Tag: That Vision Thing

Ministry

You know, I’m beginning to dislike the word “ministry.”

I just finished a conversation with a fellow student in my Greek class, and she said to me,

> “You know, I think the Lord is calling me to minister to Koreans.”
“Well,” I said, “There certainly are a lot of Koreans in the area.”
“Do you know xxxx in our class, he’s Korean, and we’ve been driving to class together. Well he ministers at a Korean church.” (I nodded. There *are* a lot of Koreans in the area.) “And the other day I saw the movie [Seoul Train](http://www.seoultrain.com/), and it really touched my heart. And *then*, the school where I work told me they had someone to tutor who is Korean and doesn’t speak a word of English. So I’m thinking, Lord, what are you doing here? Eh?”

Of course, the amazing thing was that she managed to convey all this information, I think, in a single breath. But it’s the word “minister” that get’s to me sometimes. Continue reading “Ministry”

Christian Underground

WARNING: PIPE DREAM ALERT

I recently sent a note out with an updated email address to everyone on my address book (which was surprisingly *short*. If you didn’t get that email, and you want to be able to send me stuff, put a comment to that effect below and I’ll send you my new address). One of the results was that I’ve started getting email updates from my [mom’s](http://mingobird.blogspot.com/) friend Kerry Urbanski. If you don’t know who she is, that’s because you’ve never met her.

This got me thinking. Kerry’s a great writer, with a lot of good things to say, but she’s not particularly active on the web. She does a lot of stuff at her church and in her community; she writes articles and distributes them to friends. But she doesn’t have a weblog. Why? Because starting a weblog is still too tech-heavy for a lot of great writers. My mom only has a weblog because we forced her to, and the formatting’s still not so great on her site because Blogger and Outlook don’t play too nice. This makes me think that there are still a huge number of Christian writers out there who are off the web for all intents and purposes because they don’t have anybody to help them across the transition.

Which got me thinking. How about a multi-user weblog (like Xanga or Blogger) dedicated entirely to publishing quality lay Christian writers? Call it the “Christian Underground.” Support for technical and design issues would be supplied free of charge, with the understanding that the subject matter on each person’s blog would be “public” issues (religion, politics, and culture: yay; catblogging: boo). New blogs would have to be recommended by others in the community and qualified outsiders to limit the costs of said technical and design support.

Basically, the goal would be to have three limiters to zero in on the kind of blogs I’m thinkig of: lay Christians, Public issues, high quality writing. Lay Christians, because professional ministers seem to be able to get themselves in the public eye without too much help. Public issues and high quality writing, because there are plenty other free portals for the personal newsblog.

My original idea was just to call such a site the Charismatic Underground, because that’s what *I* am, and it’s what I miss the most, but a few minutes thought showed that was probably a little too narrow. However, it gave me the idea that we could perhaps include a tagging system where people could indicate their particular religious perspective (Evangelical-Epicsopal-High Church-Charismatic?), and so that people visiting the site could view a list of blogs according to different kinds of categories.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of limiters keeping me from trying out such an idea: It costs about $75 – $135 a year to run a site with a separate domain name. That’s money I ain’t got. It takes time to run tech-support for somebody else’s website. That’s time I ain’t got. The first problem could theoretically be solved by running carefully selected blog ads, and hoping for the right level of traffic, but it’s hard to imagine recruiting a volunteer webmaster for a site that doesn’t exist yet. I can imagine eventually recruiting a fill-in after I’d done the initial setup, but I don’t have time to do even that yet. Sigh.

Anyway, it’s still a great idea, right? Can anybody think of others they wish were blogging, who are being kept out by the technical details?

My Heart Hurts

I’m really, really, really tired of being in school. No, mom, I’m not having a mental breakdown, I’m just worn out. Have you ever read something that made you feel sick to your stomach? Make your heart ache? Well I have and rather recently too. I knew I was going to have some difficulty when my health law class got to “reproductive rights,” I just didn’t realize that it would make me feel physically ill.
Continue reading “My Heart Hurts”

Frightening Thought

> “Darling, has it ever occurred to you that we might be called to stay here?”

> “. . .”

> “It hasn’t occurred to you.”

> “No! I want to live in a place where we can afford to live in a house! Where we could afford to build a house. Where we… why?”

> “Well, it’s just that… if you have any missionary zeal at all, and you know God has called you to the United States, there are only two places to go.”

> “The West coast, and the Northeast.”

> “Yep. The middle part doesn’t need missionaries; they just need evangelists.”

