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Today I can no longer deny that I'm middle aged. I was born in what they call the summer of love, a year that includes these events:

• Canada turned 100
• Charlie Chaplin opened his last film
• Martin Luther King Jr. condemned the Vietnam war
• Expo 67 took place in Montreal
• Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu got married
• The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• The Rolling Stones appeared on the Ed Sullivan show
• The Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup (and haven't won since)
• The world's first heart transplant took place

A brand new MK II Ford Cortina would set you back $749 and a new home would have been $24,600. You'd bring home some $7,000 a year, pay 5¢ for a stamp, and pay 33¢ a gallon (9¢ a liter) at the pump.

This is what a computer looked like in those days. Of course, that computer didn't connect to the Internet because there was no Internet.

Man am I old. Oh well. Happy birthday to me.

Tim Keller has written convincingly about the importance of urban ministry:

More Christians should live long-term in cities. Historians point out that by A.D. 300, the urban populations of the Roman Empire were largely Christian, while the countryside was pagan. (Indeed, the word pagan originally meant someone from the countryside—its use as a synonym for a non-Christian dates from this era.) The same was true during the first millennium A.D. in Europe—the cities were Christian, but the broad population across the countryside was pagan. The lesson from both eras is that when cities are Christian, even if the majority of the population is pagan, society is headed on a Christian trajectory. Why? As the city goes, so goes the culture. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flow outward to the rest of society.

People who live in large urban cultural centers, occupying jobs in the arts, business, academia, publishing, the helping professions, and the media, tend to have a disproportionate impact on how things are done in our culture...

I have taken up the call of the late James Montgomery Boice, an urban pastor (at Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church) who knew that evangelical Christians have been particularly unwilling to live in cities. In his book Two Cities: Two Loves, he argued that evangelicals should live in cities in at least the same percentage as the general population. If we do not, we should not expect much influence in society.

It's easy to apply this to top-tier cities like New York and London. I live in Toronto, the city that Canada loves to hate. We have lots going for us but we're not really world-class - yet.

But check out this article:

Urban thinker Richard Florida says Toronto has a fresh energy that places it among the world's most powerful urban centres, and that's one of the reasons he's moving here.

Once a "third-tier" city at the level of Minneapolis, Toronto is now "one of North America's top five or 10 cities," among the ranks of such "second-tier" cities as Los Angeles and Chicago, Prof. Florida said...

...Florida firmly establishes himself as a booster of his new home, calling it "the most international city in the world," and saying it could one day compete with top-tier cities like New York and London.

Overstated? Maybe. But I'm becoming more convinced that Toronto is a strategic place, and I love being here. I think more of us need to unpack what people like Keller are saying in the context of Toronto.

Paul Metzger has a book coming out in November called Consuming Jesus:

Many Americans think that race problems are a thing of the past because we no longer live under the Jim Crow laws that once sustained overt structures of segregation. Unfortunately, says Paul Metzger, today we live under an updated version of segregation, through the subtle power of unchallenged norms of consumer preference.

Consumerism affects and infects the church, reinforcing race and class divisions in society. Intentionally or unintentionally, many churches have set up structures of church growth that foster segregation, such as appealing to consumer appetites. Metzger here argues that the evangelical Christian church needs to admit this fault and intentionally move away from race, class, and consumer segregation.

Challenging the consumerism that fosters ethnic and economic divisions and distorts evangelical Christianity, Consuming Jesus puts forth a theologically grounded call to restructure the church's passions and practices, transforming the evangelical imagination around a nobler, all-consuming vision of the Christian faith.

The publisher has kindly offered some copies to bloggers who would like to review the book on their blogs. If you're interested, then send me an email with your blog address and I'll give you the information you need.

Update: Thanks to all those who responded. Copies are no longer available.

I hate Apple...my MacBook Pro's hard drive has failed and it's less than a year old. It's in for repair and it won't be back until the week is almost over.

I love Apple...thanks to SuperDuper! I have an up-to-date mirror of the failed drive on an external disk. I just plugged it into Charlene's iMac, booted from the external drive, and I've been working as if it's my computer all day.

Can't figure out what to think about this crazy company.

Last May, Charlene came home shaken up. A few blocks away, she stopped to yield to oncoming traffic in a yield lane and was rear-ended. The other driver (in a BMW SUV) took off without exchanging contact information and other details.

Usually we try to be pretty reasonable in these circumstances. If the damage is minor enough, we often take the information but live with the damage. In this case, Charlene's neck was hurting and we were a bit disturbed that the other driver had fled. So we reported the accident to the police, and the other driver was charged with three offenses.

The case finally went to court on Thursday and Charlene was subpoenaed as a witness. I was hoping for a plea bargain so we could all go home, but no such luck. The other driver pleaded not guilty, and Charlene was called to the stand. If you've ever given testimony in a court, you know how intimidating it can be, especially with the dependent sitting five feet away whispering loudly, "That's the first lie!" She eventually took the stand, swore on a Bible, and told a version of the events that's significantly different from what Charlene remembers.

