I’m going to be out of town this week looking for housing in Ohio. Please pray that I find something suitable. I’ll post when I return.

This post could also be titled, “The Continuing Adventures of the TNIV Controversy.”

After a period of about 2 1/2 years (about 2 years of that during Seminary), I made my first foray into a Christian Bookstore today. Actually, I went to two. I went because I was looking for some music we’d been doing in church for years on CD so I could play it for some of the folks at First Baptist Warren in the near future.

I couldn’t find it at Best Buy (my first attempt for music), and I didn’t have time for iTunes and burning the CD, etc. So I went to the Christian bookstore that was just down the parking lot from the Best Buy. I went in, and their music selection was really picked over. I mean, about half the shelves were bare. Others were thinly stocked. I found two of the four CDs I was looking for there. The clerk was only semi-helpful.

I decided that I also wanted to pick up a TNIV today while I was out running errands and read through it to decide if I wanted to use it regularly. After hunting around the “Bibles” section for a while, I finally gave up and went to the checkout counter. There were two clerks there, one working with a mom and 5-year old to get in-store credit for a non-existent VeggieTales item. The other clerk finished up with her customer and closed the aisle. I waited for about 15 minutes for the in-store credit to work, and the other clerk came back.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked. I said I was ready to make my purchases. She started walking away. So then I said that I was looking for a TNIV, did they have any? The busy clerk sort of startled and looked at me, then at the other clerk. I felt like she backed away just a bit. The other clerk said, “I don’t think we have that one, we don’t carry it here.” I said, “Oh, that’s too bad.” She said, “I’ll check with my manager.” She got on the phone and came back out.

“We won’t be carrying it, because it’s too controversial. There’s a letter that’s posted in the office as to why - something about inclusive language.” I said, “That’s too bad, I think people need to read it to find out what the fuss is all about.” She said, “I agree, but it’s not my call.” Then she went back into the office. Presently she emerged with a publisher’s bound page proof of the TNIV New Testament. She said, “We were given these as samples to give out to people, you can have it if you want.”

“Thanks,” I said. She started to walk away again, but then thought better of it and said, “well, I guess I could ring you up.”

She did, and I left.

I drove all the way to the other side of town, still looking for a couple of CDs, and now, more than ever, interested in tracking down a TNIV. I went into the other Christian bookstore’s music section, discovering it to be kind of empty but not as picked-over looking as the other. I still couldn’t find what I was looking for, so I went and asked the clerk at the counter. She looked it up - on the complicated text-driven IBM cash register/computer. She found it and we both scoured the shelf in that section until I found one of the two CDs. I gave up on the other one.

So as she was working on looking up another song for me, I asked the other clerk about the TNIV. I said, “I’m looking for something that seems a bit contoversial, so no offense, but do you carry the TNIV?”

“Of course,” she said, and helped me find it. I picked up the little pocket-size one. We went back to the counter. The other clerk hadn’t found the song I was looking for: it’s a new version of “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” played in a swingin’ 2/2 meter with mandolin and guitar. We talked about how I didn’t just want to pick up a CD of recycled hymns because the arrangements had the potential to be so awful. We all got a good laugh over that one.

Then I said, “I don’t know why this TNIV is so contoversial - it seems like it works well in the campus ministry context, by avoiding the gender questions so much where it’s unnecessary.” Both clerks agreed with me, shaking their heads along with me.

They were friendly.

I don’t think I’ll be back to a Christian Bookstore for a while. Amazon.com works for most of the stuff I need (books and music, at least), and CM Almy has a decent website for the rest. I could end up being a full-time solo pastor at a traditional-ish church and not have to venture into a Christian bookstore for a really long time, if I plan ahead.

This evening I attended All-Campus Worship, an event put on by the University of Illinois Evangelical Christian Union. ACW is a gathering of over 20 evangelical campus ministries at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign held once a semester in the University’s largest auditorium, the Foellinger Auditorium.

As usual, it was a powerful two-and-a-half hour event, with music, prayer, an offering, and a speaker. This semester’s speaker was George Verwer of Operation Mobilization.

Verwer spoke on Luke 10:25 - 37, known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He argued that we have seven different kinds of people that are on the side of the road; as believers in Jesus Christ, as his followers, we are called to care for these.

The seven are as follows:

1. Children at Risk: when war, famine, abuse and other sorts of tragedy hit, the children get hit the hardest. As believers in Jesus Christ we are called to care for children at risk all over the world.

2. Abused Women: One third of American women have been abused; globally (according to Verwer, could someone check this out?) that rate is dramatically higher. One of those ways is Female Circumcision - which, apart from being morally reprehensible, causes the death of many due to poor surgical practices globally. Of course there are many other ways women are abused: another he mentioned was women globally who receive HIV/AIDS through their philandering husbands.

3. Globally Poor: We as Americans do not understand poverty. Verwer encouraged the 2000+ college students to go visit third-world slums - only then would they be able to comprehend the level of poverty at which vast numbers of people live. Moreover, he joins the Liberation Theologians in stating that the Bible has a bias toward the poor, but that the developed world does not. We must be willing to adjust our national policies to deal with that issue.

