Its Suburbs Without the Car

I read an article in the New York times today that has been plaguing my imagination all day.

In Vauban, Germany they are creating communities without cars. If a resident owns a car they have to park at the edge of the community in super expensive parking lots ($40,000 per space). 70% of Vauban residents do not own automobile.

This is my dream world… except that its in Germany. Not that I don’t like Germany, I just don’t speak German/ I think it’s really cold.


To read the full article: click here

Saturday nights in Seminary...

So I am writing a Paper on synod of Dort for my systematic theology class. It's a 15 page paper and I'm on page 6 and it is due Monday at 1pm. So needless to say I am on a time crunch. Mid-term week is really crazy and you honestly don't have very much time to get done everything that has to be done. It is really frustrating because I am in the place where I am not satisfied with average work but when time is short you do the best you can. The gift of studying theology is that when I am sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday night feeling quite desperate, God can really speak and move through what I am reading and researching. My paper's tentative title is, I grew up an Armenian and didn’t know it: Discovering Biblical truth within Calvinism. So I am having a good time even though it is pretty heavy material. I am currently writing on the fist article of the Synod which is Predestination and Unconditional election. One thing I am realizing is that the Bible is filled with really hard truths and they are often not easy to swallow. What has been amazing is God gently guiding me into a fruitful theology. I have struggled and had doubts but I am thankful for the men that have come before and labered and worked to help me have a greater understanding of God and His word.Bastian Kruithof tells a story in The High Points of Calvinism a story that really encouraged my soul:

"Some day ago I talked to a man who can be considered a refugee from Hungary where Russian totalitarianism is grinding the people down. One of the first words he spoke to me was: "Predestination." He told me of the several million Hungarian Calvinists who are by no means defeated. He said to me that whenever a brother appears on the verge of despair, the invariable retort is: "are you a man?" That sentence has tremendous significance when it comes from those who are not stoics but Christians who know that God is with them, and that they are in God's unshakable plan and under his lasting grace. I was interested to read this sentence in Hasting's Encyclepedia of Religion and Ethics: "The Calvinistic 'fate' is the incentive to heroic effort, a challenge to play the man."

Samual 10:9-12
When Joab saw that the battle was set against him both in front and in the rear, he chose some of the best men of Israel and arrayed them against the Syrians. The rest of his men he put in the charge of Abishai his brother, and he arrayed them against the Ammonites. And he said, “If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. Be of good courage, and blet us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.”

Encouragement for my spirit.

A great way to view differences within the Church:

Theological National Boundaries

Indeed, there are theological national borders that need to be retained, such as Scripture as God’s Word; God as Trinitarian community; humanity as sinful; Jesus as God and man; the virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus; and the necessity of Jesus alone for salvation from sin, hell, and the wrath of God.

State Boundaries

Beyond these sorts of national borders are state borders. State borders include spiritual gifts, baptism, communion, worship styles, Bible translations, sense of humor, and the like. Various states can have their own proverbial borders on these issues. Nonetheless, like states we must be able to live as a loving and unified nation. We cannot turn our state borders into national borders and refuse to live at peace in unity and love with those who live in other proverbial states. Simply, the state borders should not be battle lines where personal and theological wars are fought because bigger things are at stake, such as the evangelizing of lost people and the planting of missional churches.

My prayer today is this

“Thank you Sovereign God for an opportunity to influence the nations for good. May you please give us your Spirit to keep our minds learning, hearts loving, ears listening, hands serving, and humility growing for your glory and our joy. We ask this for your fame by the Spirit’s power in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

-Mark Driscoll @http://theresurgence.com/time_magazine_new_reformed

New Music refreshing my ears...

1) Manchester Orchestra - Mean everything to nothing
2) As Cities Burn - Hell or High water
3) TV on the radio - Return to cookie mountain / Dear Science
4) M. Ward - Hold Time
5) The Devil Wears Prada - With roots above and branches below
6) Niel Yong - Fork in the road
7) Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
8) Leona Naess - Thirteens
9) Kari Jobe - I'm singing
10) Gavin Degraw -Free
11) The Decemberists - The hazard of Love
12) Jon Foreman - Winter ep
13) Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
14) Animal Collective - Merriweather post pavilion
15) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

More from the great emergence

"The new Christianity of the great emergence must discover some authority base or delivery system and/or governing agency of its own. It must formulate – and soon – something other than Luther’s sola scriptura which, although used so well by the Great Reformation originally, is now seen as hopelessly outmoded or insufficient, even after it is, as here, spurred up and re-couched in more current sensibilities.”







My Response:

"The Bible will stand. No critic will." -John Piper

the great emergence

I am reading Phyllis Tickle's 'the great emergence' and I don't like it. I think she is confusing and writes in circles. She spends half of her book "considering... a few of the major cultural shifts in the twentieth century that have determined the religious and ecclesial perspectives out of which emergents are working" leaving the reader grasping for an understanding or working definition of what the Great Emergence actually is. There is no doubt an emergence is happening but she does no more than to point to 500 year hinge periods that she defines as rummage sales. She seems quite content to leave the reader lost with a bucket of knowledge filled with interconnected historical events.

"The reformation's understanding of scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead. That is not to say that Scripture as the base of authority is dead. What the protestant tradition has taught about the nature of the authority will be either dead or in mortal need of reconfiguration. And that kind of summation is agonizing for the surrounding culture in general. In particular, it is agonizing for the individual lives that have been built upon it." Pg. 101

I think there may be some truth in this statement but not in the way she intends it.

The ever true hymn from Edward Mote:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

wolfgang amedeus phoenix

Thanks Chris! This is my album of summer 2009.