URL: Gallup Probes Blogs, Finds Most Americans Have Never Heard of Them (Editor and Publisher)

Leading evangelical scholar Stanley J. Grenz died yesterday morning, 12 March 2005, after a major brain hemhorage. Grenz was a professor at Carey Theological College and Mars Hill Graduate School.

Author of numerous books, including A Primer on Postmodernism, Theology for the Community of God and Sexual Ethics: A Christian Perspective, Grenz has been very influential on the formation of evangelicalism in the last decade.

Grenz was known for sharp mind and a gentle spirit. I had the opportunity to meet him at Robert Webber’s Worship, Evangelism and Nurture conference. He answered several of my questions during the panel discussion, and then afterward, made sure my questions had been addressed.

Our prayers are with his family today.

Gizoogle is amazing:

http://sites.gizoogle.com/?url=http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/11/jackson.trial.leno/index.html

Link via Brant

Judge, 2 Others Killed at Atlanta Courthouse

I have begun work on an “entry strategy” for beginning work with the First Baptist Church of Warren, OH (no link ’cause there’s no website… yet). I’m trying to think through the approach I will take to getting to know the congregation and begin the process of building upon what is to bring about that which can be – the things to which we are called.

At this point, I have some ideas:

1. Meet with every board, committee, entity and informal organization within the congregation. It is preferable to do this over a meal, in a home.
2. In these meetings, learn the self-conscious role of that organization within the congregation. Ask questions about what they’ve done, what they see themselves doing, what they like about the current setup, what they dislike, what new things they want to see, what things they want to retain.
3. Develop (with the aid of the appropriate existing body) a worship planning committee/team to strategize and coordinate worship. We will intentionally attempt to bring creative, innovative people on board with an eye to developing worship that is “outside the box” but comfortable. These people will work with all aspects of the worship experience: music, preaching, communion, prayers; audio, visual, multimedia; baptism, special events, drama, the arts.
4. Begin a home fellowship group at my house (or at another’s house who can host while I help to develop the conceptual side of things). This will be primary to our growth strategy.

That’s step 1. More later.

Anyone who has questions, comments, better ideas, speak up!

In her essay, Risky Love or Secure Aversion, Sylvia Keesmaat takes on our security-conscious perspectives and brings new light on the story of the Good Samaritan.

She explains how it was just as risky for the Samaritan to tend to the beaten traveler as it was for the others.

An excerpt:

Security. In a world of Homeland Security Acts, home invasions, violence on the streets and terror in the air, security has become an obsession. As it was at the time of Jesus. When a lawyer approached Jesus and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, he was asking a question about how to secure his future in the coming kingdom (Luke 10.25).

His second question heightened his sense of self-security. “Who is my neighbour?” he asked. Now, in first century Judaism one’s neighbour would almost always include one’s fellow Jews. But some argued that it should not include anyone outside of Judaism, and definitely not “sinners.” The lawyer was pretty secure about whom he would be expected to love.

But Jesus moved the debate beyond its secure limits. And in so doing he answered the question in a way which goes beyond concerns about security. A man was travelling down a very insecure stretch of road, from Jerusalem to Jericho. He was attacked by thieves who stripped him, beat him and left him for dead.

Read the whole article here.

Link via Prodigal Kiwi

Andy over at To All Nations has an interesting take on evangelism. What do you think?

We know the location of the bunker – our ‘target area’ – but we don’t understand its structures, its strengths or its weaknesses. But, undeterred, we hurl our ‘grenades’ at it. Some miss altogether, some bounce off before they detonate. Still others hit the target, exploding on impact, but merely denting the surface; failing to penetrate the well constructed defences. Some cracks may show, but we don’t hang around long enough to prise them open, and by the time we come back again, if indeed we do come back again, these cracks have been repaired and the bunker has been restored to full strength.

Read the entire article here…

Link via Steve

I had a crazy idea a couple of days ago: I wanted to put a dynamically-generated sidebar on my main site at http://www.msquaredt.com listing the most recent entries on this blog. Well, with a little cutting and pasting, and some educated programmer’s guesses, I have succeded. This means instead of my main page being “index.html” it is now “index.php.” Just to make sure I didn’t lose anyone, I also did the following:

ln -s index.php index.html

That should save me some headaches down the road.

Did I mention I don’t know PHP (yet)? This was pure extraction from my working blog page. Oooh… how smooooth…

So, well, check it out, already!

Brant Hansen (whom I have met through the Baptist Student Foundation’s Koinonia Christian Cooperative) has been working in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. He blogs (humorously) about his adventures there: “Cannonball Run”.

Ben Bell is at it again. This time he’s produced an “Easter Card” with similar out-of-the-box thinking to the Christmas Card which I linked here.

When people ask me what kind of creativity and innovation it takes to bring the message of Christ to our neighbors, this is really what I’m talking about. This is a great example of taking the truth – Jesus being tried as a common criminal – and setting it up in dramatic format which cannot but catch us all off-guard. And by throwing us off-step, even a little, can get us to look at our obscured stories in better lighting.

I just finished editing my new photo galleries of my new house and the church where I will be starting to work in April. They are at http://www.msquaredt.com/photogallery.html

Check them out!

Disclaimer: I don’t have good photo editing software yet, so the images are big, but reduced in size, so they still could take a while to load. I’m working on alternatives.

I have been playing around with CSS today and I’ve found a more workable design based on the default WordPress design that came with the blog. Check out http://www.msquaredt.com and tell me what you think!

Check this out: the new UIUC Turing Cluster. It’s built on 1280 Apple G5 processors. That’s stinkin’ amazing!

Ok, so I was reminded yet again tonight about why I go to the local grocery store rather than the huge ones on the edge of town. Two weeks ago (yes, that long ago), I left my notebook there that has my grocery list in it. Not such a big deal, except that it also has the “roommate balance sheet” in it. This is the accounting that B and I keep when we buy things for both our use (groceries, cleaning supplies, etc.).

Well, I noticed after I returned from Ohio that it was missing. I realized what I had done, and that I could be out big money on the balance sheet by losing the records. I asked at the customer service desk. The clerk had it in a drawer waiting for me.

She said they found it 20 mins after I left last time, and just kept it for safekeeping knowing I would be coming back eventually.

Isn’t that cool? They know me!

Question 1: Where can I get a good .css stylesheet for this site? The one I’m using for the blog is WordPress’s original; the one I’m using for my main site is home-grown and it sucks.

Question 2: Anyone know how I can import my blogger comments into WordPress?