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I don't know how it happened, but somehow we got old enough to have a daughter graduate from Grade 8. That's right, we now have a daughter who is about to enter high school. Scary.

I have mixed feelings about all the graduations that take place these days - graduating from kindergarten, grade 6, etc. But this was a bit of a milestone, and we had fun the other night watching her enjoy the occasion.

One of the highlights was hearing one of the teachers use a poem Christina had written to end her speech. With Christina's permission, here's the poem she wrote to mark the end of her time at Quest Alternative School.

reflect
upon the waters
in which I've traveled,
where I've been

I just finished
not a quest
but a part of the journey

it is not the end
but the end of the beginning
there is still a ways to go
but I've finished
being a curious wide eyed kid
I am making a transition
to a ever wondering teenager

I am making the transition
past elementary
past that small island
onto the next stage of my life
my journey
my quest

A part of my heart
will stay at the island
will stay in my childhood
will stay at this tiny school
no matter how far I travel
how much longer I have to go

I am prepared to move on
to face the next part of my quest
my life, my all
but I still shed a tear
at the thought of leaving,
the thought of each friendship here
might slowly fade

but I still have the knowledge
to move through out my journey
and carry on my quest
this is not the end
but the end of the beginning

Sometimes I get pretty excited by a book in the same way that I get excited about a movie that's only worth watching once. Other times I keep returning to it over and over because there's so much there. Case in point: The Heart of a Servant Leader by Jack Miller.

I reviewed this book back in January, and I've thought about it many times since then. I just pulled it out again and man, do I need to read it regularly. I find it challenging and encouraging at the same time. It's one of those books that I would include as a must-read for any pastor if I had the power (and we're all glad I don't). I think I'm going to pull it out and keep it beside my bed.

If you haven't read this book yet, get it. It'll be good for your soul.

My latest column at Christian Week:

The church I pastor is trying to become more outwardly focused. Sometimes it helps to learn from examples, so a group of us traveled a short distance to one of the most outwardly focused churches we know: Sanctuary Ministries in downtown Toronto.

Sanctuary is more than a church. It's a ministry "that seeks to establish and develop holistic, inclusive and healthy community." They live in a neighborhood that's a little different from ours, one "plagued with homelessness, drugs, prostitution, unemployment and AIDS." Though it's not only a church, Sanctuary has the gospel at its core. "This Sanctuary is a gospel community at its heart, devoted to living out the good news that Jesus is God and Saviour," their website says. "There really isn't anything radical or new about it. It's just simple, orthodox Christianity at work."

I just posted on Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and his view of what the church needs to pull out of its slump. "The church was to advance, not by approximating to the world, but rather by representing in the world the true life and privilege of the children of God. The fundamental need was for the church to recover an understanding of what she truly is."

Now Tullian Tchividjian has a great post that reinforces this thought. Tullian quotes Sinclair Ferguson:

Doesn’t Jesus teach us here [John 17:20-23] that His single greatest evangelistic agency is the church? And notice –I think this is significant –not the church simply as a random collection of individuals who have been converted, but the church as a new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, and community, and joy, and sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ among His people.

That’s the reason, you know, in the New Testament there’s hardly any instruction whatsoever about how to be a witness. And by contrast, in our evangelism manuals all the emphasis lies on ‘How can you as an individual be a witness?’ and ‘Here are the questions you need to learn to ask.’ Now what’s that a sign of? That’s a sign of the bankruptcy of the church, because when the church is full of the power of the Holy Spirit what happens is what Simon Peter describes in 1 Peter, chapter 3–that you’re in a situation that you need to be ready to give an answer for the hope that’s in you.

When the church fails to be the church, individual Christians need to learn how to ask questions that will make ungodly people think about godly things. But when the church is the church, the people of God simply need to answer the questions that the very character of the church is prompting the world to ask.

more

It's much harder actually. Becoming a counter-cultural community is a lot more work than running a program. It's also easier since it's much more organic and an overflow of who we are.

By the way, if you don't subscribe to Tullian's blog, you should check it out.

I've really been enjoying Iain Murray's biography, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939. Even though I'm reading about things that took place a century ago, it's striking how little things have changed.

Take this sermon by Lloyd-Jones, preached in March 1924. You may or may not agree with Lloyd-Jones, but it sounds an awful lot like a critique you could hear today. You'll notice that Lloyd-Jones was often confrontational in his approach. More on that some other time.

