Tuesday, October 31, 2006

420 update

Being a former Humboldt County, CA, resident, stories about marijuana grab my attention.

story 1:

Barack Obama: 'I Inhaled — That Was The Point'
(source)



story 2:

Lebanon war puts damper on Israeli pot smokers
(source)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's recent war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas has sent cannabis prices sky high in the Jewish state. Boosted security on the Lebanon frontier brought a drastic reduction in drug smuggling, with the cost of cannabis in Israel up eight-fold, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Smoking and selling cannabis are illegal in Israel. Trafficking from Egypt has also been curbed by Israeli patrols aimed at preventing Palestinians from smuggling in arms.

Today's mid-week run

The training schedule I'm using for the Disney Marathon has me running four times a week; a long run on Saturday, half that distance mid-week, and two short runs (3-5 miles). Today was a five miler. It was a muggy 78 degrees this morning.

run time: 42 minutes 58 seconds
average pace: 8 minutes 36 seconds per mile
best pace: 7 minutes
calories burned: 618

Next long run: Friday morning; only eleven miles.

Monday, October 30, 2006

A Great Way to Spend Retirement

Dwight Shrute Bear Attack PSA

I ripped this off from SpitBox. I don't know who they ripped it off from...

Post-Christian Christmas

Do you wait til after you tell your kids there's no Santa to get them this, or do you just tell them it's from Santa?

At least people know that this is a bad thing.

Tesco has been forced to remove a pole-dancing kit from the toys and games section of its website after it was accused of "destroying children's innocence".

The Tesco Direct site advertises the kit with the words, "Unleash the sex kitten inside...simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go!

"Soon you'll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars".

The £49.97 kit comprises a chrome pole extendible to 8ft 6ins, a 'sexy dance garter' and a DVD demonstrating suggestive dance moves.

(source)

So do you think mom's will be bustin' each other up-side the head in WalMart's aisles over this toy this Christmas season?

On being a dad; a grandpa; a husband

I had a pretty normal weekend. Nothing spectacular happened. Saturday morning I hung out with my daughter, wife, and granddaughter. Saturday night, Susan and I had the baby and went over to visit with good friends in ministry, and yesterday, I relaxed around the house with my son, his girlfriend, my wife, and granddaughter.

It was restful. This is what Sabbath is supposed to be. Stopping work, putting a hold on the urgent, and enjoy the ones you love. Let them love you back.



I talk and dream about the future with my daughter. With my son, last night we wrote a letter that will go out to friends and family. Aaron wants to be a missionary so he's off to a four month intensive/immersive discipleship school. Susan and I talk and pray about how God might use us as we enter into middle age. And we snuggle with and play with Ali, the amazing baby that's changed our lives.

So I'm thankful. Too often I'm too busy chasing after what I don't have to realize how good I do have it.

How about you?

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Today's Run

This morning, Billy and I started our 15 mile run at 5:00am from the Chucky Cheese parking lot in North Stuart. It was rainy and muggy, but only 75 degrees. Neither one of us was feeling very strong and we only ran 13.32 miles. That's only half the distance of the marathon we're training for.

run time: 2 hours 8 minutes 48 seconds
average pace: 9 minutes 40 seconds per mile (we need to bring this time down)
best pace: 5 minutes 59 seconds (on the downhill side of the bridge crossing over from Sewell's Point; we wimpily walked the uphill side - my bright idea)
calories burned: 1638 (which means I can eat a ton today, right?)

Next long run: Friday morning; only eleven miles. Sweet!

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Make it Talk

Am I nuts or is this killer guitar?

CCJ Men's Retreat Blog

We've set up a blog for you men at Calvary Chapel Jupiter. The purpose of this blog is to get all the latest developments and information for the upcoming Men's Retreat.

Our Future

This young man has expressed his desire and apparent call of God on his life. He wants to be a pastor. To guide and disciple the next generation of business men and women, politicians, and moms & dads.

Our future is, indeed, bright.



Thanks to Pastor Chris, our youth pastor, for giving his life love and disciple these kids. Our kids have fun, but they get the straight scoop as Chris pours out his life and teaches them the Word of God.

