A few good reads

Michael Spencer has a couple of terrific posts you ought to check out.

To Know We're Not Alone - a pastor reveals just how human he is by telling his congregation of how he has just found his wife with another man and he is falling apart. But, pastors are supposed to have perfectly families and never fall apart, right? Michael, if you see this I tried to leave a comment earlier today but had some trouble. Excellent post.

A Contrarian Manifesto for the Church Growth Movement - Steve Brown says that many who check out of church do so not because of horrific sin or scandal, but because of fatigue. They just can't handle all of the pressure and all of the expectations. Michael expresses a bit of pastoral fatigue here. He's tried all of the fads that are supposed to produce church growth and he's grown tired. I wonder how many preachers check out of the pastorate more from fatigue of trying to meet growth expectations than from anything else.

Tim Challies has a good post on some of the differences that a Reformed worldview makes in daily life.

Diane Roberts just read John Dean's book Worse Than Watergate - dealing with the Bush presidency and neo-cons. Her post makes one wonder if Bush is a wolf in sheep's clothing, at least in his appearances to be the champion of Christian values. For my money Bush is still the better candidate in this election hands down. However, Diane rightly suggests that evangelicals tend to blindly follow politicians and parties that will give a nod to their "family values" and turn a blind eye to their foibles. She lists some of Dean's assertions about the agenda of neo-cons but she didn't have room to list the evidence for the assertions. I would be interested in looking at the book to see what evidence Dean musters. Still, there is some definite food for thought here. Her list of "family values champions" whose lives didn't match their rhetoric provides some worthy warnings.

Jeff Clinton at the Dawn Treader has two good posts (here and here) on presuppositional apologetics. This is one of my favorite topics among the theological encyclopedia. Presuppositional apologetics grew out of the work of Cornelius Van Til and has been popularized by folks like Greg Bahnsen, John Frame and Richard Pratt. The trouble with presuppositionalists is that for the most part they have been obscurantists. While Van Til is considered the father of the system, he is extremely difficult to read. John Frame and Greg Bahnsen have tried to explain Van Til to a new generation (Frame in his books Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought and Apologetics to the Glory of God and Bahnsen in his books Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis and Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith) but he has remained pretty obscure. I still think that Richard Pratt's Every Thought Captive: A Study Manual for the Defense of Christian Truth is the most readable into to Van Til and presuppositionalism. But, for those of you who don't have time to read the books you can check out Jeff's posts for an introduction to and practical application of some presuppositional apologetic principles. Then, when you are done reading Jeff, go read Jeremy Pierce and he'll tell you why we presuppositionalists are all wet.

And, finally, Jared at Mysterium Tremendum is being mysteriously drawn to the darkside by the tremendous force of the arguments for amillennialism. Come Jared, use the force and come all the way and join us on the dark side.