The Blog
Blog ArchivesI Am A Powerpop Punk Rocker
This is a profound realization for a man who spends a majority of his time playing “contemporary” “Chrisitian” “praise and worship” “music”.
I took a blogthing quiz “What Kind Of Rocker Are You” and it told me I’m an Emo Rocker. The heck I am!!
Metallica, Face to Face, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine. It all comes together. Loud, Fast, Hard, Manly. This is music. This is the sound of my heart, soul, and mind. There are so many emotions that can be eschewed from ones soul this way. Lyrics should be straightforward, thick, and deep. Guitars should be crunchy, visceral, gritty. Say what you mean to say, do it loudly, and don’t stand on pretense or ceremony.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m posting this other than that I’m watching a Face To Face DVD (”The Only Goodbye”, Live from House of Blues Hollywood) and thinking to myself: this is music. Trevor Keith is such a man. I need a bigger amp and a louder guitar.
Flame away.
David Crowder Band’s First Video: Foreverandever, Etc
The David Crowder Band made their first official music video! It is to “Foreverandever, Etc” from A Collision. It’s got a sweet Dragonball Z, anime vibe to it. Check it out.
Technorati Tags: David Crowder Band, Music Video, Anime, Foreverandever Etc
To The Christians - Who Do You Hang Out With?
“Watch out! Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
Jesus of Nazareth, The Christ. (As recorded by John Mark, Peter’s companion)
Who do you spend your time with?
Why is it, when we talk about ways of “meeting ‘the lost’” do we always conceive of awkward, unnatural, forced interactions that require “faith” (more like, a complete lack of social tact, or extreme guts…) in order to engage in?
Who do you sit next to in class?
What is your next door neighbor’s name and what do they do for a living?
What is the name of the person next to you in your place of work and what do they do for fun? When was the last time you went with them when they did that?
Why don’t you know the answers to these questions?
Have we created such a culture of “community” and “fellowship” that we have no more time for relationships with people who aren’t in our immediate circle of fellow believers?
What would it take for you to have time to spend with your classmates, neighbors, and coworkers, on their turf? What activities do you need to cease involvement with?
Do it.
Christian Bloggers Network
Mark Kelly, the News and Editorial Director for Saddleback Church (Rick Warren’s Church) is trying to start up a network of Christian bloggers. A lot of people were asked to complete a survey about how Christians are using their blogs for “ministry purposes” etc, it yielded some interesting (thought maybe not scientific) results. After the jump is a list of Web sites of folks who participated, if you are interested.
A Parent’s Love as an Image of God’s Love
This post is exceptionally long, and you probably won’t read it all. But it’s from my heart, and I hope you’ll take time to consider reading it.
Tonight as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner (something I do only once in a blue moon) and keeping an eye on Elena while Nancy was getting ready to head out to some meetings, I had a profound realization. I love my daughter. I love her almost as much as I love my wife.
She was playing in her playpen and had tipped over sideways in a wonderfully contorted position that only an aspiring gymnast could accomplish. She is not yet strong enough to right herself, and she was laying uncomfortably over several toys and struggling to get up. This is a position she finds herself in quite frequently. Sometimes she manages to make her way onto her stomach (not much more comfortable). Always she ends up whining for help. I smile at this whine (so far, she’s only 8 months old). Never yet has it been annoying to me. This is when I realized I love her.
I walk over and tenderly sit her back upright she goes back to playing without much acknowledging my assistance. A minute later, we repeat the process. These sort of things go on throughout the day. She must be hand-fed. She poops and pees all over herself and we must change her diapers. Soon she’ll be disobeying and we will have to discipline her, which I’m really not looking forward to.
All of this however reminds me how much I love her. These little inconveniences do not annoy me, or make me frustrated at her. Then again, I don’t have to put up with it nearly as much as Nancy does, so maybe I don’t have enough credibility yet to make this next assertion.
This must be fairly close to exactly the way God feels about us, only with him it is to the nth degree. He loves us perfectly and always will. We are like children in his eyes and his love for us is much the same (deeper still) as (than) a parent’s love for their child. Unconditional. Unbreakable. Unfailing. Relentless. Perfect.
This analogy goes very deep, very wide, very high, doesn’t break down very easily. I believe the order of things was created this way. Just as a husband’s relationship with his wife gives us a picture of Jesus’ relationship to the Church, so a parent’s relationship to a child gives us a picture of God’s love for his children. This analogy, as immense as it may be, however, has several strange twists. The first one:
Not all of us are God’s children.
