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Reformation Day sale on the Reformation Study Bible.

Get it for $15.17.

Regular price, $39.99.

Just for Fun

Some entertainment, in celebration of my 29th year.

Debating the Year of Living Biblically

Good looks = Bad theology. You know what they say, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife.” I’ll be looking for an ugly husband.

Election help. I matched with John Cox (who?), Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney (gag me), and Ron Paul (funny, feisty little man).

I’m half-done with midterms. I think I did well on the Systematic essays: a) What is the relationship between the NT Church and OT Israel, b) According to Clowney, what is the structure of the church, and c) What is the role of women in ministry? I’ll post my answers if I pass. :)

I finally came up with a paper topic for Gospels, though I haven’t started any research. I'd like to look at the role of suffering/persecution as the Church body and the implications of that for missions. Primarily, I would be looking at John 15:19-20, Matt. 5:10-12, Matt 25:40, and John 13:34-35, with significant support from the Epistles, and connecting both the suffering of Christ and the relationship between Israel and the Church in the gathering of nations. I will essentially be making the argument that supporting the indigenous and often suffering church in a global context is essential for the spread of the Gospel, and that ultimately, the call of the church is to suffer with our brothers and sisters.

And last but not least, all I’d really like for my birthday are some squash recipes that do not involve acorn squash with butter and brown sugar. Come on, people, be creative!

UPDATE: Squash recipes are all good, but on second thought, I'd really like a bb gun to shoot the #*%&$ squirrels that keep eating my snapdragons. Grrrr.

Ethical unease

I am settling into the new world of non-profit fundraising and research. I love my job. It is amazing to enjoy going to work each day. I am also in over my head in seminary. I put Hebrew first because I know my tendency with languages is to be overwhelmed and give-up. Thankfully, that's not the case so far. We'll see what the midterm says. I was encouraged when I was the only one in the class that caught a spelling error (in Hebrew) on a quiz. But as for Systematic and Gospels...

Back to the title topic. Today brought an interesting dilemma to the new work adventure. Being the development coordinator, I get to mess in everyone's business. I get to have an opinion on marketing, research, logos, everything down to how the receptionist answers the phone. Idea being that, as a non-profit, you bend over backwards to get folks to give you money. This is the part of my job that I hate. I hate asking people for money. I can't think about it like that. I prefer to talk of "partnerships" and "supporters" rather than "donors" or "clients." But, at the end of the day, it's my job to convince people to take out their checkbooks. I'm happy to do this only because I fully believe in the call of the organization; we bear the unique claim of aiding the suffering, global Church. (I'll write more about this later when I finish my paper for Gospels.)

So, we're a Christian organization that takes money from Christians and gives it to Christians around the world to help impoverished, persecuted or suffering Christians. On the whole, we make no distinctions along denominational lines. I know where my organizations stands, and I know where my individual coworkers stand on theological/doctrinal issues, and they are in agreement with my own.

However, the issue came up today of how far is acceptable to go to solicit funds from those with questionable theology. I'm not talking about differences between, say, Reformed Baptists and Reformed Presbyterians. I mean more like beyond Emergent and into the realm of Joel Osteen. The advertising in question wouldn't directly link us to anyone; but it would target a very theologically diverse crowd.

So, is this a necessary line to draw? Do we ask supporters if they adhere to the Westminster Confession before they give, or just gratefully take their money, send a (personalized) thank-you and pass it along to those in need? Is this, as Dr. G raised in class last night, the slippery slope of distinguishing the visible church from the invisible church?

Digests?

In Gospels, we've been tasked by Guy Waters to write a "digest" for each book assigned in class. I take it this was intended to capture the essence of the book, but I'm still a little fuzzy on the point of this exercise. It was not supposed to be a response or book review. And, we could do it in small paragraphs or in outline format. I opted for the outline.

However, outlining two 600-page books was not the simple process I thought it would be. In short, I now have 10-page outlines for Backgrounds of Early Christianity (Everett Ferguson) and Jesus and the Gospels (Craig L. Blomberg). But, I've not really read them nor did I retain anything. This was by far the most useless assignment I've done in seminary, and possibly in my entire graduate career.

See, my reading retention is so painfully poor that I make 3 x 5 index cards for every book or article I read. I started to do this with Ferguson, realized about 1/3 into the book that
I would never have enough time or space (10-page limit) to type it all, and proceeded to outline the rest based on subheadings and italicised points. Granted, I'm sure my index-card process could be more efficient, but I've got a reading and writing process that earned me one graduate degree and I'm not really keen on changing it all that much. I'm tempted to ask Professor Waters if I can just turn in my index cards for the next two books, or I'll never actually learn anything in this class. Well, that's not entirely true. From what I could tell of headings and subheadings, Waters is sticking pretty close to the books.

But I still don't have a paper topic and class starts in an hour and a half.