name change

you may have noticed that this is no longer "tom & lisa's blog" but just "tom's blog". that's because lisa has her own bloggy thing going on now.

emergING not EmernGENT

Revelant Magazine had a good article on the Emergent movement, not to be confused with the emerging church. Emergent is the more formal organization that includes guys like Doug Pagitt and Brian McLaren. Just for the record, our community may be considered part of the emerging church, but we have nothing to do with Emergent. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Emergent gang. I'm particularly concerned with much of their theological sloppiness and careless disregard for the importance of doctrine. We've been studying some church history in our gathering and tonight discussed some of the background around the Council of Nicea. They considered theological terminology & the finer points of doctrine to be very important, thankfully or else we might all be Arians instead of Christians. I get the impression from some of their recent writings that Pagitt & McLaren wouldn't necessarily be too upset about that as long as we could all just get along.

Anyway, there was a great quote from Len Sweet in the article, and I think it holds true for the emerging church as well as the Emergent gang. The article mentioned that Sweet was concerned that the overemphasis on how we do church has taken the focus off Christ. Then Sweet says:

"And that [the overemphasis on how to do church] brings me to a related issue: confusion between relevancy and recency. Some of the most relevant things are not the most recent, but the most ancient. Without a historical sense, or the spiritual discipline of histoical context, there's confusion between keeping relevant and just keeping up. we have to be in touch with the culture but in tune with the Spirit."

I've been thinking much lately about this kind of stuff; about being the church, about being community, about being connected to the larger Body of Christ, about theology and history, about worship and liturgy.

I was right

Nacho Libre is hands down the funniest movie of the year. I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. Funniest movie I've seen in a long time, if not one of the funniest I've ever seen. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it was very funny.

close call

seven comments on ben roethlisberger's recent accident:

• 1. he is one lucky s.o.b.
• 2. i think he owes every steeler fan a minimum of $500 for mental anguish

3. does it make me a bad person to admit that my first reaction to hearing that he was seriously injured while riding his motorcyle was "there goes the season"?

4. he's an idiot. wears a helmet to work because a 350-lb lineman might hit him, but doesn't wear one while riding his motorcycle when a 3000-lb car could hit him.

5. i hope the little old lady that hit him has police protection because steeler fans can be absolutely insane when it comes to anything negatively impacting the team.

6. here's hoping he'll be ready for the start of the season.

7. i'm guessing his next contract is going to have some language in it about riding motorcycles--especially without a helmet.

7. anyone riding a motorcycle without a helmet is an idiot. lawmakers that have repealed laws requiring helmets (like in PA or here in FL) are idiots too. it's against the law in FL to ride a bicycle without a helmet, but not a motorcycle. go figure.

Rats!

I woke up to a sight like this greeting me this morning in my bathroom. That'll get your blood going! I gentlely closed the lid and walked back through the bedroom. Lisa woke up and asked what I was doing. "There's a rat in the toilet" I calmly replied. I put on some work gloves & went back into the bathroom. As I stared at the toilet I played out my options. I could: A) flush the poor little bastard, but that could clog the toilet, B) grab him & run out of the house then throw him across the yard hoping a stray cat would find him, but then again he could just come back in the house, or C) reach in there and hold him under the water to drown him, but he could bite me. Then I saw it, the plunger! I used that to drown the little guy then grabbed him by the tail to dispose of the body. This is the fourth rat to meet his/her untimely dimise on my watch & each time the grim reaper has taken a different form: trap, poison, squashed by a pot & drowning. Next time I'm going for a flaming aerosol can. Until then no more blindly sitting in the dark during a late night potty run.