Brian Habig is a church planter in Greenville, SC.  He is stretching himself to reach out to a community of unchurched that is soaked in religion. He has a few comments here about his experience; interesting stuff.

Responding to Keith’s query on football in the library. Here is Boyce Library’s offering:

Author: William D. Dean

Title: The American Spiritual Culture and the Invention of Jazz, FOOTBALL, and the Movies

Abstract:

Americans are perhaps the most openly and energetically religious of all the peoples among the developed nations. Americans are religious in all the obvious ways, belonging to churches, synagogues, and mosques as well as nurturing private spiritualities. But they are religious also in public ways, aiming to find a standard large enough to frame their common life and to judge them and their country. In this book, William Dean describes the spiritual culture that is grounded in the emerging American story. He also explores the concept of God (or the “Ultimate”) that is central to that story–a concept that is reflected in contemporary American culture, including popular culture. The first part of the book argues that Americans are a pragmatic, culturally displaced, immigrant people and teases out the meaning of this description for a concept of God that is theologically and religious adequate–pragmatic yet attentive to both tradition and mystery. In the second half of the book, the author verifies his analysis by examining three quintessential American popular cultural forms, which he would argue are forms of religious expression. They are jazz (improvisation), football (violence), and the movies (fantasy). The American spiritual culture is a work of constructive theology that is wide-ranging in scope, combining cultural commentary, rich historical illustrations, and theo-philosophical insights.

So there you have it, Keith, a book on football, in the library, for you (and Bruce) to enjoy.

No Aaron, I have not been to a rodeo. I have been to an establishment that had a mechanical bull though. I have also watched segments of rodeos on TV, and have seen movies with segments from rodeos. I have a general idea what goes on. I have also not been to a bull fight, a cock fight, or the dog races. I don’t necessary have anything against them, I just haven’t had occasion to attend one.
But, I have been to Portland. I’ll bet they never have a rodeo there.

Bruce reviewed Chris Seay’s Faith of My Fathers at the 9 Marks website.  That’s cool.  Notice the Keisling wit:

Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) writes in the forward that the “beauty” of the book lies in its “subtlety”. I disagree. Faith of My Fathers is subtle like a Texas rodeo is subtle.  Sure, you could “read” into a rodeo the quest for human dominance over nature, but it’s really just a sporting event. So too, you could “read” into these conversations layers of meaning all throughout, but it’s really just a conversation with some nuggets of meaning that emerge here and there.

There’s more wit (and insight) to be found in his review, but I’ll leave it at that.  Bruce, have you been to a rodeo?

So Greg and Ben, not to be defensive but here we are on Third Avenue’s blog — the home of the not-so-edited-thoughts of our church leaders.  The audience consists primarily of our local church but you just can’t limit who has access to a website and, frankly, we welcome any readers beyond our church.  Still, our audience is primarily Third Avenue.  Given our context, and given your remarks, should we shut down?  Before you answer, realize that we regularly ask ourselves if this blog is something that should continue.

I haven’t posted this week but I am about to make up for it. I’m sitting here in New York with Greg Thornbury, Dean of the School of Christian Studies at Union University and Senior Fellow of Kairos Journal and Ben Mitchell professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an editor of Kairos Journal. They’ve agreed to spend a few minutes engaging in a discussion on a few topics including the danger of blogging, the SBC, the church and the culture, and some thoughts on the one year anniversary of the death of Terry Schiavo. They are our first guest bloggers. It’s great to have them and I’m going to get things started with a question: Thinking about the rise of blogs in conservative Christian circles, are there any ethical considerations worth discussing?

I wrote a review this weekend of Brian McLaren’s book, The Last Word, and the Word After That. You’ll be able to see the whole review in the May/June issue of Modern Reformation, but here are a couple of paragraphs from it.

Finally, it should be noted that The Last Word is conspicuously lacking in any emphasis on, or practically any mention of, the cross of Christ. Perhaps that is unintentional, but whatever the case, it is at least strange that a book which focuses so intently on hell should so assiduously avoid discussion of the means God has given for avoiding it. Maybe the explanation for all this lies in the fact that McLaren’s gospel is so socially oriented, so focused on the present, that it has no obvious place for concepts like atonement, substitution, propitiation, or eschatological salvation. Yet those are the ideas which lie at the very heart of the cross’s meaning. It is therefore not surprising that a gospel which downplays those concepts will also wind up downplaying the cross. Ultimately, McLaren is so careful to avoid the uncomfortable “legal” language of evangelical Christianity, and so intent on making the gospel a matter of the here-and-now rather than the there-and-then, that he ends up leaving the cross itself with nothing better than a tenuous foothold in the Christian gospel.

McLaren set out with his “New Kind of Christian” trilogy to rescue the Gospel from irrelevance. By approaching Scripture from a decidedly this-worldly perspective, by revisiting the teachings of Jesus with postmodern sensibilities, and by stating the gospel in terms of social justice, he hoped to make the Christian faith attractive to a new generation. In the process, however, what McLaren has finally presented is a gospel so nearly emptied of eternity, so tethered to the here-and-now, that it really has no ability at all to offer a full and lasting hope. After all, as Paul wrote, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”