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In 3rd grade, I memorized Psalm 100 and can still remember the thrill of being able to say that I had memorized a whole chapter of the Bible!

Whitney went to a Be Moms event recently and was encouraged by Laurie Jenkin’s story of teaching her boys Psalm 100 last year. So, the Bennett family is trying to memorize Psalm 100 and plan on saying it together as a family on Thanksgiving.

Psalm 100 (ESV)
1 Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
2 Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!
3 Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!
5 For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Perhaps you might wish to read this on Thanksgiving as well as you contemplate the glory of the God from whom all good things flow.

I am thankful for this church. Thank you for letting me serve as a pastor at this church with such joy.

Trailer to the new Blind Side Movie

Biblical Literacy

This story from USA Today on biblical literacy was sent to me by my friend Andrew. The basic point of the story is that biblical literacy is important, but schools are afraid to teach the Bible because we crazy Christians will use the book to proseltyze. Here is an excerpt:

Indeed, Newman says that trying to appreciate biblical allusions in literature without an underlying knowledge of Scripture is like trying to appreciate a good joke when someone has to explain the punch line. You might eventually "get" the joke, she says, but by the time you do, "it's not funny anymore."

Interestingly, a 2008 study published in Sociological Quarterly found that regular church attendance positively affected students' grade point averages. And while lead researcher Jennifer Glanville of the University of Iowa attributed much of this effect to the social and psychological benefits of being enmeshed in a wider community of like-minded peers and adults, some of this effect might also be explained by the greater biblical literacy young people typically acquire by attending church.

To stem the decline of biblical literacy, three states — Georgia, Texas and Tennessee — have passed laws in recent years calling for public high schools to offer elective courses that teach the Bible "in an objective and non-devotional manner with no attempt to indoctrinate students" (as Georgia's law puts it).

A few thoughts...

1. It is always astounding to me to realize what an impact the Bible has had upon our culture...and how quickly our culture is changing. A significantly smaller fraction of our cultural output requires Biblical literacy in order to interpret.

2. Yeah, I have to admit if I were a teacher I would do use the Bible to teach about Christianity. Guilty.

3. It is always sad to see how fearful secularists are of proselytizing, or even the acknowledgement of religious belief in the public sphere. The objective is not protection of all beliefs (or lack thereof) but rather the removal of the acceptability of belief.

4. Would a teacher who doesn't believe the Bible to be true be held to the same standard of "objectivity?" Would he be required to NOT communicate his lack of belief? In other words, if a teacher taught about the life of Christ from the Gospels and considered those accounts to be mythical, would we be concerned about her communicating that to her class? If she mentioned that they were fanciful accounts, would we accuse her of proselytizing? I think the whole idea of objectivity is rather absurd.

Not sure if this is funny or not...

I still blog...

...just intermittently. I shall return to the blogosphere soon!

In the meantime, if you haven't seen this, it's pretty good:

God Ordains the Return of Calvinism...

...and Time chooses to report it.

Time.com is reporting on the big trends of 2009. Surprisingly, the resurgence of Calvinism is on there. They note that the increasingly influence of men like John Piper, uber-cool Mark Driscoll, and my personal friend Al Mohler (he sends me an email every day whether I like it or not) in evangelical Christianity is helping fuel the resurgence.

I think the appeal of Calvinism is partly fueled by the rejection of the alternatives (seeker-sensitive church, dead mainline churches, exclusive emergent church, etc.). There simply aren't a lot of options out there for the believer passionate about the glory of God and the authority of His Word. They're out there, but clearly the dominant voice in conservative Evangelicalism is the voice of JC (John Calvin).

I don't like being assigned a label, but I understand that some believers are just so excited by the truths contained in the doctrines of grace, that it is easier to just proclaim they are Calvinists than to enumerate each truth that excites their soul.

The unfortunate thing is labels can be misleading. The meanings one ascribes to the term Calvinism can be quite varied. But I suppose it is easier to say one is a Calvinist that to pull out a doctrinal statement to identify oneself.

PowerPoint is Evil

Edward Tufte entitled his Sept 2003 article in Wired magazine, "PowerPoint is Evil." Tufte should know. He is professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale. I think pastors would benefit from reading his article. He begins it with this paragraph:

"Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall."

In case you missed it due to his subtletly, he's referring to PowerPoint. His primary contention is that the program elevates form over content. The dependency upon this form of communication is decreasing our ability to communicate effectively. In schools, children are learning not how to research and communicate content but instead learning how to animate graphics in a slideshow. The typical PowerPoint presentation "disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content."

I think Tufte is at least partly right, which is why I struggled with whether or not to personally implement PowerPoint in my preaching ministry. The difficulty was especially profound for me because I personally don't benefit when others use PowerPoint. In high school, PowerPoint wasn't really big yet, but by the time I was finishing seminary, it had saturated the classroom. Whenever I went to a seminary class and had a professor turn on the projector, I inwardly groaned. But others I know find it extremely useful, which indicates diversity of learning styles, I think.

The pastor, in my opinion, must be careful to preserve the unique genre of the sermon. The form must not overshadow the content. Ultimately, I decided to utilize PowerPoint but very sparingly. The slides are not designed to be the vehicle of communication but merely help people track with where I am in the progress of the message. My goal is that it would be very rare that a person would need to look at the PowerPoint at all to get the full impact of the message.