Our Church‘s Easter theme is CSI Easter and as such Greg, Randall and I have been commissioned to do another one of our famous (or maybe infamous) videos.
I will try and post some of the production stills on my blog as we go with my new digital camera. I will also post the full video on my blog after it has been premiered.
Over the last 6 weeks or so I have read numerous books for school (pictured above). I usually make it a practice to write some thoughts on the books I read but at the pace I was going and the other school work I was doing, it just didn’t get done. Instead, I thought I would write a brief overview of the highlight and lowlights of my reading adventures.
The best and most insightful book I read was Paul Spilbury’s book, The Throne, The Lamb and The Dragon. It is a helpful guide for reading and interpreting the book of Revelation. It helped to put into works a lot of what I was thinking about through my study and research for a class on the Apocalyptic Literature and Revelation. That leads me to another important work that any pastor doing work in Revelation should have, Revelation: Four Views by Gregg. It is a parallel commentary that looks at the four main views of Revelation (Spiritual, Futurist, Historical, and Preterist).
The book that made me think the most was Honest to God by Robinson. It is part of a Contemporary Theology Class I am in and it has got my brain moving and stretching.
I also liked The Reformed Pastor by Baxter written nearly 400 years ago. Its timeless nature gives it credibility and although you (like myself) may not agree with it all, it is a great perspective on the calling and work of pastor.
The most practical book was God’s Gifted People by Harbaugh. Although it has bad exegesis, it is a great resource for Meyers-Briggs applications in the church.
The worst book by far and ironically the most entertaining was Racing Towards The Mark of the Beast by the Lalonde brothers. It was part of an assignment to critique a popular book relating to the book of Revelation. Need I say more?
That is the fast summary of my reading over the last few weeks. So it is on to the next stack of books as I prepare for a major paper presentation on “Hans Kung” – the contemporary rebel catholic theologian.
I was sent this link about a lady who suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and heard about some brain surgery that is supposed to help. She did the research and then thought she would perform the surgery on herself with a handheld construction drill. The surgery didn’t go well when she pierced the brain membrane and had to be taken to the hospital (she is okay now). I guess she should have also bought the countersink drill bit. I don’t know much about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but there has to be something more wrong with you if you are willing to drill into your own head.
Honestly!?!
Imagine the conversation with the customer service rep. at Canadian Tire: “What drill and drill bit would you recommend for do-it-yourself brain surgery?” Or imagine that crazy Canadian Tire guy from there commercials explaining the benefits of this new product to his neighbour: “I’ll Start with you.”
I came across this eBay ad in which an atheist is auctioning himself off to go to church. For every $10.00 bid he will attend church with an open mind for one hour a week (the auction ended and he sold for $504.00 US). So I did the calculations to see how this would play out on a mass scale. You could have yourself a church of 500 people per week at $260,000.00US per year.
Could you imagine? Imagine being the pastor of a church full of people YOU are paying to be there?
I am not sure what to think but this guy is creative.
In the process of doing research for school, I have been surprised by the number of times I have come across the diverse history of biblical interpretation and theology that boggles my mind. It isn’t so much the content of the discoveries, but it is that I have not heard of them before. I wonder what kind of service we think we do in church by only feeding the information and selective history that meets our own theological and cultural agenda (the concept of indoctrination rather than education).
Whether it is our interpretation of the book of Revelation or the historical struggle in theology between the transcendence and immanence of God, I wonder why I haven’t heard of the fuller picture before. It isn’t that I want to be a scholar, but it almost seems as if we have edited the historicity of theology and biblical interpretation to meet our own ends and, dare I say, agenda. Maybe that is the tendency of every culture (whether church or national). I don’t think it is someone’s fault, rather I think it is more a result of the overall church culture of our time.
My research for school has been a good exploration of this new territory that I had not expected to find or even knew existed.
