Colbert Announcement NOT in liberal NY Times...

I know who I will vote for!

"I am not ready to announce yet - even though it's clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative. "

- Stephen Colbert, in a guest column in Sunday's New York Times. Colbert then announced his candidacy for the president of the United States on his Tuesday show.

My 100th Post...and Surprise! It's about the Church

Thanks to Victor for pointing me to this blog on CT's blog site today. The past few years I have attended some or all of the Willow Creek Association's Leadership Summit, mostly because my local church here in SA hosts the satellite feed party. But I didn't go this year. It looks like I missed Bill Hybels big confession...

The church is about making disciples of Jesus. And megachurches don't do it any better than anyone else, they just do it bigger and costlier.

Dismantle the machine, and go back to living life together. It's cheaper, and it actually works.

Despair.com's newest...

Jews and Christians together?

Here's a great article about "The Christian and the Pharisee", a new book out written by a pastor and a rabbi and the friendship they have developed.

Now this is funny!

From The Onion, one of my favorite parody news outlets...

Fred Thompson calls on Americans to elect him to get a hot first lady.

I wonder if Richard Land is jealous...

Yikes! I agree with Paige Patterson on something...

In an article in Towers Online, published by Al Mohler's Southern Seminary, Paige Patterson calls the current Baptist practice of baptizing younger and younger children one of the greatest challenges of Southern Baptists today. Here's the link to the full article...We've talked about this before on this blog.

It's so rare to find something that Paige and I would agree on, I just had to take the opportunity to note the momentous occasion. I can't totally buy into his conclusions on the mandate for regenerate church membership, but that's mostly because I don't think there's much biblical basis for the way Baptists emphasize local church membership and congregational rule. But clearly we've got to stop baptizing young kids in droves, or we're throwing away a key biblical distinctive we've long held.

These are children for crying out loud!

One of the bloggers I read each week is Big Daddy Weave. He will forever be remembered in my book as the guy who outed Richard Land's man-crush on recent presidential hopeful addition Fred Thompson. I'm not usually one for blogging too much about politics, but the whole SCHIP thing with Bush's veto, well, I disagree with the President to say the least. But the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (misnomers galore) headed by Land agreed with the President on this. And on the war in Iraq. And on virtually every other neo-con point.

Where's the prophetic nature of such a commission? Well, to the shame of Southern Baptists, BDW points out that the voice of the prophet is coming from a Methodist. Specifically from the Rev. Joel Hunter. Apparently in a recent sermon he had this to say:

"There are people in this country - Children - and I hear these arguments all the time about these dirty filthy immigrants, these illegal immigrants who come into this country. And they are getting all these benefits because their kids get sick enough to get into an emergency and go to an emergency room. And somehow those children don't deserve care because they come from another country and they are not like us and maybe they don't believe what we do and maybe they don't speak the same language we do. And we want to deny those children healthcare? God would say "what are you doing?" I don't believe health care is a right. But I believe healthcare is the test of our character as a nation. And I believe that any nation that does not take care of the children among us is not much of a nation, is not much of a people, is certainly not much of a Christian......And I gotta tell ya, what are we doing?!? These are children for crying out loud! God would say - there are 100,000 in the city who don't know their right hand from their left, and you would ignore them and not give them what they need because they don't happen to have what you have. If you're a nation that don't take care of your own children, you're not much of a nation, as a matter of a fact you're not much of a people, let alone much of a Christian. These are Children! Here's what we have to understand. We gotta know that God cares for the vulnerable. This is a message to us all. We are to love the ones that we might not love naturally but God does. We are to love according to his standards not according to ours. And I know I may have just made some of you really mad. But I don't care. It's what the word of God says and I will always tell you what the word of God says. Pray with me."

Press on!

East Carolina Outlasts UTEP In Overtime, 45-42

Another close Miner game, this one they couldn't pull out.



First conference loss.

How about South Florida #2 in the BCS?

Hawaii and Africa, Hawaii and Africa

For some reason I'm really obsessed with the little map that appears in the left column of this blog. Yes, scroll down to see it. I'm about to hit 1,000 "hits" on this blog. And you can look and see that not all 1,000 of them are just from me here in San Antonio, Texas. Unless I'm traveling the world and logging on to my blog just to show that people come from all over...

But no one from Hawaii or Africa has ever looked here. I mean for goodness sake someone from Mauritius has been here, why not Hawaii or Africa?

So I thought I would just write about Hawaii and Africa to see if that helps.

I've been to Hawaii 3 times. Benefits of playing football in the old Western Athletic Conference. Never there longer than a couple of days, but still, how many of you can say that you've been to Hawaii 3 times? Hawaii is a beautiful and exotic place, just like they say. On a couple of the trips, I tried to surf. The surfboard won. The mahi mahi is excellent, you wouldn't believe how good the fruit tastes, and luaus are all you imagine they are. Plus you can make stupid college guy jokes about getting leied by a beautiful woman while there...

I've never been to Africa. I know that the maps in the US don't do Africa justice--they are nortocentric and make the continent look the same size as North America, when it's really 1/3 larger. There's a lot of fighting there, for lots of different reasons. I have a friend, Nodji, from there, and another friend, Jim, who lives in Paris but goes to Africa a lot. I read Texas in Africa just about every day and learn a lot about the politics of Africa. Desmond Tutu is a Christian leader there. Philip Jenkins says that Africa is on track to soon have more believers than North America, if it doesn't already.

I'm sure I know more, but I'm starting to bore myself at this point. Let's just leave it at this and see if someone from Africa or Hawaii will come by.