Good job, Chris.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Missing


We've been talking around our house and around the office about the remains that have turned up five years after the fact at Ground Zero. (link)

How incredibly sad that is for those that have lost loved ones. It's motivated me to dust off a CD that's been on the bottom of the stack for a few years, but really captures the sadness of 9/11 as only the master of sad songs can: Bruce Springsteen and his album The Rising.

Check out this live video of the album's "Missing" track or download MP3 of solo performed on SNL. Props to Jeff (who claimed dibs on this topic but I ignored him) for bringing this track to mind and making it available to me and in turn, to you.

SWEEEAT Weather

Tempratures have plunged into the 50's the past few nights here on Florida's Treasure Coast. That makes it great for that morning run.

Billy and I are training for the Disney World Marathon in January as we have done the past few years. The training schedule called for a seven mile run. I got done in an hour and two minutes at an average pace of 8 minutes 55 seconds a mile. That beats my run last Friday, which was one of the worst on record for me; fourteen miles with an average pace of eleven minutes a mile. I walked for at least a third of the time. It was 90 degrees at 9:30am that day. Crap.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

wee ones

this kid

This is my boy. Aaron is about four months shy of his eighteenth birthday. He'll be the main speaker this weekend at a youth group camping trip. He just asked me to take a look at the notes he put together to teach and challenge the kids.

This kid definitely has something to say to his peers. What more could you ask for from your kid but that he does better than yourself. And this kid is light-years ahead of where I was at his age.

Good job, boy.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Jack Black on Piracy

New Blog Mag



I subscribe to these guys blogs and read just about every post. They definitely capable of more posts than I have "witty" comments. I can't keep up.

What I don't get is how these guys have the time to post so much, collaborate on a slick/hip lookin' blog/mag/launch, and do youth ministry. Do they sleep? Do they eat?

Los_bio_imageName: Carlos Whittaker (a.k.a. Los) is the worship leader at Sandals Church in Riverside, California. He is the husband of Heather and the proud papa of two beautiful little girls. Los also host's his own extremely popular personal blog, Ragamuffin Soul. RS also boasts a freakin sweet weekly podcast, and three worth while posts per day.



Db_bio_imag Name:Dustin Bryson (a.k.a. Dusty Leggs) is the youth pastor at Eastgate in Panama City, Florida. He is the lucky husband of Leah, and the proud owner of a Dwight Shrute Bobble Head.

Next Prez???



Time Magazine published a well written article about Senator Barak's Spiritual Journey. I'm not sure what I think about this dude, yet, but I'm ready for someone that takes faith and how faith works in leadership. This country is ready for a leader that is willing to make decisions that please God, first, and voters, second.

At first glance, looking at it from my Republican point of view, I respond a little cynically. Liberals like to make themselves look a whole lot more conservative with elections on the horizon, and then revert back to true liberal ways once the voters have come and gone.

Liberal or conservative, this country needs a leader that doesn't change his stripes to spots once the votes are all counted. We need a leader that doesn't just talk about God. This country needs a leader that actually leads like he answers to God.

Amen?

For one thing, I was drawn to the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change. Out of necessity, the black church had to minister to the whole person. Out of necessity, the black church rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation. It had to serve as the center of the community's political, economic, and social as well as spiritual life; it understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world.
---
Barack Obama

A Word from my Wife

My wife read the following to me from a McManus book:

We have put so much emphasis on avoiding evil that we have become virtually blind to the endless opportunities for doing good. We have defined holiness through what we separate ourselves from rather than what we give ourselves to. I am convinced the great tragedy is not the sins we commit, but the life that we fail to live.

You cannot follow God in neutral.

God has created you to do something. It is not enough to stop the wrong and then be paralyzed when it comes to the right. God created you to do good. And doing this requires initiative.

Erwin Raphael McManus
Chasing Daylight


My wife always encourages me to grow in godliness and do what is right. And she always says it in a gentle a loving way. Those are great qualities to have in a wife.

Cutting back?

Sunday, October 22, 2006

PC Productivity

A green-thumbed, Poland teenager got busted last week growing cannabis in a PC (link). You can't do that with a Mac right out of the box.

Of course, if he was a Mac user, maybe he would have been creative enough to not get caught.

