Turns out the conference centre has Wi Fi. So I'll be blogging it over the next few days. Enjoy.

8/10 Moore College applicants say that J. I. Packer's book, Knowing God is their favourite Christian book other than Bible.

I wonder if that's still the case?

When one of them gets converted?

Dirty Don gives a nifty answer.

I'm gonna drink enough coffee to melt our faces with Nick. We'll start by going to Mecca Espresso in the CBD. Then we'll have lunch with Bron and Maisy.

Then I'm going to St Cuthbert's Anglican with Ben Pfahlert from MTS. I'm crashing at his place tonight.

Then tomorrow we are going to Geneva's Down the Drain conference. I'll be MCing three or four of the sessions and doing three church planter assessments. I've gotta work on that stuff on the plane this morning.

He had a seizure and they discovered a tumour in his brain, I think.

He has written on his blog, prior to going into surgery.

Another dear friend, founding elder of Crossroads and hero of the faith here in Hobart has been in the ICU after having a heart attack a week ago. He seemed much better yesterday, but it's still a long way to go.

Heavy stuff.

A good friend of mine gave this savvy advice for submitting a funding proposal to a businessman:

One idea however would be to include your nice flyer in a printed nicely presented proposal letter etc and post in A4 envelope. Then send it all by email the afternoon when the mail should have arrived and refer to the hard copies he should have received. This is a chance for him to read it in hard copy, which he'd much prefer than reading it all in electronic email attachments (he's not a fan of big attachments), and then also a chance for you to include the nice looking flyer, and your business card etc. The photo of you in the flyer will help him to visualise who he's supporting, which is important.

Good suggestions, don't you think?

Keller makes the rhetorical point that we need to apply the gospel both to wordly sinfulness and religious sinfulness - "to good people and bad people". That's very helpful. He says "There are actually three ways to live".

It's a helpful reminder, but it's not ultimately true. That's obvious, but sometimes we don't realise the obvious when we hear a powerful speaker say something.

So there you go. Religion is really a subset of rebellion against God.

So there are really only two ways to live: continue in our rebellion against God and face his wrath, or submit to Jesus as Lord and trust in him for eternal salvation.

Check it out.

Amen.

H/T Nathan

I've been using Logos for the last six months and I've found it kind of crappy.

Besides, I'm not particularly convinced that Bible software is all that helpful most of the time. It's a great way to stop using your original languages and, for that matter, you brain. I agree with Con on this:

The risk of using software is that you can short-cut the learning process, just as you will with an interlinear (see my second post). You need to struggle to remember words and grammar, rather than just get a quick answer (By the way, this need only apply to your 'Greek reading time', not every time you use the software). So, if you're disciplined, go ahead and use the software for your Greek reading. But if you can't be trusted not to cheat, then close your laptop, and get out a paper Greek New Testament. If you can find one.

A problem with software is that it doesn't tell you which words you should already know. You think you don't know a word, so you get the quick answer, then think, 'oh yeah, I knew that'. A vocabulary tool like Sakae Kubo's book is better in this regard, but I'll address vocab revision/learning in a future post.

Anyway, it's nice to hear some of the criticisms of Logos voiced here:

a business model which charges often-ridiculous prices for public domain books, and book sets which contain an inordinate amount of chaff, I have consistently found the intricacies of the software off-putting. Logos has never been easy to use. It's complex, counter-intuitive, challenging software. Consequently, I seldom use Logos for anything but simple Bible searches.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates on Logos.

The saga continues. Anakin Skywalker has now become Darth Vader but on the bright side, there's no more JaJa Binx.