Joshua Blankenship on Christian Art, Parody, and Creativity
When a church (or Christian organization, or Christian designer) takes existing art and media, makes poor parodies of it (that they probably made in a few days because refuse to plan well), and then distributes it under the guise of creativity it completely devalues the work and skills of the artists and craftsmen responsible for the inspiration. Worse, it just makes followers of Christ look BAD, which in turn makes Christ look bad, uncreative, and irrelevant. And then we wonder why there aren’t more artists in the church.
Ted Nugent On The New Crowder Album
This is amazing.
Thunderous applause.
Technorati Tags: David Crowder Band, Ted Nugent, Rock and Roll
Virb is the New Improved MySpace
MySpace users should all cancel their account* and switch to Virb, which is everything MySpace should be, and better. I have 90 invites to get in and poke around if anyone is interested.
* I fully realize that this probably won’t happen anytime soon.
Remedy Is Coming!
The David Crowder*Band is in the studio again, and again, they have Webcams and blogs set up to capture the process!! How exciting!
Elena Blog, Entry Two
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John Piper’s Father Passed Away Tuesday Morning
John Piper’s father passed away early Tuesday morning and he wrote a very heartfelt journal entry about it. It made me weep while sitting in a public space. Mildly embarrassing, but oh well. I wanted to share it. I believe I will say many of the same things about my father one day.
Yes, The Rock Is On For Tonight.
If that changes, I’ll post here and notify the Facebook group.
C.S. Lewis - The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays
Paul got me into a great collection of essays by the highly quotable C.S. Lewis called The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays. Beautiful.
A few especially quotable excerpts:
On the implications of God being who He says He is.
If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficent being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infinitely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficent and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this.
C.S. Lewis from “On Obstinacy in Belief”
An excellent take on Jesus’s response to “doubting Thomas”.
The saying “Blessed are those that have not seen and have believed” has nothing to do with our original assent to the Christian propositions. It was not addressed to a philosopher inquiring whether God exists. It was addressed to a man who already believed that, who already had long acquaintance with a particular Person, and evidence that that Person could do very odd things, and who then refused to believe on odd thing more, often predicted by that Person and vouched for by all his closest friends. It is a rebuke not to skepticism in the philosophic sense but to the psychological quality of being “suspicious.” It say in effect, “You should have known me better.”
C.S. Lewis from “On Obstinacy in Belief”
Why I wish I was a Libertarian (which, I’m not, because real Libertarians don’t exist.)
I fully embrace the maxim (which he borrows from a Christian) that “all power corrupts.” I would go further. The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments. All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it’s claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives. Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Thus the Renaissance doctrine of Divine Right is for me a corruption of monarchy; Rousseau’s General Will, of democracy; racial mysticisms, of nationality. And Theocracy, I admit and even insist, is the worst corruption of all.
C.S. Lewis from “Lilies that Fester”
Guitar Repairs
Going to The Lutherie, a guitar repair shop, is a lot like going to the dentist and the auto mechanic at the same time.
“You haven’t been flossing, have you?”
A high-quality acoustic guitar needs to be kept at a high level of humidity. We are on our way out of one of the driest years we’ve had in a long time. (I have no data to support that, it’s just a hunch.) I’m not very good at keeping my guitar humidified. It is a discipline (keeping the humidifier wet, storing it in a humidified room) that I just haven’t gotten myself into yet. It’s a lot like flossing. You get yelled at by guitar guys when they see how dry your guitar is. A dry guitar is a fragile, weak guitar. Mine now has a wonderful crack on the top “face” of the guitar because of it. It costs a lot of money to have that repaired.
“I just found 12 other things that need to be done while we’re at it.”
A well made, well played guitar needs to be well maintained. This is the first time in my 3 years of owning the guitar that I’ve taken it in to get looked at. It needs six new frets, a new saddle, and new nut, among other things.
“That’ll be $350 to get her back in top shape…”
Ugh.
Elena Blog, Entry One
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No, They Did Not Find Jesus Christ’s Bones
Just so you all know, this hype (nonsense) that is being paraded all over television about Jesus bones having been found is National Enquirer style tripe.
I might not have a lot of credibility when it comes to this topic, if you are a skeptic, but Michael Spencer has an excellent writeup and links to resources as to how we know.
A few telling items:
- It’s James Cameron that is espousing this idea.
- It’s being touted by Discovery
- James Cameron
- This burial site was actually found in 1980, and was said to mean very little back then as well.
- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were extremely common names back then. (seriously.)