4. HIV/AIDS: Having traveled extensively in Africa, he says that as big as we think the AIDS Crisis is, it’s at least 5 - 10 times larger than any of us can fathom. We are called as believers to work in AIDS prevention globally.

5. Persons Without Pure Water: Lack of pure water causes many preventable diseases and disorders. We are called to respond to help bring safe water to every human being on this planet.

6. Aborted Babies: As believers we are called to speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves. We are called to speak up for the widows and the fatherless, the orphans, the children. We are called to lovingly deal with the abortion issue to stop the meaningless slaughter of millions of children worldwide. Once again, not just an American problem.

7. Planet Earth: God created our world, and called it “good.” We are called to care for our environment, to cease our overconsumption of resources, to develop environmentally sustainable life habits - all these things will promote life in the world, something God is genuinely interested in.

This was a powerful message. It is rare for me to hear these seven issues discussed by the same person with a singular goal in mind: that believers in Jesus Christ should act upon all of these together. These are the “moral values” that we Americans must deal with - not just one or two off of the list. I hope that we are all able to hear this message: Christ cares about these things; if we do not care about them we deny Christ.

Kyrie Eleison!

I received a great gift last night: Dinner at The Ribeye and a ticket to the #1 ranked Illinois Men’s Basketball game at the Assembly Hall.

The Illini blew out Northwestern by 36 points and received a share of the Big 10 title for their effort.

The atmosphere was electric: at one point early in the 2nd half, “the wave” went around the whole arena 4 times! Since this was probably my last home game in a while, I did some touristy stuff: recording the halftime stuff on my camera phone and buying a “100 years” sweatshirt. It was cool!

Tim Bednar of E-Church has an interesting post on the relative merits of using the TNIV: a translation that is becoming more well-known for dealing with the masculine pronoun problems of the original NIV.

I think the TNIV could be a translation I use a lot - since I grew up on the NIV. It’s one I could memorize and recite without so many of the gender questions being thrust to the forefront when I use it. But I also feel some ambivalence. Here’s the comment I dropped on Tim’s post.

Tim:
Good thoughts on the TNIV. I grew up on the NIV, but I used the NRSV extensively in Seminary. As a language nerd, I use Greek a lot now for most stuff in the NT. I can’t wait to get my hands on a TNIV - it’ll be easier than stumbling to fix the gender questions all the time in public reading of scripture.

I would observe one thing that makes me a bit ambivalent about the inclusive language work: Take Galatians 3:26, ff. The NIV, and a bludgeoningly-literal translation of the Greek say “You are all SONS of God through faith in Christ Jesus… there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Now, the NRSV says “in Christ Jesus you are all CHILDREN of God through faith.” Perfectly reasonable inclusive-language translation, and very commendable. Much easier if you want to read it and not have to explain that “sons” means everyone.

But allow me to be the picky scholar for a moment: could it be that by translating “Children” rather than “sons” we have inadvertently dropped some of the radicality of what Paul was saying to his original hearers for the sake of today’s hearers?

In Paul’s day, only sons (typically) could inherit anything from their father. In this passage (Gal. 3:15 - 4:7), Paul is using an extended inheritance metaphor to describe our relationship to God by faith. By saying to both his male and female listeners that they are all SONS of God he is making the bald-faced declaration that all women have been RAISED to the status of inheritors just like the men. It is a statement of (not merely) equality between men and women but that all women (and for that matter, younger brothers) have the opportunity to receive what only the highest of the hierarchy could hold!

To take it one step further, the Greek for “children” (there are actually several different Greek words that we translate “children” in English) does NOT imply inheritance, only paternity. Of course, such a distinction was profound in the first century. One could (most definately) be one’s biological child without sharing in the inheritance.

Perhaps for today, too: instead of being sired by an absentee father who wants us all to get along because we’re really all alike, we are being called inheritors of all that God is and has.

All of which gives me pause. I will use the TNIV and NRSV, I speak in terms of “person” and “humankind” rather than “him” and “mankind” in daily speech: I just wonder if by solving one real, important problem, we’re causing another.

Further thoughts?

Am really excited about the new pastoral work I will be doing (i.e., The New Job) at First Baptist Warren (Ohio). I am excited for the opportunity to join the people of Warren in ministry.

But I’m also starting to feel the fear and anxiety join in on the fun. I’m having to leave my hometown - not just the place I’ve grown up but my family’s home town for the last 153 years. even in our transient community of 110 000, I still run in to people I know all the time - people I’ve known for years, family friends, college friends, neighbors. I know the managers at the grocery store I go to. I knew the waiter at lunch today at the Courier Café. There are streets in this town named after relatives of mine - ancestors, even.

My parents keep telling me that moving away from home (no, I haven’t been living with them - they mean away from town) is part of the growing-up process. It’s unavoidable, up there with death and taxes. But part of me wants to scream NO NO NO! It doesn’t have to be like this!

