Revitalize Your Church

The outstanding missiologist, Paul Hiebert, taught at my alma mater, Fuller Seminary and then finished his career at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I have always admired his thoughtful work, and recall his thought provoking lectures, which usually left my head spinning. His textbook, Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues , proved helpful in navigating the murky waters of contextualization vs. syncretism in Native American ministry. (Though there were several occasions when I read a paragraph a half dozen times before I understand what he was trying to communicate.) Jon and Mindy Hirst , have recently brought some basic Hiebert concepts within the reach of simple-minded readers like me. I love warm cookies from the bottom shelf! Ooze Viral Bloggers recently provided me a copy of their new book, Through the River: Understanding Your Assumptions about Truth. The Hirsts have captured some pretty deep philosophy, and traslated it, via delightful story form, into someth...

My friend, Kathy Brown, is a participant in Chuck Colson's Centurion's Program , and has developed a great website on the Christian World View: worldviewclick.com . Very insightful and informative.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, one of the world's great landmarks, was originally designed to stand up straight. It began to lean shortly after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation. The word "pisa", I've heard, actually means "marshy land", which might explain why history's most famous church bell tower started going off kilter before it was even completed. Several years ago, it looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa was headed for toppling. Moving one-twentieth of an inch each year, it eventually ended up 17 feet out of plumb. Alarmed architects and engineers puzzled over it, and in 1990 created a plan to remove 38 cubic meters of soil from underneath, straightening the tower by 18 inches. Now, they say, it is stable for another 300 years. Perhaps you will be surpised to learn that The Leaning Tower of Pisa is NOT the most tilted tower in the world. In November 2007, that honor was given to the Leaning Tower of Suurhusen in Germa...

Yet thus life rolls away with too many of us in a course of shapeless idleness. Its recreations constitute its chief business…amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, to fill up the void of a listless and languid life; and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements which our early youth had tracked out. -- William Wilberforce , 1797