We get endless sermons on psychology, but amazingly few on Christianity. Our preachers are afraid to preach on the doctrine of the Atonement and on predestination. The great cardinal principles of our belief are scarcely ever mentioned, indeed there is a movement on foot to amend them so as to bring them up to date. How on earth can you talk of bringing these eternal truths up to date? They are not only up-to-date, they are and will be ahead of the times to all eternity.

As I say, you can disagree, but there's no doubt that the issues he mentions are still ones we're talking about today. This could have been preached at the T4G Conference a couple of months back.

Or check out this sermon, from 1927 I think:

We seem to have a real horror of being different. Hence all our attempts and endeavors to popularize the church and make it appeal to people...The man who only comes to church or chapel because he likes the minister as a man is of no value at all, and the minister who attempts to get men there by means of that subterfuge is for the time being guilty of lowering the standard of truth which he claims to believe. For the gospel is the gospel of salvation propounded by the Son of God himself. We must not hawk it about in the world, or offer special inducements or attractions, as if we were shopkeepers announcing an exceptional bargain sale...

Spectacular stuff. I can almost hear Eugene Peterson or even Michael Horton in these comments.

I was reading today about his first pastorate. The church was in decline and people wanted to see how Lloyd-Jones would tackle the problem. They guessed it might be by starting a new program. Lloyd-Jones didn't seem to rely too much on programs though. Murray writes:

Dr. Lloyd-Jones had nothing to say about any new programme. To the surprise of the church secretary he seemed to be exclusively interested in the purely 'traditional' part of church life...The church was to advance, not by approximating to the world, but rather by representing in the world the true life and privilege of the children of God. The fundamental need was for the church to recover an understanding of what she truly is.

That last sentence is great.

By the way, I got reading about the Doctor (as Lloyd-Jones is often called) because Tim Keller mentions him so much. I'm really enjoying the book. A good biography is always refreshing.

Tonight I'm the guest at a coffee house for international students at York University. Students have submitted a lot of good questions for me to answer as a pastor. Some examples:

• Why are there so many denominations of Christianity?
• Why did the earthquake happen in China?
• How can we know if the Bible is true and is from God, not just fiction and superstition?
• Is the Bible in conflict with science?

And many more.

Should be interesting. If you're the praying kind, pray for me tonight.

From CTV:

It looks like the Mats Sundin era with the Toronto Maple Leafs might be about to end.

The Maple Leafs have given the rival Montreal Canadiens permission to speak with their captain, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

Not happy. Any team but the Habs would be OK.

What Wordle did with the words on my home page. Cool idea.

Here is this coming Sunday's sermon:

via

If you were to ask me to give a definition of a Christian I should say that he is one who, since believing in Christ, feels himself to be the happiest man in the world and longs for everybody else to be equally happy! (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quoted in D.M Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years)

If you are in the Toronto area and enjoy discussing theology over a cold drink, then join us tonight for theology pub.

Place: Sarah’s Café and Bar, 1426 Danforth Ave. (at Monarch Park Ave., west of Coxwell) - phone 416-406-3121

Time: 7:00 until we're done

Topic: We'll be discussing An Evangelical Manifesto. What can we learn from the manifesto? Is it just about positioning evangelicalism in the public eye, or is it calling us to real change?

Hope you can make it.

I've long had a theory that the most effective pastors are ones we'll never hear anything about. It's hard to believe this in a day of celebrity pastors and megachurch conferences, but our values are so far out of line with God's that I'm sure we'll be surprised one day at how God's estimation of things is different from ours.

more at my book blog

One of the problems with Christian ministry is that everyone is incompetent. Nobody - pastor, elder, teacher, leader - can transform a life, never mind transform a whole community of people.

I was thinking of this as I read D.A. Carson's account of his father's life, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. Carson writes, "So many aspects of ministry demand excellence, and there are not enough hours in the day to be excellent in all of them." It's easy to see why many pastors struggle with feelings of inadequacy.

Carson's father struggled with a perfectionistic streak. He struggled with "self-doubt, guilty conscience, sense of failure...and growing frustration with apparent fruitlessness." I found it sobering to read this part of the book. "There is no hint in his journals of the proper place of rest, of pacing himself, of Jesus' words, 'Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.'"

