Blogroll

Todd Burus has been blogging since late 2007 but I want to bring his blog, “For the time that is past suffices…”, to your attention.  Todd has one of the keenest minds that I know from mathematics to politics to theology Todd is profoundly intelligent and his blog comes highly recommended.

Justin Sok recently left the blogsphere and shut down his blog Marvelous Light.  This was a devastating blow from the man who inspired me to blog.  Luckily none of us will have to do without his thoughts for much longer as this weekend he rejoined us with the aptly titled In Medias Res.  Like Todd Justin has a keen mind and provides solid insight on just about any subject.  Other than Al Mohler Justin is the widest read individual I know and I love engaging him in discussion.  I am excited to see where Justin takes this new blog and I hope you are as well.  For those of you who were as sad to see ML go as much as I am let me know and I will e-mail you a .feed-ms file that contains all of Justin’s posts.

Books

Re:Lit, of Crossway, has several new books out and coming out in the near future that you would do well to check out.  See the links below.

·         Death by Love: Letters from the Cross (click here for Amazon)

·         Practical Theology for Women: How Knowing God Makes a Difference in Our Daily Lives

·         Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods

Tim Challies offers a brief review of Serve God Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth, MD in his cleverly titled post “Serve God, Save the Planet.”

World News

“How Putin Wins” by Foreign Policy is a brief yet insightful post on the war in Georgia.

The Olympics

Michael Phelps is making Olympic history.  There are countless articles on the web about this so I will just refer you to this article over at CNN.  But seriously if you have not been watching the Olympics you are missing out, both in terms of history and hilarity.

John Mark Reynolds, Associate Professor of Philosophy, at Biola University, looks at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and reflects on the worldview imagery displayed there.  I appreciate his post, “The Religious Olympics Opening,” as it reminds us to focus on being philosophically and culturally discerning.  At the same time I think he has either underestimated China’s cultural pride or overestimated the historical pride and intelligence of most American’s.  Why did China’s opening ceremony make “much of what contemporary Americans do in our public ceremonies look decadent and without cultural confidence?”  Simple, most Americans are ahistorical slobs to whom decadence sells.  For me a particular irony is this: throughout the news coverage of this Olympics China’s human rights record has been a constant topic of discussion and yet despite this record China’s citizens have displayed a tremendous amount of nationalistic pride.  On the other hand if the US were to end poverty, bring peace to the world, and ensure democratic process to all large numbers of American’s would still hate their country and find no sense of pride in anything remotely American.  So why would the US never produce an opening ceremony as pervaded with imagery from US history as the ceremony in Beijing?  Because not only are most Americans ahistorical but a lot of them are aAmerican as well.

Theology

In Ed Stetzer’s post “Saturday if for (Baptist) Friends” he looks at the ever aging SBC and notes both how the convention will not survive if this young generation of pastors/missionaries/etcetera is lost and then asks how this generation can be reengaged.

Timmy Brister has a great post up about word-driven church planting movements entitled “Word-Driven Movemental Christianity.”  Give this a read and then give Tim some feedback, I think you will really enjoy his post.