Some good reflections here about the difference between (and not necessarily the equivalence of kingdom growth and local church growth):

So was Uni Church a failure? As I think about individual people I'm forced to conclude that CUC was not a failure. As always, I think about myself first, and the way God has used the people and Bible teaching, and example of each other striving to live the gospel out, to greatly encourage and strengthen me in living out the gospel message. I think too of the way God has grown new followers of Jesus. I have sentimentally been looking at old photos and keep being surprised at the number of people who have become Christians and then moved on, that I had forgotten about. That's quite astounding really, that in a church whose weekly attendance over six years has rarely touched thirty, that I could actually lose count of the number of people God brought to faith in Jesus. Our goals that we set were at least in part being met: we were reaching Cumberland campus with the gospel, we were encouraging students to persevere and we were training men and women for long term ministry.

You see, I was wrong (and let's face it, a little bitter) when earlier in the series I wrote of the godly spin-doctoring we performed as each person chose to leave our congregation, we would inevitably rebadge this leaving as "being sent". But I've changed my mind. We did send them. God through our feeble efforts as a church had raised up people who were going out with the gospel. Furthermore, we didn't ask them to stay. We could have but we didn't. No, we sent them. And knowing the people they are, who were going to serve mightily in other long-term ministries, if we'd begged them to stay they probably would have. Though no doubt we needed them, Uni Church was a sending a church.

Nick from St John's designed an awesome brochure for new students starting at UTAS in 2010. I wish I wasn't a part of this ministry, so that I could get this brochure and then join it!

Fundraising for my new work with the University Fellowship of Christians is going really well. I've now got a little over $70K in donations or pledges. The last $30K will enable us to lease and set up office space and hire a 1-2 day/week admin staff. It's a funny thing, setting a big vision, like raising $100K. You know it's possible, but when it starts to come together you still get the shock of 'Whoah, this is actually going to really happen!'.

I'm very thankful to the people who have been generously supportive of all of this and hope that a few more people will sign on in these last few weeks of 2009, either for ongoing financial partnership, or once-off contributions.

Arthur and Tamie are blogging through these issues at the moment.

• Office: Take 2 (exploring Ralph Winter's stuff on modalities and sodalities)
  
• Going parachurch 1: Mirco-ecclesiology (exploring the right way to frame parachurch: "groups unhinged from the local church for mission")
• Going parachurch 2: Ordination?
  

In Australian Christian circles that have been strongly influenced by the Knox-Robinson thesis of church, there is an awful lack of thoughtfulness about parachurch organisations - whether small groups, uni ministries, Bible Colleges or denominations.

Knox-Robinson thesis is, as Andrew Heard says, 'a desert island theology of church'. It's not a complete definition and it's irresponsible to brandish it around recklessly. Just because people 'gather around Christ in the word' at small group or campus ministry doesn't make it a church in every way that a local church is. Just because Acts 29 and the Anglican denomination are both networks of local churches, doesn't mean that they are both equally denominations, either.

Christian single men take note.

But to the country.

To not eat, smoke, laugh, take herbal baths. To eat a lot of peaches. To be slippin and a sliding, playing domino.

Props to anyone who can add some further lyrics from songs about living in or moving to the country.

Here.

Personally, I'm much more of an NIV guy and I don't like NIV dissing much - or TNIV dissing for that matter. The vast majority of 'bad translation' in the NIV doesn't even need to be commented on in a sermon, you can just paraphrase as you explain. When you do need to 'correct it', you should be brief and very courteous (let's not forget that a international team of experts created the NIV!).

I have a lot of sympathy for a decent amount of the gender-neutral translation, although the TNIV does go too far and make Hebrews 2, for example, kind of meaningless. Still, I agree with Mounce that assuming gender-neutral stuff always involved feminism is mean-spirited.

I've looked at the Holman a bit and quite like it. But still don't feel too bothered with the NIV, actually.

H/T Alan

On Sola Panel.

Article in New York magazine.
H/T John Tyson from Trinity Grace

The Swiss have banned the building of minarets in their country:

But Martin Baltisser, the SVP's general secretary, told the BBC: "This was a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power."

H/T Experimental Theology

Sojourn's Daniel Montgomery's 'breakout session' from the recent Louisville bootcamp.