This is one of the most difinitive articles I’ve seen on the emergent church

Here is a link to a quiz that will help you figure out if you really understand what the Bible and true Christianity is all about. It’s fun and revealing. Enjoy!

Yes, Brian McLaren has launched his singing career at age (45-65?)  Is this song one for the hymnals?  I am relieved to know that BM doesn’t believe in the God I believe in.  I’m just confused as to why he is a regular for APU chapels. For some truly intelligent appraisal of of Brian’s approach to theology this site is great.

“Only five people in history have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Godl Medal: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel … and Norman Borlaug.” *

What, you’ve never heard of Norman Borlaug? Me neither. And I’m really surprised that as a Christian I don’t know more about him. Especially now that Bono, who is supposedly a Christian, Tony Campolo and Rick Warren are out to end world hunger. “For Borlaug…to win more notice, he would have to make his next trip to Africa in the company of Angelina Jolie.”*

Okay, so who is this guy? Only the man who has saved at least a BILLION people from starvation over the last 60-plus years. How? Through biotechnology. Yes, that scientific practice of crossing genetic make-up of plants or organisms to create disease and pest resistant crops. In the 1940’s and 50’s he developed a hybrid called “dwarf wheat” that tripled grain production. This was the begining of the ‘Green Revolution’ - (not Greenpeace or the Green Party who, oddly enough, despise this man). The ‘Green Revolution’ has done more to end world hunger than any other event in history. “In 1960 about 60 percent of the world’s people experienced some hunger every year. By 2000 that number was 14 percent…”*

Amazingly, one of the biggest criticisms of this great man is his desire to create roads in impoverished areas so that people who are starving can have access to food and be able to become self-sustaining. According to Norman Borlaug, “Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure. For example, you bring fertilizer into a country like Ethiopia, and the cost of transporting the fertilizer up the mountain a few hundred miles to Addis Ababa doubles its cost. All through sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of roads is one of the biggest obstacles to development–and not just from the standpoint of moving agricultural inputs in and moving increased grain production to the cities. That’s part of it, but I think roads also have great indirect value. If a road is built going across tribal groups and some beat-up old bus starts moving, in seven or eight years you’ll hear people say, “You know, that tribe over there, they aren’t so different from us after all, are they?”
And once there’s a road and some vehicles moving along it, then you can build schools near a road. You go into the bush and you can get parents to build a school from local materials, but you can’t get a teacher to come in because she or he will say, “Look, I spent six, eight years preparing myself to be a teacher. Now you want me to go back there in the bush? I won’t be able to come out and see my family or friends for eight, nine months. No, I’m not going.” The lack of roads in Africa greatly hinders agriculture, education, and development.”**

Do you suppose this man will be invited to visit APU as a guest lecturer?

*Newsweek, July 30, 2007 (p. 39)
**Reason Magazine, April 2000

Praise the Lord! Rod goes home from the hospital today!

Please renew your prayers for Rod as he is back in surgery for more tumors.

From Tabletalk, 1626 AD:

“Idolatry is all manner of seeming holiness and worshipping, let these counterfeit spiritualities shine outwardly as glorious and fair as they may; in a word, all manner of devotion in those that we would serve God without Christ the Mediator, his Word and command. In popedom it was held a work of the greatest sanctity for the monks to sit in their cells and meditate of God, [solitude] and of his wonderful works; to be kindled with zeal, kneeling on their knees, praying, and having their imaginary contemplations of celestial objects, with such supposed devotion, that they wept for joy. In these their conceits, they banished all desires and thoughts of women, and what else is temporal and evanescent. They seemed to meditate only of God, and of his wonderful works.
Yet all these seeming holy actions of devotion, which the wit and wisdom of man holds to be angelical sanctity, are nothing else but works of the flesh. All manner of religion, where people serve God without his Word and command, is simply idolatry, and the more holy and spiritual such a religion seems, the more hurtful and venomous it is; for it leads people away from the faith of Christ, and makes them rely and depend upon their own strength, works, and righteousness. In like manner, all kinds of orders of monks, fasts, prayers, hairy shirts, the austerities of the Capuchins, who in popedome are held to be the most holy of all, are mere works of the flesh; for the monks hold they are holy, and shall be saved, not through Christ, whom they view as a severe and angry judge, but through the rules of their order.”

But then, what did he know?

You can get the latest information on Rod’s condition (brain tumor) here.

I guess Fresno Pacific University was considered on the ‘B’ list last year for Christian Universities that Soulforce decided to bless with a visit, but it seems the smaller ‘B’ list schools are in for it this spring. Today they were to be at FPU; uninvited. I am impressed with the way the school and the Pacific District Conference of Mennonite Bretheren Churches has handled the whole thing. Read the rest of this entry »

By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Mar 22, 2:39 PM ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Sometime between the founding of a student-run porn magazine and the day the campus health center advertised “Free Lube,” Harvard University seniors Sarah Kinsella and Justin Murray decided to fight back against what they see as too much mindless sex at the Ivy League school.

They founded a student group called True Love Revolution to promote abstinence on campus. The group, created earlier this school year, has more than 90 members on its Facebook.com page and drew about half that many to an ice cream social. Read the rest of this entry »