A follow up to this: Tim Chesterton has posted a short account and a picture of our meeting in Southminster, and another one of the gig at Rawreth. I am in the background of the second gig photo, trying not very successfully to hide behind a microphone stand!
It has been good to meet my fellow bloggers Tim Chesterton and (rather briefly) Paul Trathen. I don’t think I have mentioned Paul here before; his blog is called the journey home. I have mentioned Tim’s blog An Anabaptist Anglican, but perhaps not his other blog Tale Spin which is more about his music and his story-telling. Tim is an Anglican pastor in Edmonton, Canada, but originally from here in Essex. Paul is also an Anglican priest, but still is here in Essex.
I was thinking of posting some profound thoughts for this post number 200, as I tried for my 100th post (which for some reason became number 101 here in WordPress). But I couldn’t think of anything, so instead you get this item of trivia:
Smenita is back yet again! I thought we had seen the last of her, with the completely new Blogger software package. But it was not to be, she has struck again tonight. At least she is not cruelly eating comments as she did last year, but being benign as she was in January:
Smenita doesn’t seem to be the problem she used to be. In the past when I typed in her name Blogger didn’t recognise it, and gave it to me again for word verification. Now Blogger does recognise “smenita” and accept the comment, and repeats the same word verification.
But how long will she be around this time, and when will she next turn up? Does Lingamish’s Institute for Smenitalogical Studies need to be reopened? At least, the Blogger folks need to tweak their random word generator so that it doesn’t get into loops like this.
At least I don’t have this problem any more on my own blog now that I have moved to WordPress. I do see some repeats in my list of verification words, which are Bible names, but it doesn’t get stuck in a loop like the Blogger one. At least, not yet!
What is it about Matt Redman‘s song “The Heart of Worship” that makes two of my blogging friends, Alastair and Eddie, list it as one of “The Worst Worship Songs Ever”? I am glad that at least Lingamish has jumped in to defend it.
Eric Jones just asked me to add his blog Transformed Daily to my blogroll. So I started looking through it and came across this wonderful illustration here:
I was what I call an ornamental orange Christian – I looked great on the outside, but when the shiny peel was removed it uncovered a spiritually dry and bitter inside. I did not passionately seek God’s face in sincere prayer and meditation on his Word. I was actually living for myself and not for God.
Are you an ornamental orange Christian? Am I? I certainly have been, and at times I still find myself drying up like this – although when this happens I don’t usually care too much about looking great outside. Read how God put things right for Eric, and how he can do the same for you and me. As we pursue an intimate relationship with God, we can become not ornamental oranges but tasty and juicy ones which, even if they don’t look quite so perfect, have a lasting attractiveness.
Eric, welcome to my blogroll!
My last post on Adrian’s apostasy was not to be taken seriously. But this one is. Apostasy is not quite the right word. But what is the right word for someone who pronounces a public curse on his brothers and sisters in Christ for disagreeing with him on a theological issue?
In fact I rather appreciated most of Adrian’s interview with the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions
I will be away from home for work from tomorrow morning, 6th May, until 23rd May. I will have some Internet access but limited opportunity for blogging. I will see any comments, but I am not sure yet if I will be able to respond. I may tell you more about the trip when I come back.
The latest new blogger is Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss. Here is the “news report”. I’m waiting for a link to the actual blog!
In a comment Dave Warnock reminded me of the importance of Christians maintaining a good witness to outsiders as they disagree about the atonement. Dave believes that the split between Spring Harvest, UCCF and the Keswick Convention is a bad witness. In my comment in reply I did not disagree, but noted:
Perhaps here the marketing, if not entirely open and honest, is managing to avoid too much of a bad witness.
In other words, it can only be a good thing in terms of Christian witness that the organisations involved are not publicising their disagreements, but presenting this more positively as an opportunity for God’s work to be broadened.
But in that case perhaps those of us who are blogging about the split, such as Adrian, Dave and myself, are being the bad witnesses by opening up this issue in public, by washing Christian dirty linen in a public forum. Should we keep quiet?
I seem to have been evolving quickly through the TTLB Ecosystem, which seems to be a fun way of ranking blogs. Only a couple of days ago I was still on the bottom rung as an “Insignificant Microbe”. But by yesterday I had jumped five places up N.Z. Bear’s evolutionary ladder to “Slimy Mollusc”. And today I am one step higher still, a “Flippery Fish”. Why the sudden change?