A Little Bit of News

Boy oh boy.  It’s been 16 months since I last posted on here.  At that time, I was driving truck for a nursery and working 12-16 hour days while studying for my LSAT’s and attempting to get into law school.  Life was rather nuts and I wasn’t doing it that well…and then things got *actually* crazy.  I’m not going to get into details about how my life has become a field, strewn with flaming cow pies from the Devil’s own satanic herd.

There are three reasons for that:

a.  I don’t want to.
b.  I can’t.
c.  The people who need to know already know.

I’ve been gone from this blog (outside of responding to occasional comments), but I haven’t been totally gone from the web (though I’ve been gone from this for so long that it just took me several attempts and several minutes to insert the above picture…sigh).  I have  been somewhat on social media, but Twitter and Facebook have more or less been outlets for humor and low-grade trolling…purely distractions for me.  I haven’t been blogging because I haven’t known what in the world to write about.  Scandals have arisen that I normally would have weighed in on, but I didn’t say anything and that was most likely for the best.  There was nothing I could have said that didn’t get said by someone smarter and more articulate than myself anyway.  Issues have come and gone and though I may have listened to podcasts and read articles, I didn’t weigh in because I didn’t really need to.

A Ray of Hope…

Ah, the American Election.  Watching from Canada, it’s been a bit of entertainment that may bode trouble for Canada, though it’s far too early to tell. I’m not too apathetic toward American politics, though I definitely don’t make a habit of following them.  My wife is from the US, and I have many close friends south of the 49th, so it’s not of no consequence to me.

Still, the election is over now and the aftermath is already being forgotten.  Apparently now that Trump has become the president-elect, mobs of previously-restrained racists and homophobes are free to run around and beat people in the streets…except all of the claimed “Trump instigated violence” stories that I’ve seen in the media are fabricated.  Sadly, lying is how the political (and theological) left has always rolled.  Reason and truth are secondary to the desired agenda.

Those signs should say “I obviously shouldn’t be here,” “I don’t understand how naturalization works” and “This protest shouldn’t be effective”…

That’s all nothing new…but also not terribly encouraging.

So what’s with the title of the blog post?

Tim Challies “pleads Canadian” on Dispensationalism

My wife and I have an ongoing joke.

When we were first dating, we enjoyed talking about the subtle differences between our two cultures.  She’s American and I’m Canadian, and though people think that Canada is the politer, colder version of the United States, there are a few more differences than manners and climate.  We would always be talking and then one of us would suddenly drop a word that the other didn’t recognize.  One time, it took a trip to to an Office supply store to explain to her exactly what a Duo Tang was.

There was a second, related joke.  Since we were living in the US at the time we were dating and I was the foreigner, I would sometimes pretend to not know what she was talking about and I’d “plead Canadian.”  In other words, I’d feign ignorance and enjoy my girlfriend’s (now wife) shock and awe that I’d never heard of sour cream and onion chips (or whatever it was that we were discussing).  What can I say?  I’m a bit of a stinker.  So why do I bring this up?

The Blog Is Officially On Standby

I’m guessing that you were expecting this to be the third installment on my series about generational curses, but the Lord has derailed that train for an indeterminate period of time.  I recently lost my job (due to no moral or ethical failure of my own), and that means that all luxury activities (which basically means “blogging”) are on hiatus for the indefinite future.  I have the third post 3/4 done, but it’s a few hours away from being ready to go and I have several more posts that are in the “rough notes” stage.  Those will all have to wait.

In the meantime, I do have 2 requests:

Quick Thoughts: The Church of the Highlands and Chris Hodges

Boy oh boy.

I am asked about stuff all the time and don’t have time to do the amount of research or study necessary to give to properly deal with some of the stuff that comes across my plate, but I wanted to toss something online on an upcoming church that appears to be very dangerous.  One of the fastest growing churches in North America is the Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama.

It’s not necessarily in the limelight yet, but Church of the Highlands is a 15 year old church that has grown to be a multi-site church of 14 locations with over 32,000 people.  In fact, it’s grown so fast that it wasn’t even on the Outreach top 50 back in 2013 when I went through the top 50 churches on there.

They’ve been doing the growth thing with bells on, and they’re a good example of tight packaging and excellence in presentation.  There’s a whole lot of design, architecture and presentation genius in Highlands that many churches could benefit from.  Their buildings look great and their presentation is amazing…but beautiful architecture, great media, slickly-produced programs and fantastic music don’t make a good church. But what about Highlands as a church?  What about their doctrine and practice?