Happy 26th Anniversary, Wifey!

Thought this was a good article on the challenge of parenting:

I love the ESV’s subtitle for Psalm 71—“Forsake Me Not When My Strength Is Spent.”

How appropriate for a psalm that describes God as one who saves in his righteousness and is to us a rock of refuge!

This summer a doctor actually told me that my strength was “spent.” I visited an orthopedic surgeon to have him check out my lower back pain. I had leaned over to change a diaper and had my back freeze up a dozen too many times.

The doctor did his evaluation, took some x-rays, then he declared that my back was fine. It was just my strength that was “spent.”

Read the rest.

Registration is now up and open on the SAMP website for our 2012 Men’s Retreat. 

The theme this year is,  “Be Present,” and, I am delighted to have +Terrell returning to SAMP to lead us through the weekend.

For more information or to register, click here.

Get your Kleenex out:

Back story is here.

Trevin Wax has done a good job of thinking through what Francis Schaeffer might say to the gospel-centered movement within today’s church.

As I recently read through Crossway’s collection of the Letters of Francis Schaeffer, I was struck by how applicable Schaeffer’s insights are today, particularly in regard to evangelical movements, leaders, and doctrine. His counsel deserves to be heeded by those of us in the “gospel-centered” stream of evangelicalism.

With this in mind, I have selected some favorite excerpts from these letters and woven them together creatively. Using Schaeffer’s own words, I am imagining out loud what counsel he might give us today.

Read it all.

We’d love to have you join us this Thursday evening!

One of my favorite Pilavachi stories:

Off for a two-day retreat at Pinehurst, NC with the clergy from across the diocese for our first retreat.  The primary goal is to simply get to know one another more personally and to spend quite a bit of time in prayer.

I would welcome your prayers for safe travel and a rich time together.

UPDATE:

Thanks for your prayers.  We had an amazing time away.  The hope was to develop collegiality and deepen our relationships.  We spent our time focused around the Word, prayer and the individual sharing of our stories addressing these dimensions: our conversion, our call, our departure from TEC (if applicable) and what we are seeing the Lord do in our life and ministry right now.  Very rich conversation.  Very rich times of prayer.

Keller writes:

“In reading what a number of respected Christian authors have said over the years about polemics and theological controversy, I have distilled a few rules. These rules, I believe, will help us neither avoid polemics nor engage in them in a spiritually destructive way. Almost every rule is mentioned in some ways by multiple authors, but when a writer has put a principle in a particularly strong or apt way, I’ve put his name on the rule.”

Read it all.

The previous three posts have addressed church: it’s permanence and it’s incarnational form. One last thought on the matter comes from this video clip from Gospel Coalition. The video was published a year ago and it is a conversation between Mark Dever, Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald. Driscoll and MacDonald are advocates of multi-site video church and Dever is not. In short, Dever advocates the identification, development and release of increasing numbers of preachers who lead a local congregation.

I’ll be curious what you think. Does Dever have a point? Do Driscoll and MacDonald come across as a bit defensive? Is there a perspective you thought/wished had been addressed?

Multiple Sites: Yea or Nay? Dever, Driscoll, and MacDonald Vote from Ben Peays on Vimeo.