Tonight we had our first core gathering of a small mustard seed called Jacob's Well.  It was great to eat, fellowship and dream together with my new family.  We are beginning a journey together to live for the glory of God, the good of our cities and extend hope through the gospel of Jesus Christ in central New Jersey.  I am so thankful for each person involved.  Two guys are not pictured as one of them had a pretty bad allergic reaction this afternoon and had to be driven home. 

It is a joy and privilege to lead this community forward serving them and building our team.  Pray I would lead them willingly with a passionate servants heart...with wisdom and skill with faith and dependence on God.  

Please keep this crew in mind - that God would expand the family, add to our number as we work together to see a community planted - a gospel centered, thoughtfully engaged, family who seeks mercy and justice while finding joy through generosity and mission. 

No this is not going to be some pithy off the wall theo-commentary about the popularly funny sitcom "The Office" - Not that I am above doing that, but this office is my new home office.  Some generous servants from NC (thank you Terry, Tom and Charles) built and delivered me some incredibly sexy bookshelves which now house my small army of little friends.  Kasey and I cannot thank these men enough for all they did to help our home and family. 

And yes, I speak endearingly of my books.  Anyway, here is a picture of my shelves, my desktop, my office and my new printer which has brought both joys and pain.

The Shelves - this action shot features a twelve foot wall of wood with room to grow from the guys birthed out of brown Amazon.com boxes. It also features some framed Inversion gear from years past.  Some would ask why I don't have more books...some would think I have bookidolatry...my secret is keeping almost a thousand volumes (mainly classic works, references, lexicons and commentaries) on my hard drive courtesy of Logos Liboronix...awwww yeah. Click images for larger views.

The Office - here I sit with my Windows Vista equipped Dell Laptop, conceled USB hub for connected devices.  I have a minimal desk as most work is computerized...I have a small resource center behind me for printed materials, supplies and workspace for hole punching and paper cutting. Having your office in what is supposed to be "the living room" gives you a nice selection of windows. 

The Desktop - Currently I have some printouts on my desk in preparation for our first core get together for Jacob's Well on Sunday night.  Fall Schedules, Jacob's Well DNA files and some cool visual teaching thingys (can't show you pics of that - top secret) are there.  Also of note is a picture of me with my smoking hot wife, some new biz cards with my NJ 411 and slightly to the left is one of my daughters panda bears from the Littlest Pet Shop...yeah, I roll that way.

The Printer - this lovely guy is the subject of my previous blog post - well, sort of.  This was an unbelievable gift from a friend.  Color, full duplex, wireless and cost me nothing.  Did I say this was an unbelievable gift! 

So I am really thankful for my office, my bookshelves and gifted gear.  Yet I am not thankful for these in themselves...but rather their purpose in my life.  To be used in service of the giver of all good things.  St. Augustine once commented that to love a gift more than the giver of all things would be utterly absurd...I'll leave you with a classic quote from him on this.

“Suppose brethren, a man should make a ring for his betrothed, and she should love the ring more wholeheartedly than the betrothed who made it for her….Certainly, let here love his gift: but, if she should say, “The ring is enough.  I do not want to see his face again” what would we say of her?...The pledge is given her by the betrothed just that, in his pledge, he himself may be loved.  God, then, has given you all these things.  Love him who made them.” 

Selah...

This past week I have been working on setting up my home office.  My undergrad degree was in Applied Computer Science and a minor in Physics so I still take to the tech world a little bit.  So I was installing a wireless network, my work laptop and the family computer.  As Balki Bartokomous used to say, it was easy as cake and a piece of pie. Successfully installing some technology is very rewarding and yet there is a dark side of this same force as well.  Introduce the new printer...

A gracious and generous friend from Fellowship Nashville bought Jacob's Well a sweet color laser printer which also scans, faxes and gives back massages.  Well, maybe I am embellishing a bit...but it is a sweet printer.  I unpacked the box, installed a hardware duplexer (both sides of the paper please!) and we were off and running.  I plugged in my USB cable to my laptop and viola! Printing in less than 5 minutes...pride cometh before a fall.  The printer is also networkable and I wanted to be able to print from our family computer...and from my wireless network anywhere in the house.  Part II of my printer installation experience took 5 hours.

