Hey – it’s that time of year where the editor of PPP.Info recognizes the efforts of this year’s writers by drawing attention to some of his favorites of their offerings – hoping that they would not go missed in the grand scheme of things.  So, without any more babbling (and in alphabetical order):

Brendt: This was a close one – I’m not sure I can choose between the giggles in Where Did This Come From or his (as usual) dead-on recognition of idiosyncrasies and hypocrisy in Whenever You Assume, You Make… So, instead of choosing, I’ll just pick both   Also, if you’ve not visited his blog before, be sure to go over there, as he’s got a lot more material there (including an interesting and spot on review of Avatar).

Chris: Not Chris L – Chris P.  Not that Chris P – the other one.  The one who, this year, introduced us to the music of Ken Silva.  That Chris (who has had more flat tires than anyone I know) probably challenges my thinking more than any other writer, and this year was no different.  His article Those People! What People? You Know THOSE People is an challenging indictment we all need to consider as we write in the blogosphere.

Christian P: One of our youngest, yet probably most mature, writers is Christian P (brief admission – we rather frequently communicate via IM, and participate in Woot-offs together). His article, entitled You Lie, is a very thoughtful piece on how we often go too far in categorizing items in too inflammatory a manner, particularly “lying” vs. being incorrect.

Eugene: Our newest writer here at .Info, Eugene is also our only non-American.  His life in South Africa has given him a diverse set of experiences, which he drew on in many of his articles, my favorite of which was Apartheid in the Body of Christ.  He also has a heart for Jesus’ parables, and I thought both of his articles on the subject – the first on the Parable of the Mustard Seed, and the other on the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son – were incredibly well thought-out and applicable.

Jerry: [Apologies to Jerry for not having this in the initially published version - I must have copy/pasted over it in the page-editor.  Sorry!]  I think no other writer here has had more “thoughts of the day” than Jerry (we should probably make our own tag for them!).  Perhaps it was a product of a tumultuous year, but (as Rob Bell pointed out in “Drops Like Stars”) sometimes our greatest creativity springs from our own times of suffering.  Since we come from a similar church background, I found Jerry’s posts on baptism and grace to be two of the most raw, honest articles I’ve read anywhere this year.

Joe: Mr. Martino, who co-founded this site with me several years ago,  is often rather economical with his words.  However, one of his more lengthy articles, What if a Muslim Street Preacher Showed Up at Your Vacation, is one that has probably had more reverberations since it’s original posting than any other article this year.  I owe Joe a great debt of gratitude for what he – and this blog – have brought me, in terms of my own growth and walk.  Thanks, Joe!

Joe C: Our own active-duty soldier/writer, Joe C, became a dad and had a good deal of travel this past year.  His incredibly-well researched article on Paul and what it means to be truly relevant, Becoming All Things, is the type of writing I wish all of us could produce every day.  He has our prayers for his continued safety.

Neil: One of our most objective writers (and comment-thread peacekeepers), Neil has a special place in his heart for Palestinian believers, and the injustices Western Christians often commit in reflexively siding with the modern State of Israel on any controversial topic.  His article on the current state of the Church in America, an Ode to Chicken Little, is one that I greatly appreciated, particularly in its objective view and wisdom (which, ironically, led to ODM’s channeling Carly Simon in assuming that the article was talking about them).  An excellent read, it was.

Phil Miller: As writers on this site go, I’d say that Phil’s thought processes and organization are probably most in line with my own – even if we do not always agree.  Possibly, it’s because we’re both engineers from the Big Ten, but I suspect it is something more than that.  Phil had quite a harrowing experience this year with his wife’s illness (which we are all so thankful that she has recovered from), and we are all blessed to have him writing with us.  His Easter Article, Jesus is For Losers, especially resonated with me, and the addition of Steve Taylor (one of my favorite “classic” Christian artists) was just icing on the cake.

Zan: My absolute favorite writer at PPP.Info (sorry guys – she’s a lot cuter than all of you, combined.  Plus, she does more to keep me fed, and in line, than any of you.)  She’s probably also the most shy of our writers – often talking to me about things she would want to write, but never does.  Her Esther study has challenged her walk this year, and her “eye-catching title” post, had some excellent thoughts that deserve a second read.

