_awakening

Bloggers at 2009 SBL.

If you're looking for a pretty comprehensive list of presenters at SBL in New Orleans in November, Hebrew and Greek Reader has you covered. The list is arranged by date and time of presentation. Very impressive.

Slacker.

Apparently my lack of consistent posting is now something that has has been scientifically qualified. For the month of July, I was ranked #117 on the Biblioblogs Top 50. For the month of August, I fell sharply to #217.

So there you have it. My slacking has been called out with cold hard facts.

Perhaps September will bring better fortunes. [And a bit more consistency.]

Dangerous.

Apparently James McGrath has caused an issue with one of his more conservative commenters on his blog. This person has taken issue with some of the things McGrath has blogged about and taken it upon themselves to contact his pastor to let him know of McGrath's thoughts...

For those of you who have followed our journey, you will undoubtedly see a eerily common thread here, as it was my blog which caused a firestorm at a church I was on staff at. I saw and experienced some of the most vicious and hateful things said to me and about me in public during that time - things I would not wish on anybody. It was truly unbelievable, and truly heart-rending. [Obviously, I resigned].

In any event, I think McGrath hits the nail on the head when he finishes his post with this:

A conservative blog recently described me as "dangerous", and I realized that I should take that as a compliment. Acknowledging the possibility of being a Christian while at the same time engaging in open discussion of ideas, tolerating uncertainty, and anticipating that you might have something to learn from those with whom you disagree, is dangerous to fundamentalism - but not to Christian faith per se. What is dangerous to Christian faith is viewing it as though it were something static, as though the understanding of it one has as a child should remain static throughout life, or that Christianity itself could or should remain static throughout history. But perhaps more dangerous still is the conviction that our own understanding is God's very truth - that cannot but lead to a spiritual pride and arrogance that is incompatible with the Christian faith in general, and with the fallibility of the greatest heroes of the faith as depicted in the Bible in particular.

Amen.

The Kingdom of God.

With the advent of a new year, Adam Walker Cleaveland over at Pomomusings is launching into a new series on the Kingdom of God utilizing guest bloggers. [To see a full listing of guests, go here.] The issue of the Kingdom is something that has captured many people's imagination lately - as a much needed corrective to the gospel of personal salvation that seems to be propagated today. Judging from the list of guest bloggers, the posts and comments will be quite interesting and well worth following.

First guest up? Tony Jones, who begins his post this way:

Maybe you’ve seen this before: some well-meaning evangelist spray-paints “jesus is the answer” on the side of a railroad bridge. Then some smart aleck comes by later and adds “so what’s the question?”

You can read the rest here.

Soularize Bloggers.

Soularize finished last night and now that I've finally had a good night sleep, I thought it was better late than never to pass along a few others who are here that have been sharing their thoughts about the conference. So if you're looking to live the conference vicariously, here's your chance. Here are a few of the nice folks who have been sharing their thoughts over the past few days...

Ed Alvarado
Steffan Boeskov
David Brown
Jordon Cooper [everyone's favorite Canadian and the newly crowned Lord Nassau III]
John Creasy
Michael Dowd
Nicholas Fiedler
Alan Hartung
Adam Klein [condo mate and poetic genius]
Lori Lenz
Todd Littleton [our illustrious, doctoral condo mate]
Kyle Martin
Mike Morrell
Jim Palmer [yet another fellow condo mate and temporary Rockies fan - "They've got them right where they want them!"]
Nathan Pederson
David Phillips
Graham Ripple
JR Rozko
Tammy Schoch
Caleb Seeling
Rustin Smith
Mike Stavlund
BJ Woodworth

If anyone else has been blogging about the event and you're not on the list, let me know. In the meantime, back to paradise...

Hi-larious.

Props to Marko for the heads up on The [Fake] Secret Diary of Rick Warren. Whoever is writing this, my hats off to you. Absolutely genius stuff...

Soularize Podcast.

The Soularize Podcast is up and running. Here's the upcoming festivities...

Andrew Jones, blogger extraordinaire, is on tomorrow - Wednesday, June 13th at 11am PST.

Margaret Feinberg, author of the recently released The Organic God, will be on Wednesday, June 20th at 11am PST.

If you'd like to be on the live conference call, the phone number is 218.486.1300 and the bridge number is 900438. Enjoy.

Lackey Now Blogging.

John Lackey, starting pitcher for the Angels, is now blogging here. He recently posted about tonight's start against the Royals and his pre-game routine - a strange ritual involving a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a couple Red Bulls. [Sounds like a recipe for disaster.]

Next Week...

Our blog study through Dallas Willard's The Great Omission begins next week. If you're interested in jumping into the conversation, you can follow the journey at The Great Omission blog. Better yet, jump in as a contributor to the blog. For more info go here... there's always room for one more!

The Great Omission.

It's one thing to read a book, but it's another thing to be able to have the opportunity to dive into a conversation with others about a book. Starting in early August there's a group of us who are going to journey together in reading and discussing Dallas Willard's new book, The Great Omission. We will be reading the book, posting our thoughts and interacting over at The Great Omission Blog. If you're interested in jumping into the discussion, you can find out more here. Our plan is to read a few chapters a week and then discuss our thoughts via the blog. You can see the reading schedule here. At this point we have about 12 people involved, but would love to have more voices involved [especially some more female voices, as it has already been pointed out that we are a little too "testosterone-esque"].

Willard has always been a favorite writer/thinker of many of us, and this book looks pretty amazing [much like his others have been]. So if you're interested in journeying with us, the invitation is open. What do you have to lose? Order the book and jump in already!