Reflecting on this, and some of the same of the inadequacy he senses in his own life, D.A. Carson writes:

There are gospel ways of tackling this problem more hopefully...I cannot allow [discouragement] to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the gospel of grace, and God accepts us because of his Son. I must learn to accept myself not because of my putative successes but because of the merit's of God's Son. The ministry is so open-ended that one never feels that all possible work has been done, or done as well as one might like. There are always more people to visit, more studying to be done, more preparation to do. What Christians must do, what Christian leaders must do, is constantly remember that we serve our God and Maker and Redeemer under the gospel of grace. Dad's diaries show he understood this truth in theory, and sometimes he exulted in hit...but quite frankly, his sense of failure sometimes blinded him to the glory of gospel freedom.

Profound words, and good ones for us to read whenever we feel discouraged by our own performance.

One of the most encouraging books I've read recently is D.A. Carson's book Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, a book about Carson's father, a church planter in Quebec. Carson describes a period of crisis that took place in the 1940s involving T.T. Shields, a gifted pastor who became increasingly autocratic. Carson's father was caught in the crossfire of the resulting controversy. He lost his salary, went into debt, and found his integrity questioned by powerful people through no fault of his own.

Tom Carson had every reason to be angry, yet his children never heard him complain. It was only twenty years later that D.A. Carson learned what happened to his father in a course on Canadian Baptist history. Tom Carson acted with such integrity in the crisis that the lecturer commented, "One of the first things I want to see when I get to heaven is Tom Carson's crown."

Carson asked his father why he hadn't said anything about this crisis to his children. His father replied:

There were two reasons. First, you were children of the manse, and although you have seen the outworking of the gospel, you have also seen more than your share of difficult and ugly things, and we did not think it wise to expose you to this history when you were young. Second, Marg and I decided we needed to protect our own souls from bitterness. So we took a vow that neither of us would ever say an unkind thing about T. T. Shields. And we have kept our vow.

Carson's sister writes:

As I look back on life with Mom and Dad, perhaps the one thing I recall most vividly is the memory that I don’t have. Try as I might, I cannot recollect one time when either of them spoke negatively about another person. Although Mom was an extremely astute judge of character, her analyses were well seasoned with grace and the latent potential for redemption.

This is incredible given the volatility of the situation. I could learn from this.

I recently had a chance to ask Philip Nation and Ed Stetzer some questions about their new book Compelled by Love. Philip is a church planter in the Atlanta area. Ed is an author, professor, and missiologist. You can find out more about the book at compelledbylove.com.

Darryl: This is the first book I've seen that ties missional living to love. We tend to focus on how to live missionally, but you're taking us to why. Do you sense that the biggest factor keeping us from missional living is motivation?

Ed: I don't know if it is the "biggest" factor, but it is one of the more significant factors. It seems like many of the missional books are theoretical and philosophical. Most ministry books are "how to" books. We through the time was right for a book about the heart of ministry, but to build it around a missional theme.

Darryl: How is this book different from what is currently being given to church leaders through conferences and the surrounding literature?

Ed: I have the privilege of being around a lot of the leaders who are speaking and writing and I would not want to say anything negative about their ministries. Compelled by Love is meant to add another dimension to what is being said and written concerning Christian living. Hopefully, it is a tool that a leader can use to take what they hear at a church planting or missional conference and translate to the average Christian in their church.

Ed Stetzer is Twittering away at the Southern Baptist Convention this week, but I managed to get an interview with Ed and Philip Nation about their new book Compelled by Love. I reviewed the book here a short while ago.

I'll have the interview with them posted in the morning.

The Spring 2007 issue (PDF) of Ockenga Connections, put out by Gordon-Conwell Seminary, has a great article on churches and mission statements.

The article describes the problems with mission statements, and it suggests a better way: for the church to seek, "with great intentionality, the character and behavior God has laid out clearly in Scripture, and to bring the qualities of character and behavior to memory through worship, teaching, and personal interaction." The article quotes Eugene Peterson's Working the Angles - always a good thing - and includes some thoughts that need to be repeated every time a church begins a vision process:

Intend that the priority in church life is character and spiritual health - not program and organization. There is not much point in having the latter if the former isn't present...

Think first of the church as the people of God, rather than as an organization defined by programs and goals. Then think of those experiences that are necesssary for the maturing and development of all the people of God, including the children...

Church as a corporation is not a complete expression of the church...Scripture is not clear on the types of organization that should characterize a church. The Scripture is, however, very clear about the character and behavior that should characterize the people of God. This is what must not be lost in any planning process.