Commenters: To all of our commenters – even more so than my fellow writers, you encourage us to grow more in the depth and strength of our beliefs, and – speaking for myself – have greatly enhanced my walk in challenging my way of thinking, and in encouraging me in a number of my areas of study.  My God bless you all, and bring you a blessed 2010.

Grace and Peace to you,

Chris L.

It is amazing to me how – just like each of us, as individuals – communities grow, mature and gradually change over time. This is an observation the writers of CRN.Info (once SlicedLaodicea.com) have been making recently. Over the past year, while we have had a number of articles that have focused on countering spurious ODM claims, more and more our writing has focused on higher-order issues – documenting our own struggles, and those of our communities, and how best to apply the lessons taught by Christ and his followers to them.

As such, we’d like to recognize this shift in direction by recognizing the broadening in our focus, in line with the greater items in our site mission, by making a number of cosmetic changes and codifying our change in direction. While we’ve tried to clean up our policies and stuff, remove some of the snarky pages in our design, and to put in some basic recognized debunking (which we will add to over time) to try and cut down on recursive beating of deceased equines.

Prophets

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

In the kingdom of God, we are called to prophesy – to speak the words of God to the people, and to apply them to the issues of the day. All too often, the concept of prophecy is limited to foretelling future events, but when we are called to prophesy, it is to be one of those who remind and challenge the people of God to live up to their calling, and by doing so defend the defenseless and wrongfully accused. Included in this are the ideas of encouragement and iron sharpening iron.

Priests

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,” and, “A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

As Christians, we are all called to be priests, and the main calling of a priest is to minister to the people of God and at the most basic level are to be God’s representative on earth. As such, we try to seek ways of pointing out where God’s influence can be seen here, in His world. We are to teach, to learn, and to demonstrate God’s love.

Poets

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

As creatures made in the image of God – whose first action was to create – we have been blessed by Him with this aspect – creation. Creation of works made from His creation. While we, the writers of PPP.Info, may not all be cut out, literally, as poets, each of us has creative abilities granted by Him (as are all talents held by men). As such, we try to create and/or to recognize artistic beauty in our world, and to relay it to our readers.

.Info

Keeping these three roles in mind, we’ve changed the name and address of this site to http://www.prophets-priests-poets.info/ (though it may still take a few days to take effect). We’ve kept the “.Info” to remind us from where we’ve come. We will still defend brothers and sisters in Christ, wronged by the wicked words of “discernmentalists”, but we also want to recognize that this is not our full identity as a blog.  Please be patient as things start to look cosmetically different around here, and please continue to supply iron – as we hope to do, as well – on which to sharpen each other.

Thank you, and bless you, for joining us on this journey.

FYI – We will be switching servers tonight at 10:30 EST, and will be coming back up as soon as we’re stable.

Scott over at Verum Serum dropped me a note this morning to let me know about a situation in which a good deal of prayer and support is needed for a fellow brother in Christ and blogger, Ken Silva.

Ken posted a short note this to CRN yesterday:

My family learned yesterday afternoon that my youngest brother made the tragic decision to end his life. Unfortunately, there was no warning or prior indication something like this could occur and he leaves behind two teenage sons.

Whether we agree about issues of big or small import to the church, it is incumbent upon all brothers to have compassion and to be compassionate on those who are suffering.

Please lift Ken, his family and his two nephews in prayer and keep them in your prayers during this time.   If you would like to leave notes of encouragement, you can mail them directly to him at apprising@hughes.net or leave them in the comments to this post.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.

Coop, from While Rome Burns, has posed some interesting questions in a recent article, Buy Black Experiment.  in it, he begins provocatively:

I got the link from a blogger in my home state of Wisconsin, about a couple in Chicago who made a commitment at the beginning of the year to buy only from black-owned businesses. Now, as a white person, if I made the commitment to buy from only white-owned businesses, I’d be called a racist and a bigot, and probably rightfully so.