So I followed instructions installing a wireless network card into the printer - pretty simple.  Then ran the install stuff and unplugged...nothing. Then I spent a good few hours reading a fat manual and trying different methods of installation. Finally, I did the unthinkable - I called Dell Tech Support.  For about an hour I did exactly what the guy said, which was stuff I already had tried - which did nothing but make me feel less stupid.  Then we gave the printer a permanent IP address (something I think the Dell install manual should tell you to do, but I digress) and thought we had made it.  Nope.  Anyway, the install routine was not giving it a TCP/IP port in Windows - we went in and added a port and finally...printing again. The Dell guy was cool and very helpful - but it took time and a bit of perseverance.

In going through this joyous process I realized how my life centers around getting stuff to "work right."  I want my marriage to work right, my kids to work right, my body to work right, my work to work right and of course, my newfangled techno-gadgets to work right.  Yet I keep running into this problem - things can and do go "wrong." So for me, my entangled battle with a printer is an echo of the running battle that all people face living outside of Eden. 

• We want the world to be rational and moral...and it is, well, sometimes
• We want things to go well...and they don't, and do...sometimes
• We want to control things...and we can...sometimes, but then realize it is an illusion...well, sometimes
• We want life to be easier, but it is hard
• We want joy to flow from all our possessions and trappings - and it doesn't
• We want life to be full and sometimes it is boring and mundane
• We think sex, food and new experiences will fix it all - and we are perplexed when they don't
  

So it seems to me that there are two ways you can look at this world, both based on the reality of our mingled existence...that there is a real experience of joy, goodness, truth, love and beauty and an equal amount of despondency, evil, deception, guile and ugliness. When we run into this reality all the time.  It is why we get drunk.

So my question is this: What more defines your world? Brokenness or Beauty, Harmony or Havoc?

1. You can see the world as a random place of chaos where death and survival are the only laws of the jungle.  In this view love is accidental (not essential) and pain would seem essential.   
2. You can see this as a world of purpose and order where truth, purpose and goodness govern the universe.  In this view chaos/evil are accidental (not essential, even alien) and love/goodness is essential. 

It is my contention that we all long for goodness and love and think the world ought to be a more hospitable place. In other words, we think existence is a good thing but there is stuff going awfully wrong - like my printer. We hope, love, dream, desire and ache for another place.  As CS Lewis once rightly wrote in his classic Mere Christianity: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

So my printer now prints...and is filled with awesomeness...but it doesn't yet scan on the network...and the control panel seems to have an admin password that I neither asked for or assigned.  So it seems like technology bliss and banality both remain ahead. Likewise, my life will likely continue to travel roads that are mingled as well.  I know I will need to choose to follow God tomorrow and love my neighbor as myself.  I know that I must resist the dark paths that emerge from my own soul and choose to stay close to Jesus.  I need to find his grace in my failures and new hope tomorrow.  I need him to teach me that God is good and governing the chaos and some day the alien darkness will lift from his world. To think otherwise is to give way to a view of life that is less human...and certainly not from God. 

FOXNews.com has a fascinating article about Mosab Hassan Yousef son of someone in the leadership of Hamas. The article is mostly interview form and centers on Yousef's conversion to Christianity from the religion of peace. In commenting on what other Muslim's think of his conversion he provides one of my favorite quotes from the piece:

Yeah, they think that Christians took advantage of me, and this is completely wrong. I've been a Christian for a long time before they knew, or anyone knew. I love Jesus, I followed him for many years now. It wasn't a secret for most of the time, and this time I just did it to glorify the name of God and praise him. They're not dealing with a regular Muslim. They know that I'm educated, they know that I studied, they know that I studied Islam and Christianity. When I made my decision, I didn't make it because someone did magic on me or convinced me. It was completely my decision.