This article is a welcome change from what we normally read about churches and mission statements.

The question behind Preaching to a Post-Everything World is simple: "Could I now reach who I once was?" Zack Eswine of Covenant Theological Seminary wants the answer to be yes.

Until we remember that God drew us to himself and nourished us before we even knew where to find the book of Exodus in the Bible or that such things as Arminianism and Calvinism even existed, we will withhold from others the same mercy that was required for us to learn what we now know.

To reach others in a post-everything world, Eswine argues that we need "preachers who understand biblical exposition in missional terms." How do we become this type of preacher?

more at my book blog

From Francis Schaeffer:

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who - with God's help and in the power of the Holy Spirit - is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. (Pollution and the Death of Man)

The latest issue of Ockenga Connections from Gordon-Conwell has arrived, and the lead article is on Stealing Sheep. It's written by William Chadwick, who authored the book Stealing Sheep: The Church's Hidden Problems of Transfer Growth.

In found the article to be very disturbing. Some of his points:

• The Church Growth Movement, which has spawned Mega- and Meta- churches, has not helped the conversion growth rate of churches.
• Transfer growth is an oxymoron, because there is no net growth within the Kingdom. "There are no new converts, no baptisms, no expansion of God's knowledge in the world, and no salvation fruit from this practice...Individual churches can grow through transfer growth, yet because there are no conversions, this growth produces a flat line in the 'Kingdom count."
• Numbers have become the "obsessive focus of the church." The two most important numbers are attendance and offering. "When these two areas become the standards by which we measure success, church staffs are pressured into developing programming that focuses on positively increasing these benchmarks. Conversion growth charts poorly; transfer growth produces the desired result...That we grow becomes more important than how we grow."

Chadwick concludes, "Stealing sheep has compromised our mission."

I'm ordering the book and hope to review it.

If Chadwick is right, then many of the churches that look successful are succeeding only in drawing the already converted. This turns church into a shell game, and transforms Christians into consumers. His research has huge implications for churches and how we think of the Church Growth Movement.

In a way, there's nothing really new here - but if we take what Chadwick says seriously, the implications are huge.

If you haven't looked at the whole paradigm of sin as idolatry, then you really need to do so. It's transformative stuff. All of a sudden you begin to see the sin beneath the sin, as Keller says. You begin to discover that sin goes a lot deeper than you normally think. It's getting meaning and identity from someone or something else than God.

Someone's defined ungodliness as "finding fulfillment outside of God, which leads me to commit endless sins of the heart." Sin is not always the pursuit of bad things; it's inordinate affection for good things.

As I've been thinking about pastoral envy, I've come to realize how easy it is to find meaning and fulfillment in pastoring and the church. This means that ministry can become an idol. When it's going well, then I feel good about myself. When it's not going well, my identity is crushed. Pastoral ministry can become an idol and take the place of God.

Spurgeon used to say that we shouldn't save souls to save our own soul. That doesn't make sense until you realize that it's possible to engage in ministry not for the glory of God and the good of others, but to fill some hole in our heart. I've heard Tim Keller talk about reading Romans 1:17, "The righteous shall live by faith," realizing that he had been seeking his own justification not through faith in Christ's work, but through his preaching. He was being his own functional Savior. We often make the same mistake, finding our self-worth in our ministries rather than Christ.

The only way to prevent ministry from becoming an idol is to find our identity in Jesus rather than in the church.

The prideful person is obsessed with comparisons, always measuring himself/herself against others. The proud person finds his identity in relation to someone he thinks of as a lesser (which encompasses just about everyone). The humble person finds his identity in relation to someone he knows is greater: Jesus! (Sam Storms - via)

Today's guest on Steve Brown Etc: Tim Keller. You can download the episode here.

There's only one true religion and despite all the pain and suffering in the world, there is a loving God...who will send many of us to rot in Hell for all of eternity. You've got to be a bigoted idiot to believe that stuff, don't you?

Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and reasoning to explain how faith in the Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity and deep compassion.

Sin often takes something good and turns it into an idol, or it takes our desire for what is good and twists it. Yet underneath the sin is a legitimate longing. We try to fulfill that longing in illegitimate ways, or we turn what we long for into an idol and value it more than we value God.