Vocabulary Word of the Day

habeas corpus (link)

In common law countries, habeas corpus (/'heɪbiəs 'kɔɹpəs/), Latin for "you [should] have the body", is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

Quote of the Day

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
---Steven Wright

When Your Blog CROSSES the Line

I've heard of people getting canned from their jobs for posts that embarrass the boss, but this UN "diplomat" got kicked out of a whole country because of his blog:

Sudan’s action against him was apparently provoked by an entry he made in his personal blog — www.janpronk.nl — last weekend that said Sudan’s armed forces had suffered two major defeats with extensive casualties against rebels in Darfur in the past six weeks. He also reported that generals had been cashiered, that morale had sunk and that the government had collaborated with the feared Janjaweed Arab militias, which are held responsible for pillaging villages and killing and raping their residents.

The Sudanese armed forces on Thursday cited the blog entry in calling Mr. Pronk a threat to national security and asking that he be expelled. (SOURCE)

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Pole Vault Video from a Japenese Talent Show

This is the freakiest bit I've ever seen. The camera never moves. I swear.

At a Stand Still

"Yuk," says my wife, "you smell like grease."

"Well, my bike is scattered all over the garage and I think some of it got on me."

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a job - one you're not very qualified to do - and discovered you don't have all the tools you need? That's where I am now. I need to go beg, borrow, and buy tools to get the job done.

They never go smoothly, these projects I get into at my house. I should pay somebody, but I'm too cheap. And I like that sense of accomplishment I get when I don't pay an expert. That is, if I get the thing I'm fixin' back together and it works. Correctly.


So I'm off to Chip's house to borrow a bolt cutter to cut my old bike chain off. Then I need to pick up one of these tools so I can install the master link and new chain on my motorcycle.

Friday, October 20, 2006

how do you spell DENIAL?

D-E-N-I-A-L

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. Republican testified on Thursday in the investigation of a Capitol Hill sex scandal, and afterward said the sordid affair was not hurting his party's chances of retaining control of the U.S. Congress in the November 7 elections.

"It does not appear to be affecting any of our races," House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner said after emerging from a closed-door meeting with a congressional ethics panel. Boehner of Ohio said voters were more interested in such matters as taxes and national security.
(SOURCE)

Boehner's statement "voters were more interested in such matters as taxes and national security" sounds talking points lifted straight from the Clinton Spin Playbook. Pro-Clinton spinsters said no one cared about the Lewinski scandal because it was "only sex." Republicans couldn't wait to find a way to take Clinton down for his rougish hyper-hetero behavior, but want to sweep Foley's Brokeback hypocrisy under the rug.

If it's true that we Republicans only care about "taxes and national security," then we 'll get what we deserve come November.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Legalism

Mark 3:6
“the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

Quote from Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God:

Legalism is the reduction of life to mere technicalities. It substitutes code for conscience, ritual for worship, rectitude for holiness, morality for purity. The most bizarre lines of reasoning appear natural to the legalist: you must never heal on the Sabbath, but you can plot the death of those that do.


pp. 107-108

Pretty Slick...

You can do fun stuff like turn pictures into text over on this site...

Here's what I did with a picture of my daughter:




I hear you asking: "who has time to find stuff like this?"

Not me.

What's in your suitcase?

I wonder what it would have been like to have this in my carry-on luggage when I traveled this week...

All I want for Christmas...

Maybe one of you can click on over to xxxchurch.com store and get me this t-shirt to complete my wardrobe...

Christians Don't Masturbate T-shirt



Click To Zoom
click for a closer look
Lots of craziness right now over a T-shirt. We don't believe in masturbation. We think it is sin. We think it is a selfish act that pleases no one but yourself. 76% of people view porn in order to masturbate. We realize Christians do masturbate. We believe you shouldn't. "Christians should not masturbate T-shirt" is boring. So, "Christians Don't Masturbate" shirt gets people a little crazier. We like that. Buy the shirt at the X3store.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

What Are We Becoming?

I've keep most of my political views off of this blog. But the debate around whether or not we should grab people and torture them has seriously conflicted. The policies and ideals of the administration I voted in flies in the face of the training I received as a US Marine regarding the treatment of prisoners. The following quote sums up how I feel about the laws just voted on by our government:
The provisions of Bush's new torture law mean that Americans have lost the key, constitutional right on which Anglo-American criminal law (and criminal-law procedures in true democracies in general) is founded; that's the basic right of an individual to know why he or she is being apprehended and detained. Now, technically, as in Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia, anyone labeled an "enemy combatant" - again, by whom; by Bush? - can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of "war on terror," but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents. (source)
I wonder if this would have been voted in this week if North Korea wasn't feeling a little squirrely. Our government loves to exploit our fears so they can gain power through chipping away at human rights.