But lest you think this is a (somewhat accurate) examination of the intellectual inconsistencies involved in racial politics, Coop flips the question through the front doors of the church:

how is this any different than the commitment so many in the church make to buy only from Christian-owned businesses?

This immediately brought to mind Steve Taylor’s 80’s insight in “Guilty by Association” -

So you need a new car?
Let your fingers take a walk
Through the business guide for the “born again” flock
You’ll be keeping all your money
In the kingdom now
And you’ll only drink milk from a Christian cow

Don’t you go casting your bread
To keep the heathen well-fed
Line Christian pockets instead
Avoid temptation

Guilty by association

What do you think?  When I observe my own patterns, I think that where the line is crossed is in the heart.  There are times I shop specific Christian-owned businesses because – a) I know the owners, and I want to help them stay in business during this tough time; or b) I have been their customer in the past and their honesty and values have kept me coming back (thinking specifically about a mechanic that has saved us hundreds of dollars via honest suggestions and estimates, and an appliance repairman with a similar reputation).  This is in line with both good stewardship (loving God) and loving my neighbor.

Where I think the line is crossed is when I either a) judge others for not using Christian-owned businesses; or b) I see myself as somehow ’superior’ for my “lining Christian pockets instead”.

A matter of the heart.

What do you think?

_____________

A slight programming note:  I am taking my wife (and no children) on our first overseas vacation together ever, so I will not be on much – if at all – in the coming week and a half.  You can follow our pics and goings on at my personal blog (if we find a good wireless connection).  In my absence, you can expect that the other .Info guys will “watch the store” and maintain what order we have out here on the frontier.

Since the very beginning of this blog, we’ve been pretty firm in our “no comments are deleted” policy, with only a couple minor exceptions (with neither an attempt to silence/whitewash voices).  However, it’s becoming apparent that we need to add a little bit more to the way we’ve been managing this.

Some general observations/policies (for those unfamiliar) on this topic:

1) First-time commenters are automatically moderated until their first comment is approved.  We often run down IP addresses and match against some other sources to verify who someone is (or is not), and whether they’ve commented on this blog (or other blogs) before under different names/aliases.

2) For some people, relative anonymity is important (i.e. preventing people from tracking down personal/ID information and misusing it) and understandable.  As such, we do not demand full names.

3) “Moderation” (which puts comments into a queue for delayed approval) is used, rather sparingly for commenters who almost exclusively post items which:

* are consistently  nasty
* are consistently derogatory w/ little/no OP relevance
* ignore warnings on personal attacks against other commenters
* consistently ignore requests from CRN.Info writers

Ch-ch-ch-changes

With these in mind, we’re currently examining some changes in commenting policy (while keeping the “no comments are deleted” policy, as-is). Here are the proposed changes:

1) Commenters who wish to retain relative anonymity may continue to do so.  All that we ask is that you have a valid email address with your sign-in (which is only visible to CRN.Info writers) OR that you have the name of a CRN.Info writer who can verify your identity contained in the email field.  [example: We at least one commenter who is a single female and is concerned with her safety, and only one of our writers knows here and vouches for her as a commenter)]  If you have a regularly maintained blog that you’ve established, that’s good enough, as well.

2) We expect all regular commenters to maintain ONE name/alias by which they post (Example: We know who nc is, and he’s always nc).  If, for some reason (for instance, the overabundance of Chris’s and Nathan’s) you need to change in the future, just clear it with us so that we can keep track of you.

3) We expect that the ONE name/alias by which a commenter posts is not, in itself, purposely offensive or derrogatory toward another commenter/group/pastor/etc.

Comments/Commenters outside of these guidelines will be put in a moderation queue if, after a grace period, things aren’t rectified.

Personally, I hate doing stuff like this – particularly when it’s just a couple of folks currently at issue.  However, this seems to pop up every few months, so we might as well put it out for discussion and act upon it.

Thoughts? Additions?  Subtractions? Division/Multiplication?