Underneath pastoral envy is something good: a desire for the church to be all that we long for. When pastors envy other churches, this longing is twisted into something evil. It can turn our pastoral ministry or even a local church into an idol. This destroys us.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh,
but envy makes the bones rot.
(Proverbs 14:30)

If you struggle with church envy - and it's not just an issue for pastors - then it's worthwhile to step back and acknowledge that we're really longing for something good, something that will only be realized in eternity: the perfect church. This longing is good, but let's not allow it to become envy for other churches here and now which will never measure up to the church that we long for.

In a sermon on envy, Tim Keller tells the story of J.R.R. Tolkien. He and C.S. Lewis decided to write fiction they way they thought it should be written. Lewis kept producing book after book. Meanwhile, Tolkien labored over one book and never felt satisfied.

One night Tolkien had a dream about a man named Niggle. Niggle is an artist who paints a picture of a great tree, but is never satisfied. Before he can finish the painting he dies. On the train to heaven he sees the tree that he had been trying to paint. The tree he sees is the true realization of his vision, not the flawed and incomplete form of his painting.

Niggle was never satisfied with the tree he tried to paint while on earth, just as we'll never be satisfied with the church here on earth. But our longing for church to be more will one day be realized. The church we long for is not the church down the street; it's the church we'll be part of one day. That's the church we long for.

I'm preaching on envy this Sunday. Jonathan Edwards defined envy as "a spirit of dissatisfaction with, and opposition to, the prosperity and happiness of others as compared with our own." Envy has historically been listed as one of the seven deadly sins. It's hard to identify in oneself, and unlike many of the other deadly sins, it doesn't even give a quick hit of pleasure before the negative side kicks in.

As I've preached this message to myself, I've been thinking about envy as an occupational hazard for pastors. It's very easy to be dissatisfied with the prosperity of other churches, especially in comparison to what we may be experiencing.

The story is told of a monk lived in a wilderness cave. He was known far and wide for holiness, so much so that his reputation reached even to hell itself. So the devil took three of his most effective demons with him to tempt the monk out of his godliness. They found the monk sitting at the mouth of his cave, a serene look of contentment on his face. The first demon planted in his mind the temptation of great power, with visions of glorious kingdoms. But the monk's face remained serene. The second tempter planted in the monk's mind the temptation of great wealth, with visions of gold and silver and prosperity. But still the monk's face remained serene and contented. The third demon planted in his mind the temptation of sensuous pleasure, with visions of beautiful women. But the monk's face remained quiet and godly.

Annoyed, the devil barked, "Step aside, and I will show you what has never failed." He strolled up beside the monk, leaned over, and whispered into his ear, "Have you heard the news? Your classmate Makarios has just been promoted to bishop of Alexandria." The face of the monk scowled.

When a pastor hears of another church in town that's doing really well, it's easy to become envious. Tomorrow I'm going to argue that it's not entirely wrong to be envious in the right way. But as long as we are, as Edwards says, dissatisfied with and opposed to the other church, we're in deep trouble. The scary thing is that we often aren't even aware of envy even as we're experiencing it.

More to come.

Say it isn't so! 680 News reports:

Toronto - The hockey song Canadians have been humming to since 1968 on the CBC, and is as recognizable as the national anthem, may be cancelled, according to reports.

The CBC has been paying $500 to the composer of the theme song every time it is played on Hockey Night in Canada, but the licensing agreement reportedly ended Wednesday night...

The CBC has reportedly told the composer that it's no longer interested in paying the fee, and will move in another direction.

On the positive side, the Leafs haven't won the Cup since this theme has been in use. Maybe this is our chance.

Last night I read a section from D.A. Carson's book The Cross and Christian Ministry:

It is possible to "build the church" with such shoddy materials that at the last day you have nothing to show for your labor. People may come, feel "helped," join in corporate worship, serve on committees, teach Sunday school classes, bring their friends, enjoy "fellowship," raise funds, participate in counseling sessions and self-help groups, but still not really know the Lord. If the church is being built with large portions of charm, personality, easy oratory, positive thinking, managerial skills, powerful and emotional experiences, and people smarts, but without the repeated, passionate, Spirit-anointed proclamation of "Jesus Christ and him crucified," we may be winning more adherents than converts. Not for a moment am I suggesting that, say, managerial skills are unnecessary, or that basic people skills are merely optional. But the fundamental nonnegotiable, that without which the church is no longer the church, is the gospel, God's "folly," Jesus Christ and him crucified.

