, as ever, about his struggles with mental illness. A good brother who needs our prayers.
Growing up in evangelical churches, the most I knew about the liturgical year was the weird dates that were printed in the bulletin at my grandparents’ Lutheran church: “Third Sunday of Pentecost” and things like that. I’ve learned more as time has gone along, but when the opportunity arose to review this book, I figured it was a good chance to learn some more.
The Liturgical Year comes from an unabashedly Roman Catholic perspective. Written by a Catholic nun, there are times when its obviously Roman biases show through, but on the whole it provides an evenhanded perspective on the year that appears to address both the Catholic and Protestant views fairly well. (There is one chapter dedicated strictly to Marian observances, but it’s relegated to the end of the book, after the basic discussion of the year.)
The Liturgical Year is split into 35 short chapters that work their way through the year, starting with the observance of Advent and Christmas, taking several chapters to discuss Lent and Holy Week, and addressing the “Ordinary Times” that are present around those observances. In general the book is written in a more flowery tone than I expected – at times I felt it suffered from too many fluffy words and not enough meat. But as a primer on the hows and whys of the liturgical year, it served its purpose well enough.
Disclaimer: My copy of the book was provided for free by the folks at BookSneeze.com in return for my publishing a review.
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"First, did you notice that our worship of God is given back-seat to our relationships with God’s children? Against our individualistic tendencies that see worship as a matter between me and God, or my heart alone before God, this passage says no, the quality of your community as a place that is living into the reconciled relationships that God himself establishes with us is our first priority."
Good good stuff from Dr. Kirk.
Last night Becky and I sat down to watch the second episode ( titled “Rewind”) of the Fox show Human Target. The first episode was fun in a cheesy action-thriller sort of way, so we decided to give it a continued try.
Back in high school, I had some friends whose dad was a submarine officer in the US Navy. They said it was unbearable to watch The Hunt for Red October around him because he spent the whole moving groaning at the inaccuracies it portrayed in the submarine. After watching this episode of Human Target, I think I now know how he felt. As an avionics systems engineer, the details of this in-air plot just drove me batty. Allow me to elaborate.
First, the plane is going down for no apparent reason. Yes, there’s a fire down in the fuselage, but that shouldn’t cause complete loss of control.
Second, they’ve gotta put the fire out, and apparently there is more wind flow over the top of the aircraft than the bottom (???? Totally bogus) so the solution is to fly upside down until the increased airflow puts the fire out. Are you kidding me?!? We’re not talking a fighter jet here, we’re talking a large airliner. While there is this rather famous video of Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston doing a barrel roll in a 707, look at how much altitude he loses just turning the thing over! There’s no way the airplane could stay airborne and upside down for long, much less the fifteen minutes or so that it does in this episode.
Third, while they’re flying along upside down, suddenly they can’t flip it back around to right-side-up because the on-board computer locked up. We’ll ignore the detail that they say the “flight management” computer locked up when, in reality, it’s the flight control computer that would help them fly the plane. Once the pilot diagnoses that it’s locked up, somebody asks if they can’t just reboot it. And of course the answer is no, they can’t. By this point I’m yelling at the tv screen. “OF COURSE YOU CAN REBOOT IT YOU IDIOTS! POP THE FREAKING BREAKER AND RESET IT AND YOU’LL REBOOT IN JUST A FEW SECONDS!!!” (Becky is not appreciating me too much at this point.) But apparently NONE OF THEM REALIZE THAT, since they then have to go on to…
Fourth, the amazing computer hacker on board decides she can somehow download the flight management software onto her laptop, patch the laptop into the aircraft system, and use it to control the plane. About the only thing that whole sequence gets right is that there are ethernet-based networks on modern aircraft. But it would be next thing to impossible to hack into the system to download the software, and COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE to then patch that laptop into the system. And why was she able to download the software right there in the (upside-down) cabin, but to patch it into the aircraft system, they had to go down to the avionics bay?
Fifth, once they got down to the amazingly-spacious avionics bay, they apparently were able to just unplug a standard RJ45 ethernet jack (and normal-looking ethernet cable) from the aircraft wiring and plug it into the laptop, and SHAZAM! it worked! What they ignore is that standard ethernet wiring and a plastic RJ45 jack would never pass aircraft environmental and vibration testing. All ethernet connections in an avionics system are routed through stout metal screw-on connectors, not secured with wimpy plastic clips.
Well, it’s the world of TV, which means that yes, everything worked out fine inside of an hour, the bad guys were caught, the good guys survived to fight another day, and the hero got in his wisecracks just before the credits rolled. (Oh, and fun side-note: two episodes of Human Target, two appearances by actors who had major roles in Battlestar Galactica. For whatever that’s worth in your geek scoring system.) Next time, I hope they just stay off the airplanes so I don’t have to deal with knowing too much about reality for my hour of entertainment.
I actually just sprained it bad playing basketball last night. Ouch!
