I appreciated the article. My only concern is with the whole label thing. Whether the label be “evangelical,” “religous right,” “emergent,” or “young evangelicals.” I understand on one hand that classifications may help us clarify our thinking, but on the other they seem to cause confusion. I haven’t found one label that doesn’t carry some sort of baggage with it and creates misunderstandings. Thanks for your blogs.

So, without intending to criticize any pastor for what they do or don’t say about “Faith Promise,” I’ll challenge myself, and anyone else who might be intereste, to give based on faith, not just for missions, but in every area of stewardship in my life.

So, ever since I heard that story, I’ve struggled with knowing how much “jeopardy” to put my children in so that I can make someone else’s life a bit better. And, what even qualifies as “jeopardy?” I don’t know. My process has been to question the Holy Spirit and lean on his guidance for individual decisions. This process has led us to putting ourselves on the hook financially much more than is always comfortable and has led us to be much more inter-dependent with those we’re on the hook with. For now, that’s the lesson God has for me: have enough anxiety to need Me for your peace, and need the people who need you.

Thanks for the recommendation. I enjoy having my thinking challenged. And just by the title of Boyd’s book, I think I will be plenty challenged by this man.

I haven’t heard Mark Driscoll rip into Rob Bell or Brian McLaren (2 guys I also enjoy), but would imagine he’d have a hard time with their Open Theism…. which brings me to the point of this post. Does it matter if one leans toward the belief that God lives within time with us and that he reacts to our free-will choices to manage the world (as an open theist would think)? Or does it matter if one leans toward the belief that God, who is too big and other-worldly for time, already knows the number and content of all of our days yet does not control them? I guess the quote you started this thread with would suggest “yes,” it does matter. But seeing how each point of view is somehow able to use scripture to support itself, I wonder if we’re not SUPPOSED to differ on these issues within the confines of the Bible. By differing, we balance one another — making sure we never turn into the Tower of Babel people who agreed to the point of perversion — and we prove that love has power because it’s hard to do. I wonder if God is so big that he actually embodies and IS the contradictions that we use to define: pascifist/just war supporter, communal living socialist/ambitious individual, America appreciater/anti-empirialist, traditionalist/emergent post-modern, etc. I don’t know, but I wonder.

So I have one teacher to commend to you: Greg Boyd of Woodland Hills church (http://www.whchurch.org/), the author of The Myth of a Christian Nation. Be forewarned, he will challenge much of your standard American, western, comfortable evangelicalism. But he is a prophetic voice of truth in my life.