And then I think, “now what exactly would I do here if I stayed?” I mean, I’m not really entertaining that idea anymore. But really, my training and education means either a) more education (necessarily elsewhere for the caliber of program I want), or b) working as a staff professional in a church. If I want to stay otherwise I have to do something completely different.

But it’s also clear that the Call of God has gone out: the invitation that God gives to participate with him in the work of the Kingdom. And for now, this call has brought me into an amazing relationship with people in Warren, Ohio, which I never could have imagined. And they’ve invited me to lead them in ministry. That’s nuts. Good nuts, but nuts. And I want to go. I’m eager to start.

But saying goodbye is so hard!

This blog turned 2 two days ago. Happy birthday, M Squared T!

I just fixed a hard disk that had been marked “hidden” by the operating system. Any ideas as to the cause? It’s fixed now, I’m just curious what might have made that happen…

I am in the process of building a P-IV 3.0 MHz 512MB RAM 80GB HDD DVD/CDRW Matrox G550 Intel Pro/100 machine for our school’s Assistant Director.

To configure the software properly, we run Symantec’s GHOST to clone from a standard machine to the new one. This saves HOURS in terms of setup. Unfortunately, this can cause some difficulties on our aging 10MBPS network. It can take up to 5 hours to copy the standard 14 GB disk images. So we have configured two 100MBPS switches to handle the cloning. One is the “live” network - all of our servers talk to each other at 100MBPS, and then to the rest of the world at 10MBPS. The other is the “blind” network: connected to our Windows Server 2003 machine via a second network card that uses the non-routable address block of 192.168.0.0.

To configure a machine enough to clone it takes several steps.

1. Build the machine. Yes, this involves clamping down the CPU and popping in the DIMMs and screwing in the Motherboard, etc.

2. Install Windows XP pro (Volume License Version).

3. Install the Intel Network Card drivers.

4. Connect to the Windows Server to install the GHOST client.

5. Reboot the machine. Configure the GHOST console to point to the machine to be cloned (the “deploy to single machine” task), and create a new configuration file for the machine. Remember to check the machine’s CLIENT tab for proper network card configuration.

6. Switch the network cable from the “live” network to the “blind” network and reconfigure the TCP/IP numbers to point to 192.168… rather than 128.174… (UIUC). This is essential because if GHOST starts while on the live side of the network, the entire network WILL CRASH. It will hang and be unable to do anything. Evidently GHOST uses the TCP/IP multicast protocol that broadcasts on .255, and when it’s doing so on a 100MBPS switch to a 10MBPS network, everything grinds to a halt.

7. Start GHOST

8. After Ghostwalker runs, switch the cable back to the “live” network and boot up in Windows. Verify that the correct name and machine account and domain are in place.

9. Install user-specific software.

10. Transfer files from old machine to new.

11. Install new machine in the office or lab.

During the course of this particular installation, I forgot step 6. As soon as I realized it, I tried to switch the cable. All it had done was wipe out the MBR on the client disk. But it hung and I ended up with a non-bootable volume. This was better, of course, than the saturated network we had.

I removed the client HDD and slid it in as an ATA Slave on a working machine. I am currently running chkdsk /r and it has been going for an hour+. We’ll see if we have to reinstall Windows.

http://www.dannyfast.com/cam.jpg

Text: Hebrews 12:1 ? 3

Candidacy Sermon: The Cloud of Witnesses

I. Introduction

When I first encountered members of this congregation as a part of the pastoral search process several months ago, one of the first things they told me was that this church has a two hundred year history. As we have continued our discussions, it is clear to me that history and tradition are very important to people here.

I, too, have long found history important. During my second semester of college, when I realized that I really didn?t like my engineering classes, I gravitated back to history and took it on as my major course of study. I?ve always been interested in how things came to be ?as they are? and enjoy telling the stories. My friends know me as a person who always wants to tell a story about my hometown?s ?local history? because I find that it explains well how we got where we are today.

(more…)

I have just returned from Warren, Ohio, where I was elected Pastor of First Baptist Church. I will begin on April 1, 2005.

Please pray for me as I need to find housing now.

This weekend, I will be travelling to Warren, Ohio to candidate for the position of Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Warren. As a part of the weekend, I will be looking for a home, participating in a reception put on by the congregation (Saturday) and leading the Sunday service.

Please pray for me in this final step of the interviewing and candidacy process as the church and I decide whether God is calling us together at this time.

Ok, so this has been proliferating around the ‘net over the last week or two… but credit to GCT for the inspiration to put it here:

http://www.compfused.com/directlink/615/

Don’t watch it unless you want to laugh.

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.

Today begins Lent: the forty-day commemoration of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and the Cross. This is the time that we set aside our own agendas and walk with him. Some of us are preparing for Easter baptism; we are getting our houses in order, so to speak.

For many of us, this is the time that has circled back around for us to focus on setting aside our agendas, and whatever things entangle us, and run with perseverence the race marked out for us.

“Blessed be God who forgives all our sins:”

“His mercy endures forever!”

Amen.