Shalom

OK. So I’m a father. And I am often proud of my children. (Though there have been many times where ‘pride’ would not be the operative word, though love might remain constant). In general, I’ve tried to keep my kids out of my blogging (as often the family photos and stories aren’t that amusing or interesting outside the family).

But I have a son that I am very proud of today (and most every day), who is no longer a child, but a man (and, as such, it’s likely he’ll be a bit embarrassed to have been brought up in the first place).  As of tomorrow morning, he’ll be finishing the last of his Sophomore exams at Purdue, after which he will (technically) be in his Junior year in Acoustical Engineering.

When your kids are growing up, you look at them (or at least I do/did) and wonder how they will ever function on their own.  Will they carry on in the faith in which they have grown up?  When Sunday morning comes, will it just be another day of the week, or will they suffer the inconvenience of waking before the crack of noon and walking (!?!) to the campus church?  When the first bills arrive in their mail and the checkbook needs balancing, will they remember everything they’ve been taught and practiced, or will they fail?  Will their hang-ups and foibles become tragic flaws, or were they just overblown in your own mind?

I have always loved Phoenix, who is so much like me that it’s not surprising that we sometimes bring out the best and the worst in each other.  This past year and a half, he has matured in so many ways, and has become (and is becoming still) a wonderful young man, with enough of his mother’s common sense to avoid being as outspoken as his father.  But you probably don’t really care about that, and would consider me biased, anyway.

So, the part that is relevant to our streams of conversation here:

This past weekend, the musical group he sings in, the Purdue Varsity Glee Club, was part of the 75th annual Purdue Music Organization Christmas Show.  Because Purdue does not have a school of music, the PMO is a club and is not constrained by church/state issues.  They are completely funded by private donations and ticket sales to their events, and they receive no state money (renting practice/performance space from the University).  As such, there is no problem putting on a Christmas show (which they have now done for 75 years) or to do frequent performances of sacred & secular music in churches (several times a month). It is not uncommon for the Christmas Show to sell out of it’s 30,000 tickets, over 6 shows.

Their Christmas Show is comprised of two halves:  The first half brings in members of the community and alumni singing traditional Christmas music (a mix of secular and sacred), followed by an intermission (with singing of carols).  The second half is a cantata of unapologetically sacred Christmas music.

You can only imagine how much time goes into practicing for this show, in addition to their normal shows.  And even then, you’re likely to be underestimating it.

This year, they chose one of my favorite Christmas pieces – In the First Light – as the PVGC’s finale of the first half of the show (see below – no, the soloist isn’t Phoenix and the sound isn’t stereo-quality, but that doesn’t matter to me…)

And the finale of the show, itself, O Holy Night

There have been times I’ve been bothered by the idea some folks tend to push on kids in the church that to be a “good Christian”, you ought to attend a Christian school.  When I see things like the Christmas show, and campus ministries like the one where my wife and I were married, I see that this is not the case.

Blessings to you this Christmas Season…

Phil Miller turns 33 today – Happy Birthday, Phil!

Congratulations to Christian P on the new addition to his family!

Mike Ratliff does a fourth part in his series of blogs called The Abomination of Easy-Believism. Here is his rebuttal to our earlier post.

My brethren, is this passage of the thief on the cross an example of what we are calling Easy-Believism? No, it isn’t All along we have been saying that God will save His people even when the one sharing the Gospel with them messes up. The tragedy of Easy-Believism is the validation to untold numbers of professing Christians that they are really saved even though they are not surrendered to the Lordship of Christ nor are they able to walk in repentance. Those who are doing this will have to answer to the Lord about this. Let us not make that mistake. [emphasis mine]

So this means that when Rick Warren “messes up” on his gospel presentation, God still saves people and they come to faith. Plus, Rick Warren does tell his congregation that Jesus needs to be Lord of their lives, we should assume that he has done all he can to help get people to the place of salvation. Just thought I would make that clear. And, since we cannot sort thru who is really saved and not in that moment, we should validate all of them are beleivers after they have made the commitment (i.e. acknowledging that 500 came to faith at Saddleback this weekend) and let the spiritual cards fall where they may. Glad we cleared all that up.