There is also a video report which I have embedded here as well:

ReLit/Crossway will be publishing a second book from Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears.  The book is titled Death by Love and is a treatment of the scope and breadth of Christ's work on the cross for us.  ReLit just launched a new web site to feature the book and it is extremely well done.  There is a fantastic video (see embed below, or larger video on their site) some sick graphic art to download, a sample chapter in a nice flash reader, as well as a page on Facebook. 

This book will be a work in theology and practical ministry as it focuses on various aspects of Jesus death on the cross applied practically to the stories of real people.  I look forward to having this one on our book table once we get launched out with Jacob's Well next year.

Readers here know that I am an ESV fanboy - I said the other day that I loved Windows Vista - but even more that that I love the English Standard Version of the Bible.  It seems that the ESV is even beloved in the nation of China.

From the Crossway Press Release - ESV and the Olympics.  I feel happy:

Wheaton, IL—China will provide 10,000 free Chinese-English bilingual Bibles to be distributed in the Olympic Village where the Olympic athletes and media are housed, as reported by the China Daily newspaper. The bilingual Bible text will include the CUV (Chinese Union Version) and the ESV (English Standard Version), appearing in two side-by-side columns per page. The CUV Bible is the most widely distributed Chinese Bible in the world, and the ESV Bible has recently become the fastest-growing English language Bible in the world.

In addition to the 10,000 bilingual CUV-ESV Bibles, 30,000 New Testaments and 100,000 bilingual editions of the four Gospels will also be made available at the Olympic Games.

Because cultural and academic leaders in China are seeking to understand the influence of the Bible on the worldview and culture of the West, there is a growing interest in Chinese-English bilingual Bibles in mainland China. “We are especially grateful,” Crossway President Dr. Lane Dennis notes, “that the ESV was selected by Chinese Christian leaders for publication with Chinese CUV Bible, through our partnership with the British and Foreign Bible Society. Since both the CUV and the ESV are ‘essentially literal’ Bible translations, they are ideally suited for a side-by-side comparison of the two languages. What a wonderful thing it would be if thousands of people would learn English—and Chinese!—by reading the Bible in side-by-side bilingual editions.”

You can read the rest here

The Church 

• Joseph Bottum has an interesting article in First Things entitled The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline.
• Is there a uniquely "American Heresy" being preached today?  Ross Douthat thinks so and tells us about it in the Atlantic.
  

Technology

• I heart Windows Vista...now don't start mouthin off if you have not used it and watch Mac commercials. I have used it for 8 months and love it.  Also, Microsoft has a fun project they launched called the Mojave Experiment - check it out. 
• Looking for affordable online back-up for your PC or MAC?  Check out Jungle Disk.  It is an interface for Amazon's S3 Storage solution.  Your data is stored online with Amazon's servers and the monthly fee is ridiculously small. 
• Practice Surgery on the Wii - Why not? Surgeons Hone Skill with the Wii
• Finally, John Mark Reynolds asks the question - Are We Distracting Ourselves to Death? and offers five practical tips for techno-sanity in our age.
  

Peripateo - My Walk

• A touching story of a man who is wrestling away from a drug addiction.  ESPN Outside the Lines Feature - Getting Off the Mat.
• John Crace from the Guardian (UK) does a sort of parody review of William Young's The Shack. Just a look at how someone from the outside views things...here is a sampling: "
  

  The snow lay thick and the shack was deserted when Mack arrived, but he blinked and suddenly it was spring and the forest was covered with verdant greens. "Hello, Mack," said a black woman.

  "I wasn't expecting God to be a black woman," Mack gasped.

  "That's because you've never read any quasi-liberal, religious crap like this before," God laughed. "But don't panic. I am American."

  "I'm Jesus," said Jesus. "I've got a wacky sense of humour."

  "And because I'm eastern, I've been given the job of being the Holy Spirit," Sarayu murmured, "so forgive me if I sound like a stoned hippie when I burble some meaningless mystical bollocks."

• Interesting Review of Wendy Shalit's book Girls Gone Mild - Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good in the Weekly Standard.