Christian educators doomed to fail if...

I'm currently reading on Christian education and stunned to think that how we educate our little kiplings (2 so far) will very probably be the way that they (in time, DV) will educate their own children. In other words, a key test of a distinctive Christian education is not simply whether it produces well-behaved, hard-working and faithful children but also if they pass on and train their children (our grandchildren) the very things that they have learnt and seen us do. Simply put, Christian home-schoolers/Christian schools are doomed to fail, if they do not teach their children in a way that leads to them, to educate the next generation biblically (Psalm 78:1-8)

All Christian service is ministry

It has come to be a dreadfully common belief in the Christian Church that the only man who has a “call” is the man who devotes all his time to what is called “the ministry,” whereas all Christian service is ministry, and every Christian has a call to some kind of ministry or another.

C.H. Spurgeon

The Lib-Dem hierarchy hates women

What is wrong with Lib-Dem hierarchy? Why are so many of them filled with such callousness towards women? Why has so little attention been paid to the insensitive and offensive remarks by Senior Lib-Dems in their attempted defence of Lord Renard?

In today's Telegraph it is reported that Jasper Gerard, a friend and biographer of Mr Clegg, dismissed the seriousness of Lord Renard's alleged misdemeanour by saying “It was only touching a woman’s knee, it’s hardly Jimmy Savile.” Another senior leader, Lord Greaves, a Lib Dem peer, suggested that “people just calm down a bit” adding that “fairly mild sexual advances” were “hardly an offence”.

Did you hear that? Fairly mild sexual advances were hardly an offence.

Leaving aside the question of who decides if a sexual advance is fairly mild or not what about the issue of whether Lord Renard's alleged impropriety is right or wrong? Trying to mask the iniquitousness of an action by comparing it to someone worse (Jimmy Saville) or by describing the issue as "hardly an offence" does not get away from the fact that it is wrong - plain and simple. Imagine a church minister or school teacher or taxi driver saying in defence of alleged sexual misconduct "I was only touching her knee. It has hardly Jimmy Saville stuff" OR "I just made a fairly mild sexual advance - it's hardly an offence." Would that mean it was ok? Would you be at ease to leave your daughter, wife, mother in their company? What perverse logic to try trivialise a serious offence and gross violation (against the women concerned and God) and that from the party that claims to speak up for the weak and marginalised! As someone once said: O ye hypocrites, that set up marvellous standards in thy manifesto, yet you yourselves are not willing to keep them. Woe to you - for you travel across Westminster, to form a Coalition and once in Whitehall, have made yourselves twice as much the children of hell - Woe!

7 ways that leaders waste their time

1) Focussing on the naysayers

2) Refusing to delegate

3) Second guessing decisions

4) Trying to have all the ideas

5) Living with broken structure

6) Disorganization

7) Completing tasks not designed for me

A fuller explanations of each point can be found here. Just looking back over today, I think I'm guilty of 1), 3) & 6)! Help!

Saturday Smiles: Nothing to do with dogs

"That the term dogmatician has nothing to do with dogs does not, I trust, need saying. But when exegetes and dogmaticians get together it is noticeable that they tend to sniff suspiciously at each other, as dogs do, uncertain whether they can be friends." 

--J. I. Packer, "The 'Wretched Man' Revisited: Another Look at Romans 7:14-25," in Romans and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Sven Soderlund and N. T. Wright; Eerdmans, 1999), 70

Pope's message to Evangelicals?

Although there are numerous errors linked to the papacy, the soon to retire Pope Benedict XVI has written  wisely of the folly of trying to make worship 'fun'...

Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation (The Spirit of Liturgy, 198)

Interesting that the Pope thought this issue wide spread enough (in Roman Catholic circles) to write about. One could almost be mistaken for thinking he was actually addressing Evangelicals!

The sobbing comes afterwards

Following R C Sproul Jr's recent experience of intense grief, he reflects here how often, prior to one's beloved departing this mortal life, it is the adrenaline which keeps spouses going and (mostly) helps to keep the tears at bay; it's in the weeks, months and years afterwards that the  unpredictable sobbing ensues. Here is how concludes:

It is now that I fear, now that I cry. Dates, places, even weather patterns take me back. A highway we took to her clinical trial, a restaurant I frequented when she was in the hospital, even the spot by the ping pong table where I stood when she told me, all do not merely remind me of the horror, but put me back in the midst of it, but now with no adrenaline...          Time may be a river, but we are able to move within it, to swim with or against its current. Which is why we mourn with hope. Even now I am comforted, am at peace, indeed drink deep of a joy that is not behind but before me. For my momentary afflictions are not worthy to be compared with the eternal weight of glory (II Corinthians 4:17). Death indeed swallowed her up, but death is being swallowed in victory. Adrenaline is not my saviour. Jesus is.

It's a moving post. Read the full thing here