I just saw an amazing documentary.  Have you seen March of the Penguins?  Wow.

Ben and Greg, thank you so much for taking some of your time and investing it in our church by engaging in this discussion in, of all places, cyberspace.  It seems like we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time.  If we decide to keep blogging, we’d love you to join us again.

This must be one of the most updated blogs on the internet.  I’m out-of-town right now, as Jonathan mentioned, and am barely able to keep up with everything that’s being posted.  Lord willing, I’ll catch up tonight.  I’m glad to see that the nature of the church, parenting, and covenant theology are all being sorted out.  Just another week at the Third Avenue Website.

Well brothers and sisters, by God’s grace 3ABC is officially operating under her new Constitution with a plurality of elders. Let me be the first to say publicly congratulations to Aaron, Greg, and Keith. I’ll let these brothers say more about what this means in the history and future of the congregation. But for me, I’m signing off. Aaron, you know longer have to pretend you’re interested in my pop-culture commentaries. Teasing!

I have enjoyed blogging over the past couple of months. It was something that I’ve never done prior to then. I’ll admit I was a bit hesitant at first. I thought that I was out of my league to be writing with these brothers. Plus, who would really want to know what I thought or had to say about a variety of issues? Nevertheless, I thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to try to be instructive, and pray that some fruit will come from it.

Now one person, who I’ll leave unnamed, has encouraged me to start my own blog. We’ll see. If I decide to do so, I promise I’ll link to this page. Keep the posts rolling, brothers. Signing Off!

So I’m back from a week-long trip to California, and very glad about that. Being back, that is. It was a good time–I got to see Air Force One at the Reagan Library, which was the very plane that every president from 1961-1991(?) used, before they got the newer, bigger model during Bush I’s presidency. Also ate lunch at Malibu, etc. etc. California etc.

On Sunday, I got to attend one of the biggest emerging churches in the country, Mosaic, pastored by Erwin McManus. It was an eye-opening experience, really, but not in the way you might expect. The service was held in an auditorium in Beverly Hills High School, which honestly didn’t look any nicer than my high school in East Texas. But that’s another story. I won’t tell you everything I thought about Mosaic, just for time’s sake, but I did think you might enjoy hearing a little about it.

The bottom line is that this emerging church didn’t feel nearly as new and exciting and “emerging” as I had hoped. The music was fairly run-of-the-mill: fast, driving, pretty good lyrics, familiar songs most of them, a guy in a sweatshirt jumping around on the stage like a mid-90s rock star. It was fine, and honestly, the song lyrics had alot of gospel in them, which I found reassuring.

The closest thing to an “emerging” element was the emphasis they placed on the fine arts, but even that was subdued compared to what I have been led to believe from reading emergent books. During the sermon, a woman painted on a blank canvasse her interpretation, I suppose, of what was being said. So by the end of the service, there was this nice picture of two people–I couldn’t tell exactly what they were doing–at the back-center of the stage. I’m not an artist, and the times when I have been moved by art have been exceedingly few and far between, but honestly, I didn’t think there was anything particularly profound in having her paint during the sermon.

On that point, I also wonder why the church is privileging talent in the fine arts. God has given us all many talents. Why should they privilege someone who can paint over someone who can bench press 400 pounds? Or throw a football? If the church serious about letting people showcase their God-given talents, then I say let someone do push-ups behind the preacher next week. But they won’t, because they recognize just like we do that not every talent is meant to be showcased in the public worship of God. The only question is how you decide what belongs there and what doesn’t. What’s the authority in that case? The pastor’s desires? The church’s composition? Reason? Scripture?