I do have a little missionary zeal in me. I used to imagine how I would go about it if I were called to the Navajo Indians in 1807, or to Hawaii during the Second Great Awakening. But I’m called to minister in America and, except for on reservations and among foreign students, there’s no mission work left to be done. Then again, you should see this place. There are Christians here, and even more people who call themselves Christians, but are “beyond all that.”

So, if you have any missionary zeal at all, and you know you’re called to the Americas, what better place to come than here? I’m hardly saying I know I’m called to stay here (don’t cry for me yet, mother dearest!) but Lord, the fields are white!

Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics

Pres. Bush delivered a [great commencement speech](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050521-1.html) at Calvin College this weekend.

Two thoughts:

+ This is **exactly** what I’ve been trying to work toward.
+ Now how come we couldn’t get a guy like this to come speak at *my* commencement?

Actually, I know why. No community can extend itself very far beyond it’s own culture. Valerie’s commencement speaker was the president (or dean, I forget which) of the Charlotte branch of [Union Theological Seminary](http://www.union-psce.edu/), which is housed on the Campus of Queens University. UTS is a [PCUSA](http://www.pcusa.org/) Seminary, and I’m sure he gave a speech that was very moving to the modern liberal view, but it left something lacking for the evangelical Christian. On the other hand, Bush is evangelical, and it shows. He presents a worldview that allows for the individual, and calls for community which supports that which is right.

I think it was at my baccalaureate that it really clicked that I was probably in the wrong school, despite the wonderful wife I’ve acquired there. Continue reading “Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics”

Education

As the prospect of marriage approaches, I’m beginning to think more and more about children. Children are pretty important to me. In fact, there was a point I thought I might actually want children more than a wife! I’m not so far gone as that anymore, but I am convinced that, once you have them, raising those children properly should be the absolute highest concern in the way you order your life (it takes second place, of course, to loving and honoring God, but since raising your children right is pretty high up there on God’s list too, I won’t make much of a distinction).

Valerie and I have already addressed the questions of “how soon” and “how many” that seem so pressing in today’s society (the answers are “as soon as possible,” and “lots!”, respectively). But the question of how to educate them (which seems so… academic …to some people) has been bearing down on my mind. Because we moved so often when I was growing up, I have been through nearly every concievable kind of school. Hands down, homeschooling won. I don’t mean just that it was the most fun, but I genuinely think I got the most education in the least amount of time.

Valerie and I are confident that we’ll be in the best imaginable position to homeschool our kids: She’s a biology major who intends to get a medical doctorate. I’m working on my MDiv degree. She can cover the sciences while I look after the humanities. We’ll be great.

But as I hear more and more at church and work about how horrible the public school situation is, the more guilty I feel. Continue reading “Education”

Democracy is not broken

The will of the people has been served: Terri Schiavo is dead.

That sounds like a harsh statement, and it is. It’s intended to be. I didn’t want Terri to die. Nobody I knew personally wanted Terri to die. Some corrupt judge, overextending his power, determined that an innocent, debilitated woman should be put to death by removing her access to basic sustenance: by far the cruelest termination to a life currently practiced in the western world. There are crueler ways to end a life, but none of them are legal. Their perpetrators will not go unpunished. This judge will.

Nevertheless, the will of the people has been served. Elected representatives and state and federal exectutives passed laws and made noise, but were unwilling to take the final form of interference, and call in the military to enforce their will. 30 years ago, the National Guard was called upon to defend a girl’s right to go to a certain public school. This week, the National Guard was *not* called upon to defend a disabled woman’s right to life. The independence of the court was deemed more important than the life of Terri Schiavo.

Nevertheless the will of the people has been served.

Continue reading “Democracy is not broken”

On the Media

[S. M. Hutchens](http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/) on [Television](http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2005/03/the_other_catho.html):

> “If you are thinking that very, very few people do not watch television, you are right—that also has been our experience. But almost every household we have known that does not have a television is presided over by at least one Ph. D.—and invariably the doctorate is in a field that requires hard, skilled mental work in mastering languages other than one’s own, like the languages of math, physics, or ancient Mesopotamia. Not all doctor’s degrees are like this, you know.”

> “I have found that many people who have to maintain their minds at top form have an intuitive dislike of having them manipulated by the organs of the mass media, which they find not only stupid, but having a drug-like quality that does something they don’t like to the efficiency and quality of their own thinking. It’s hard to explain, but it’s an opinion I have found that people like us share.”

He also describes their decision not to have a TV in the house. Looks like [My mom](http://mingobird.blogspot.com) forgot to get the memo about the PhD. This guy just described my house growing up, motivations and reasoning included. Valerie and I will just have to make up the difference.

Hat tip: [TruePravda](http://www.jaredbridges.net/)