Moving Schedule

For those of you who are interested, here's the schedule for our move.

• Thursday, August 14 - My last day of work at Logos Bible Software
• Friday, August 15 - Move most of our stuff into a ReloCube
• Sunday, August 17 - Head out of town with our car packed to the gills (also our last day at Faith Reformed Church)
• Monday and Tuesday, August 18-19 - Yellowstone National Park
• Friday, August 22 - Arrive in Naperville at my parents' house
• Saturday, August 23 - Two fantasy football drafts
• Monday, August 25 - Move to Grand Rapids and get settled in at Calvin

So as you can see we have lots of planning to do. I haven't even started creating a mock draft for my two fantasy leagues!

Christians and Yoga

The other day I had an interesting talk with a guy at work regarding yoga. This guy stated that yoga isn't a religious thing and calling it spiritual is a matter of opinion.

Here's an interesting debate on CNN that covers the issue.



My readiness to jump onto the side of John MacArthur was tempered after a conversation with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Ben and Liza. Ben had a good point that there is some middle ground between fundamentalist truth claims and ultra-permissive lovey-doveyness. One of the important things to keep in mind here is not to condemn people who do yoga as automatically anti-Christian. I think MacArthur touches on that a little when he says that as a purely physical activity it's fine.

All that being said, this does show the hypocrisy of the New Age movement. The same people who criticize the church for it's focus on meaningless rituals are contorting their body into poses in the hope of gaining inner peace. The emergent church is founded on not being traditional or religious and yet they promote yoga, which is just as ritualistic as chanting, responsive reading or liturgical worship.

Stairway to Heaven or Just a Great Website?

If you've noticed my Facebook status lately you've seen that I've been doing lots of shopping online.

One site I highly recommend is slickdeals.net. I try to check slickdeals once a day and yesterday it paid off big time. I was able to score the "Complete Led Zeppelin" box set for $9.99. That's 165 tracks (10 albums plus some live stuff) for the price of one album on sale. I tried to spread the word quickly to some other people I know who would be interested but the price must have been a mistake because the deal was removed a few minutes after I bought it.

So make sure you check out the site. You never know what you'll find.

God Bless America!

It's the 4th of July! The day when you can't turn on the TV without running across a news program where people are spouting off on why they love the US of A. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to give my thoughts on the matter. If you disagree or think I'm being an idiotic American please comment.

1) I'm proud to live in the nation that created and protects modern democracy. When Europe was still ruled by kings and queens our forefathers had the visionary idea to create an elected government. Not only that but that government is led by a president who must be approved by the population every 4 years. These are amazing ideas considering the world in the late 18th century.

2) I love the idealism of the American people. While it's often driven by capitalism, Americans are truly optimistic people. What can we do to make a product better? What can we invent that makes life easier? How can we make movies, music and entertainment more enjoyable? I realize those ideas are derived from our European immigrants, but who really does this stuff better than the US? After all, we have Al Gore and he invented the internet. Beat that Japan!

3) Chuck Norris. (Yes, I added a period to that statement because his name is a complete sentence. Simply invoking the name of Chuck grammatically implies the verb and direct object "is the baddest dude ever.")

4) Hawaii. Disney World. Wrigley Field. Yellowstone. There's a lot of fun stuff to do in this country.

5) Patriotism. Is it stupid to say I am patriotic because I live in a patriotic country? Pam often comments on how much respect Americans pay to the flag. We love our flag and what it represents. Take a drive through any small town in the US today and the visible patriotism will send chills down your spine. That doesn't mean all other countries must bow at our feet. It just means we really like ours.

Spiritual EKG for the Presbyterian Church

Today I ran across an article at ChristianPost.com called Presbyterians Called to Face the Facts, Change.

One stat from that article jumped off my screen and I actually read it a couple times just to make sure I was understanding it correctly.

Only five churches of the nearly 11,000 in the denomination have grown every year for the past 10 years.

Wow! I realize it's hard for a church to grow every year for ten years but the odds have to be better than 1 in 2200. The article goes on to cite the palpable fear at the denomination's recent General Assembly. Some encouraging words regarding humility in the denomination were stated, but the article didn't point to a tangible change that would help the situation.

The article ended with a report on the changing attitudes of the Presbyterian church towards homosexuality. There is no direct correlation offered by the author, but I believe it's implied that the church's increasing acceptance of LGBT pastors is given as a possible solution to the declining attendance numbers. Pastor John Shuck of First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, Tennessee is quoted as saying, "LGBT candidates are ordainable NOW. Own it. Live into it."

Aside from my beliefs on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, isn't that just taking the easy way out? Instead of closely analyzing everything we do and returning to Scripture's picture of what the church should be, let's just ordain gays and maybe everyone will come back to our churches. Permissiveness is so much easier than taking a stand. When you stand firm in your beliefs you have to know what your beliefs are and it's likely you'll be tested, questioned and even ridiculed.

So what's my point? Mostly that I'm skeptical of a quick fix for pervasive problems like denomination-wide lack of membership. This is something our church is dealing with right now and I've seen the propensity to "hire the guy who will fix the problem" or "read the book that will change all our minds." Is it ever really that easy?