While I dont’ generate quite as much link traffic as, say, Geof does, I figure it might still be fun from time to time to give you some idea of the web links I’ve been following and reading. Then you, my intelligent, discerning, and thoughtful readers, can enjoy this Chris-approved list of goodness.

Spiritual/Theological/Church Links

• Monday Devotions – Confession [Worship Matters]
  Bob Kauflin gives us the text of a corporate confession of sin used at his church recently. It’s good.
• No Fetal Positions Allowed! [The Boneman]
  A reminder that the communion service should be a time of rejoicing in our salvation rather than a morose reflection on our own sin.
• Quit and See What Happens [internetmonk.com]
  Michael Spencer says there’s many folks that are too busy with church stuff, that should quit for a while. Boy did this hit home with me.
• Answering Greg Boyd’s Openness of God Texts [The Resurgence]
  John Piper deals with some of the texts most often championed by Open Theism.
• Evangelistic Worship [The Resurgence]
  This is the best post I’ve read on worship in a long, long time. The thoughts in here will reshape the way we think about and do worship at Noelridge.

Geeky Links

• Download of the Day: myFairTunes6 [Lifehacker]
  This nifty little app will strip the DRM information from iTunes downloads.
• Pop-up Potpourri: Perpetually In Beta [The Daily WTF]
  Gotta love the humor of these pop-up error messages.
• Hack Attack: Get More From Google Desktop [Lifehacker]
  I’m still torn on Google Desktop; it’s a great tool, but I’m just a little bit leery of a Google app searching through all the documents on my computer. Still, these are some great tweaks and ideas.

While I dont’ generate quite as much link traffic as, say, Geof does, I figure it might still be fun from time to time to give you some idea of the web links I’ve been following and reading. Then you, my intelligent, discerning, and thoughtful readers, can enjoy this Chris-approved list of goodness.

Spiritual/Theological/Church Links

• Monday Devotions – Confession [Worship Matters]
  Bob Kauflin gives us the text of a corporate confession of sin used at his church recently. It’s good.
• No Fetal Positions Allowed! [The Boneman]
  A reminder that the communion service should be a time of rejoicing in our salvation rather than a morose reflection on our own sin.
• Quit and See What Happens [internetmonk.com]
  Michael Spencer says there’s many folks that are too busy with church stuff, that should quit for a while. Boy did this hit home with me.
• Answering Greg Boyd’s Openness of God Texts [The Resurgence]
  John Piper deals with some of the texts most often championed by Open Theism.
• Evangelistic Worship [The Resurgence]
  This is the best post I’ve read on worship in a long, long time. The thoughts in here will reshape the way we think about and do worship at Noelridge.

Geeky Links

• Download of the Day: myFairTunes6 [Lifehacker]
  This nifty little app will strip the DRM information from iTunes downloads.
• Pop-up Potpourri: Perpetually In Beta [The Daily WTF]
  Gotta love the humor of these pop-up error messages.
• Hack Attack: Get More From Google Desktop [Lifehacker]
  I’m still torn on Google Desktop; it’s a great tool, but I’m just a little bit leery of a Google app searching through all the documents on my computer. Still, these are some great tweaks and ideas.

Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.

Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.

Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.

There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.

My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.

Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.

Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.

Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.

There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.

My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.

Last night I took the opportunity to visit Conversation Cafe, a discussion group at a local coffeehouse that is led by my pastor. The guest speaker for the night was Rick, the minister from the local Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. It was, to say the least, an interesting night.

Rick is an older single man who has a fascinating life story. He has at various times in his life been a New York City taxicab driver, a journalist, a lawyer, and a teacher, in addition to being a minister for the past 15 years. He shared some of his beliefs and perspectives on spirituality, and it was quite a grab bag. He is an agnostic, but chooses to believe that God exists. He is happy with belief in things that he can see, feel, touch, and quantify, but is really unwilling to make truth judgements outside of that experience.

Rick told us that UUs are “sin shy”; they would acknowledge that there is some human behavior that just seems “evil” and that we can’t explain any other way, but that for most human actions that seem to be “sin” there is some other more useful explanation for their behavior, be it conditioning, circumstance, or something similar. He told us that the UU church has no creed, which is “actually harder than having a creed”, because you have to figure things out for yourself. Each person at that church can define God to be whatever they want God to be.

There was a decent bit of discussion throughout the night, but I felt like on the key questions he either didn’t understand quite what we were asking, or was quite skilled at dodging them. I tried to ask about one major conflict I saw in his thinking; maybe I didn’t phrase the question well. But I was trying to ask this: in one breath you say that God is whatever you make him to be, that your observations and reason are the definers of truth and reality for you. But in the next breath you admit that you are human, with a finite understanding, uncertainty, and weakness. Isn’t there a conflict there? Doesn’t that make your “truth” weak and uncertain? Doesn’t that make God weak and uncertain? I’m not sure he really understood the question; basically he just agreed that yes, he is human, and uncertainty is part of the human condition.

My heart breaks for this man who is so close to understanding some things, but still so far away. He spoke very candidly about having, in years past, a drinking problem. And it frustrated him greatly, because he saw it as a “moral failure”, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. Thinking of it as a moral failure “wasn’t useful” and “didn’t take you anywhere”. So he associated with some folks who encouraged him to see the drinking problem as a sickness rather than a moral failure, and he decided to accept that “truth” since it was useful, and allowed him a path to move on. Rick is so close; if only his eyes were opened to see that he is right, that sin (aka “moral failure”) is a dead end, and that we as humans are stuck. If only he could understand that the reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to solve that sin problem. My prayer for Rick will be that he can come to faith in a God larger than his understanding, and know the grace that is greater than all our sins.