This quote haunts me. I have dozens of books on my shelf that focus on getting people to come, join, and feel helped. Most of these books talk about managerial, leadership, and people skills. Very few of them talk about the cross the same way that Paul did as the center of ministry. At best they assume a cross-centered focus, but here's the thing: we can't assume this anymore. It has to be clear.

I attended a seminar a few weeks back on measuring a church's effectiveness. It wasn't all bad, but very little of it measured the church in light of 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, which in the end will be the only evaluation that matters.

I'm haunted by this because it's so central and yet so easily missed. I speak from my own experience. We need growing and effective churches, but the place to begin is not with technique but with the cross.

(By the way, a book that captures this well is From Embers to a Flame, which I reviewed a few weeks ago.)

I first came across Tim Keller a few years ago. Since then I've grown to appreciate his preaching, writing, and leadership.

You may think you know a lot about Tim Keller. His profile is rising, and his book The Reason for God was a New York Times bestseller. But here are some little known facts:

Evidently he is running for Senate and held a party last night in New Mexico.

He's also known as "the guy that killed the cork" in the wine industry. Amazing. Is there anything he can't do?

Then this: evidently he even goes well with Eric Clapton + AC/DC.

I haven't seen these facts show up on Steve McCoy's Tim Keller page yet, but I'm waiting.

Five days a week in the gym, in the car, and sometimes when doing chores around the house, I have my iPod plugged in. I don't listen to music nearly enough, and it's the fault of the following people. I find their sermon podcasts genuinely helpful.

• Redeemer - This is the only preaching I subscribe to outside of iTunes, although I'm hoping they make the switch one day. Tim Keller and friends are always worth listening to.
• New City Church - Tullian Tchividjian's recent series on Jonah was outstanding.
• Imago Dei - Rick McKinley's crowd is different from mine, but Rick is always solid and he occasionally blows me away.
• Steve McCoy - Steve is a good example of someone who is currently engaged in church revitalization, plus he's a good guy.

Some new ones I've been listening to lately:

• Sojourn Community Church - A church that's really taken off in Louisville, Kentucky
• The Village Church - I'd heard of Matt Chandler, but it wasn't until Steve McCoy mentioned them that I began to listen to his preaching.

I also subscribe to the following, although I don't always get to listen to the entire messages:

• Mars Hill Seattle - I occasionally check out what's happening there.
• The Meeting House - Bruxy is a very good teacher. Different theology than mine, different approach, and different crowd, but I love his teaching.

Are there any that you're listening to that I should check out?

Garage Sale

Yesterday's garage sale at Richview was a phenomenal success. I have to admit being very nervous when I realized the sale would be moved indoors due to weather, but in the end things worked out better. We made about three times what we did last year. So far the total is around $9,800 and climbing. This money is going to be used for water projects in Guatemala through Living Water International, as well as to send some of our youth to help out there or in some other country on a short-term trip.

There are lots of individual stories to tell about the sale, but the highlight for me was seeing the number of people who gave tons of energy and time to making this happen. God answered our prayers; what an amazing day. More pictures here. Thanks to our Junior and Senior High kids and leaders for making this happen.

Crash in Tegucigalpa

Speaking of short-term trips, there was a crash on Friday at the airport in Tegucigalpa that Charlene and I flew into this past January. The airport is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world, and it looks like its days are numbered.

Comments

I've had a couple of comment strings that I've shut down recently. I always have a hard time knowing when to moderate comments. I appreciate discussion and even criticism, but the past couple of times the discussion was heading down a path that wasn't especially helpful.

If you leave a fake email address, your comment is going to be deleted. If your comment maligns the motives of others, it's probably not going to make it either.

In general I'd like to see some good dialogue on the issues, but to avoid comments that contribute to "foolish, ignorant controversies" that "breed quarrels" (2 Timothy 2:23). Most comments have been great - even the critical ones - but I'm finding that I don't have the patience to let comment strings go as far off as I used to let them. I'll give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but if a comment string really starts to go off track, I'm going to deal with it pretty quickly for everyone's sake.

Some Blogs You Should Read

My friend Chris Brauns is moving servers today. You can now find him at ChrisBrauns.com. You can also pre-order his book Unpacking Forgiveness. Chris is a great guy, and I think you'd enjoy his blog.

Another blog that I've really been enjoying recently is that of Tullian Tchividjian. Tullian is a church planter in Florida, and he is also the grandson of Billy Graham. Tullian's blog is now on my A list. His book Do I Know God? is excellent. I'm looking forward to reading his upcoming book Unfashionable.