The Justice of the Peace eventually asked her to leave the room because she wouldn't stop talking throughout the trial.

In the end, one charge was dropped, one charge was dismissed, but the defendant was found guilty of one charge with a $200+ fine and six demerit points. Charlene had her day in court and walked away glad to be done with the whole experience.

We hope not to be in traffic court - even as a witness - for a very long time.

Michael Spencer writes about a familiar scene:

I just spent ten minutes reading something I’ve read/heard hundreds of times before: an established, traditional church, experiencing some signs of aging, goes through a process diagnosing its problems, developing/selling a plan for the future and asking the congregation to work with the leadership to bring the church through a period of decline into a future of growth and prosperity.

In those plans are predictable words: Plans. Consultants. Marketing. Children. New Staff. New facilities. New families. Communication. Outreach. Programs. Growth.

We know what normally happens:

With new staff, a good plan, better facilities, more marketing, we will prosper. We need to work harder and do more. We need programs and outreaches and visibility. It’s always worked. It will work again.

Spencer identifies a problem with this approach:

Toronto icon "Honest Ed" Mirvish died last week. Mirvish rose from poverty to become a successful businessman and a patron of the arts and a city builder.

I found this quote from Mirvish interesting from someone who knew both poverty and wealth. He said this about making piles of dough:

"I don't think it's that important once you're not hungry. After a while, you're nothing but a caretaker or a custodian."

Profound and reminds me of a Proverb I've read a few times - "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread." Wise words.

We're back from two absolutely wonderful weeks at Killbear Park near Parry Sound. The weather was colder than normal, and we had a couple of nights of real big storms, but we had a great time.

Just to prove that we have piled our Vibe with more stuff than is reasonable, I offer you this picture.

I think we will have to do some different choices as our kids get older. Two dogs, four of us, and all that luggage in this car is starting to be a stretch.

I'm closing the shutters (or at least the comments) on this site. We're off for a bit of camping. The extended forecast has rain and thunderstorms every day but I'm hoping they're wrong. I'm sure we'll have a good time.

See you when we get back!

My namesakes keep getting me in trouble. This section from the book Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation is also not about me:

It's reported that several guests at last Saturday night's superposh "Romantic Semantic" soirée at the Hollywood home of Benjamin and Betty Brackets...complained of neck strain the next day, caused, we assume, by pretending not to be watching the passionate goings-on in the ivy- covered gazebo between Darryl Dash and Simone Semicolon (who, sources tell me, have just signed on to star together in the sure-to-be-smashing upcoming film, Grammarcy Park).

Scary. And also nothing to do with me. Teaches one not to do vanity searches.

Nine years ago, I started as pastor of Richview. My daughter was three. I didn't have a son yet. We were young and I had more hair and was skinnier too.

We've been through a lot together. God has used Richview to shape my life in all kinds of ways. It's home for us. These people are my family.

Some friends have been writing about the things they love about their church at my friend Paul's blog. Ken, one of my favorite pastors, submitted one about his church the other day. I've also written one and I think it may appear at Paul's blog tomorrow. Hope so!

I can't believe it's been nine years. Thanks, Richview, for your grace and love. I'm looking forward to what's coming next.

I forgot to mention what happened to me a couple of weeks back.

We were getting ready to do our roof. I was alone on the roof the first day stripping some shingles when I saw a delivery truck pull up. From the roof it looked like flowers.

At first I thought that someone had anticipated the inevitable and had sent me a "Get well from your fall" arrangement, or even a "Deepest Sympathy" arrangement for Charlene. Turns out it was an amazing fruit arrangement that tasted as good as it looked:

The card said something like, "Cool fruit for a hot day." It's the closest thing I've experienced to the infamous drive-by fruiting of Mrs. Doubtfire. It was amazing.

I have really good friends.

From Macleans.ca:

Internationally, Canada's level of contentment is almost off the charts, as measured over the past two decades in the World Values Survey. In 2000, the Canadian edition of the survey clocked in with an astounding 96 per cent feeling of happiness. To put that in a global context, one chart in the survey plots international levels of civil liberties, political rights, happiness and satisfaction on a vertical and horizontal axis. The calculation leaves Canada in the upper right corner of the graph, among a tiny cluster of elites, like Sweden, the U.S. and Australia. To be Canadian is to be born holding the deed to Park Place. "Canada is the envy of the world," says Byers. "We have the eighth-largest economy on the planet with only about 32 million people, a remarkable situation. We have the second-largest chunk of real estate, with vast natural resources. And add on a functioning universal health care system, which, I don't know about you, but it makes me feel secure."

As Greg Lyle, the pollster, put it as he finished plowing through the tens of thousands of numbers that measured for Maclean's the buoyant national mood on this 140th birthday. "If we weren't happy," he said, "who would be?"

I won't even mention that the poll says that Canadian Evangelicals are the most satisfied (69%) with their sex lives out of any religious group including atheists.

Happy Canada Day!