This weekend wasn’t too busy, but I wasn’t on the computer, so no blog updates.

Rebecca and I ran in the Solon Fund Run 5K on Saturday and did OK. I didn’t hit my goal of sub-30-minutes; I finished in 31:12. I’ll blame it on a 10 mph headwind and a long uphill the last half mile. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’m looking for another race to sign up for yet this fall. I’ll do a full post with pictures when I get the chance.

Watched a bunch of football over the weekend, the Hawkeyes won, setting up a bit showdown with Ohio State in a couple of weeks, but the Huskers couldn’t score the upset over USC. Not that I expected them too, but it would’ve been cool.

Now it’s Monday and back-to-work. I’m going to start working on some new stuff, though, so that should be interesting. Gotta brush up on my C++ coding skills – haven’t used them since school!

Oh, and I’m looking forward to next weekend – I’ll be heading up to Minneapolis along with Pastor Richard to the Desiring God 2006 National Conference. The list of speakers:

• David Wells
• Don Carson
• Voddie Baucham
• Tim Keller
• Mark Driscoll

And of course John Piper. I can’t wait.

This weekend wasn’t too busy, but I wasn’t on the computer, so no blog updates.

Rebecca and I ran in the Solon Fund Run 5K on Saturday and did OK. I didn’t hit my goal of sub-30-minutes; I finished in 31:12. I’ll blame it on a 10 mph headwind and a long uphill the last half mile. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’m looking for another race to sign up for yet this fall. I’ll do a full post with pictures when I get the chance.

Watched a bunch of football over the weekend, the Hawkeyes won, setting up a bit showdown with Ohio State in a couple of weeks, but the Huskers couldn’t score the upset over USC. Not that I expected them too, but it would’ve been cool.

Now it’s Monday and back-to-work. I’m going to start working on some new stuff, though, so that should be interesting. Gotta brush up on my C++ coding skills – haven’t used them since school!

Oh, and I’m looking forward to next weekend – I’ll be heading up to Minneapolis along with Pastor Richard to the Desiring God 2006 National Conference. The list of speakers:

• David Wells
• Don Carson
• Voddie Baucham
• Tim Keller
• Mark Driscoll

And of course John Piper. I can’t wait.

This weekend wasn’t too busy, but I wasn’t on the computer, so no blog updates.

Rebecca and I ran in the Solon Fund Run 5K on Saturday and did OK. I didn’t hit my goal of sub-30-minutes; I finished in 31:12. I’ll blame it on a 10 mph headwind and a long uphill the last half mile. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I’m looking for another race to sign up for yet this fall. I’ll do a full post with pictures when I get the chance.

Watched a bunch of football over the weekend, the Hawkeyes won, setting up a bit showdown with Ohio State in a couple of weeks, but the Huskers couldn’t score the upset over USC. Not that I expected them too, but it would’ve been cool.

Now it’s Monday and back-to-work. I’m going to start working on some new stuff, though, so that should be interesting. Gotta brush up on my C++ coding skills – haven’t used them since school!

Oh, and I’m looking forward to next weekend – I’ll be heading up to Minneapolis along with Pastor Richard to the Desiring God 2006 National Conference. The list of speakers:

• David Wells
• Don Carson
• Voddie Baucham
• Tim Keller
• Mark Driscoll

And of course John Piper. I can’t wait.

Jonah Goldberg holds the title of “Chris’s Favorite Columnist”, hands down. In days past, Peggy Noonan might have given him a run, but no longer. His columns these past few months have been just brilliant. And there’s another good one today on NRO. In it, Mr. Goldberg discusses possible outcomes if Democrats would take control of the House in the mid-term elections. He also notes that being the party in power isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be:

Republican control of the White House and Congress hasn’t resulted in lights being turned off in Cabinet agencies or enormous garage sales of office furniture. Instead, Uncle Sam is still looking like Marlon Brando at the end of his career: bloated, sweaty, and slow moving. The GOP has become a Brando-like parody of its former self, reading its lines about cutting government without plausibility or passion.

The rub of it, from a conservative perspective, is that Republican control of the House doesn’t equal conservative control. It may not seem that way to liberals who think Joe Lieberman is right wing, but from the vantage point of the conservative movement, GOP dominance has been an enormous disappointment — good judicial appointments and tax cuts not withstanding. Our hopeful joy upon the 1994 takeover of Congress was like finding a new pony by the Christmas tree. Now it’s more like finding it slumped over dead on top of the presents.

Good stuff. Go read the whole thing.

Well, my last training run before the Solon 5K on Saturday. I woke up before my alarm this morning (no small feat when the alarm is set for 5:10 am!) and headed out on my usual 3.2 mile course. It was a beautiful early morning, chilly and brisk, the sky bright, clear, and full of stars.

For not having run much the past two weeks, my times were ok:

Mile 1: 7:38. A nice brisk pace.
Mile 2: 9:59 (total: 17:37). Slowed a bit here, was starting to feel it by about the last 1/4 mile.
Mile 3: 10:38 (total: 28:16). That long hill the last quarter mile gets me every time.
Total time: 30:39. Didn’t quite get in under 30:00.

My goal for the 5k on Saturday is to get in under 30:00. Should be a fun test.