- James Cameron
So, why all the hullabaloo? Well, a chance to prove, once and for all, that the most profoundly meaningful event in all of history, having the highest amount of moral and personal implications for each individual on the planet, is false, is a huge deal. IF those actually were THE Jesus Christ’s bones, I’d be the first one off the bandwagon, into… what? Who knows. A meaningless existence, I guess.
The Latest SpouseAndSpouse.org Web Site
I’d like to welcome our good friends Mike and Kristin Wesner to the world of blogging on mikeandkristin.org. They are coming out of the gates hard with Kristin posting a wonderfully geeky and clinical explanation of why one should humor one’s spouse in novel activities (like blogging…).
Nice work guys, welcome to the blogosphere ;)
Today Only: Chris Tomlin being featured at Yahoo Music!
Chris Tomlin is being featured on Yahoo Music. This doesn’t happen very often for the worship “genre” of music. Go check it out.
New David Crowder Band: Oh The Glory Of It All
Unfortunately not a new live album yet (I hear that is coming later this year?), but still a good live recording from Passion 07.
Called “Oh The Glory Of It All” it seems to be, musically and lyrically a progression in the line of “Deliver Me” and “Coming Towards”. If you put these three songs together you get a nice pretty straight line. Not sure if that’s what they intended or not, but that’s what I’m hearing.
Nice work, guys. Hope you don’t mind if I post the lyrics?
I transcribed the lyrics from the live recording on iTunes from Passion: Live from Passion 07 pt.2 (you should also get part 1)
Oh the Glory of it All
David Crowder BandAt the start
he was there, he was there
In the end,
he’ll be there, he’ll be thereAnd After all our hands have wrought
He forgivesOh the Glory of it all is:
he came here
For the rescue of us all
that we may live
for the glory of it all
for the glory of it allAll is lost
find him there, find him there
After night
Dawn is there, Dawn is thereAfter all falls apart
he repairs he repairsOh the Glory of it all is:
he came here
for the rescue of us all
that we may live
for the glory of it alloh he is here
for redemption from the fall
that we may live
for the glory of it all
oh the glory of it all
the glory of it all
oh the glory of it allAfter night
comes the light
dawn is here
dawn is here
it’s a new day
it’s a new day
everything will change
things will never be the same
we will never be the same
we will never be the same
we will never be the same
we will never be the sameOh, The glory of it all is
you came here
for the rescue of us all
that we may live
for the glory of it allOh you are here
with redemption for us all
that we may live
for the glory of it all
for the glory of it all
oh the glory of it all
Current Reading: Christ The Center - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
After my recent foray into the world of modern emerging church movements in “Confessions of a Reformission Rev.” and “Organic Church“, I thought I would go back to the classics, to some dead theologians whose lives we know we can respect, while the Jury is still out on Neil Cole and Mark Driscoll (both through whom it seems God is doing amazing things…). I’m starting out, guns blazing, in to Bonhoeffer. I read this book before, and I didn’t get it. Now, it is blowing my mind, and I’m only through the introduction.
Right now, the main thing that is astounding me is the historical, theological, and political significance of this particular work. The book is a collected set of notes of Bonhoeffer’s students from lectures he gave them in a particularly significant semester. Hitler had just been elected Chancellor of Germany and was currently making moves that would give the Nazi party control of the German church, and thus a foothold into much of the European church. This work provided a theological basis for refuting this new church “movement”, and set Bonhoeffer up as an enemy of the German Church (read: the Nazi church), which would ultimately lead to his death. This work served in uniting the “Confessing Church” (the non-Nazi church) and providing them with “many of it’s weapons to defeat the German Christians and thus prevent the poison of Nazism from destroying the Church.”
Theologically, it is also excellent (so far). In tackling the question of Christology…
Bonhoeffer refused to begin his lectures on christology with what he called the ‘alchemy of the incarnation’. Much discussion of the two natures seemed to him impertinent and certainly concerned with the wrong questions. The discussion which set out to ask, ‘What?’ had been led into asking, ‘How?’ and that was no question for man to ask. Equally he saw how the evasion of christology in the preadhing o fhte cross led to a concentration upon the works of Christ to the exclusion of the real questions. The theologian must be able to speak of Jesu Christ as one in whom ‘act’ and ‘being’ are one. He is not requred to answer the question ‘How?’, but is required to look seriously at the questions ‘What?’ and “Where?
… It is because I am separate from my true being that Christ thus stands between me as I am and me as I should be… … We discover our humanity in him.
More to come.
