Archive for November, 2009

New Orleans 2009 – Day 2 – Work (#Orleans09)

One of my favorite things so far is being in close proximity to some older members of our congregation. Something I appreciate about my heritage is the strong work ethic, and that ethic is on display here this week. But not only do they work hard, they laugh hard and play hard too. Every night [...]

New Orleans – Day 1 – Travel (#Orleans09)

New Orleans 2009
Well we made it here; we’re in New Orleans ready to get to work with MDS (Mennonite Disaster Services).
It was quite a trip: left at 11:00pm, spent over an hour at the Sarnia border, stayed up all night, flew out of Detroit at 6:00am, landed in Houston and hopped onto another plane to [...]

Question 1: Didn’t Jesus Say We Should Sell Everything We Own and Give it to the Poor?

For the last week I’ve been collecting questions here – feel free to add a few more; below is the first answer. This is actually a repost (with some edits) from September 2008, but I’ll re-post it now for two reasons.
One, it tries to answer a question submitted by Nathan Colquhoun:

After reading the story of [...]

The Two Selves (The Medaille House Journals – 4)

***This is a series of posts based on writing I did on personal retreat in October 2009. Read earlier posts in the series here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |Part 5|Part 6|Part 7***
Like every other uncomfortable experience, I was blind to the future benefits while I was going through [...]

Next Week – LiveBlogging From New Orleans (#Orleans09)

Next week I will be leading a team of 13 to New Orleans to do disaster relief work through Mennonite Disaster Services.
How to follow along:
Blog – I will try to post at least once per day here at the blog and  include pictures. All of the posts related to New Orleans will be at the [...]

N. T. Wright on Blogging and Social Media

All salient points. He understands the medium. Take a look:

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.
Wright’s one big worry: isolationism. Sure it is human beings typing and human beings responding, but there is something about human communication that involves bodies and faces, and however good you are as a writer, you can’t [...]

Ask Me Anything

I find that some of the best and most discussed posts at The Ascent to Truth come about by way of a question sent to me by email, Facebook, or Twitter. Obviously, one question represents the questions of many others.
So, ask me any question. (No doubt I will receive very shortly hordes of inane and [...]

Douglas Wilson – Leveling the Monks of High Art

I will quote here (at length) from Doug Wilson’s recent piece called “Humbling the Arts”, but you really should read the entire thing for yourself here.
Money quotes:
We have come to the point of high circularity where our culture defines art as anything done by an artist, and an artist as one who has the right [...]

“The Edge Of His Cloak” Author Kevin Abell on the Genesis of His Book

I recently published a review of Kevin’s book here. You can purchase his book at Amazon.
This is from the Aylmer News Blog:
“In December of 2008, my wife and I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the young women who used to be a part of our youth group. During our time together, [...]

Michael Frost – “A Call To Transform Neighborhoods” (Renov8 #rv8)

***This will be the last of the liveblog posts. I will probably follow up with some further thoughts later next week. Thanks for reading*** (All of my posts from Renov8 can be found here)
The time has come to wrap up the conference, and who better to do that than the guy who got us started: [...]