I always hear people say that our country is founded on Christian ideals. It sure would be nice to if our government would actually practice those ideals.

Sorry, I'm just a little grumpy from being herded through the cattle lines set up at airport security (as I sit here, I'm being told over a loud speaker that this airport is operating at a heightened level of security so my toothpaste or deoderant may be the cause of the line backing up).

I'll feel better when I get home to my wife.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Flop Sweats

From time to time, usually three or four times a year, my Pastor calls on me to cover the pulpit on Sunday mornings. I have to preach. I identify with Moses when he begged God to pick someone else. When called upon, I usually talk up the great teaching gift Pastor Chris or Jeff our worship guys has.

But this time was definitely my turn. No one wanted to hear that it was my birthday. In fact, to add insult to injury, Jeff our worship guy led the congregation in singing happy birthday to me. Embarrassing. Cheesy. I owe him a trip to the emerency room.

I don't care how much notice I get or how much time a have to prepare, I get nervous. I'm afraid I'll flop. I sweat.

Flop-sweats.

And the closer it gets to the time of delivery, the more my anxiety increases. Am I the only behind the scenes guy that gets this way?

On our website, we used to only post Pastor Dan's sermons, but we started including guest speaker's messages, as well.

So, Mom, if you want to hear it, click this link. My notes are here at this link, and if you want to put it on your iPod, Mom, click this link and you'll end up at the iTunes store.

By the way, I appeciate the ministry of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. They make all of Pastor Mark Driscoll's messages avalable via podcast. His recent podcast message about the Cross heavily influenced my message.

Also, if you have been listening to Pastor Bob Coy for any length of time, you've heard him talk about the time he got beat up after a Sunday Night Service back in 1995. I was a ministry assistant on staff there when it happened. The way Pastor Bob handled that assault impacted the way I view my ministry heroes and I talk about that a little, too.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Custom Cake

My son, Aaron, pulled this cake out of the freezer and told me he had it personalized for me.

Nice.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

The Reason Blogs Are BAD

I read this anti-blog post over on the Ambassader Youth BLOG!

The Internet—and more specifically blogs—has enabled everyone to have a voice on any matter. Now everyone’s thoughts are “published” for all to see. Whether or not it is effective, as soon as something is posted the person has a larger voice. It often makes the blogger feel good or makes him feel as if his opinion counts—when it is mostly mindless blather!

Here is the definition of a blog from a highly popular blog provider: “A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules…blogs have…enabled millions of people to have a voice” (emphasis ours).

Ask yourself, “Do I have a tendency to want to have a voice?”

This has grown so out of control it is routine for a person to start a daily blog entry with a single word that details his or her mood. A blog entry will start: “Current mood: ____” The level of shallowness and emotional immaturity this represents is astonishing! In the grand scheme of things, why would the world at large care?

People naturally want to make a mark in this world; they want to make a difference, and many believe blogs will allow them to do this. However, most blogs, especially by teenagers, serve as nothing more than public diaries. (Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with a personal diary, as long as it is kept private.) Although certain professional weblogs can make a positive difference within some elements of society, teen blogging does not.


Comments on "Peacemakers"

Pedro brings up a good point in his comment on a recent post:

pedro said...

i am personally torn between evangelism, which causes division, and bulding bridges, which can make it easy to compromise, its a fine line to walk

12:18 AM

Delete
Bryon Mondok said...

The bridge has been built. It's a narrow bridge. Evangelism is persuading people to cross the bridge.

It's crossing the bridge that causes the division.

But evangelism is another topic. I'm talking about living in peace with your neighbors. If you can do that, you'll have a better chance and be in a better position to invite them to cross the bridge with you.

5:37 AM



Does anyone ele have anything they want to contribute to this conversation?

Friday, October 13, 2006

Hanging with Bill

Calvary Fellowship in West Hartford, Conneticut is pastored by Bill LaMorey. Bill is one of many guys (like myself) that has spiritual roots at Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale. From CCFL, Bill went on staff to serve at Calvary Fellowship Miami Lakes, Florida, with Pastor Bob Franquiz. Bob was there as well and it was cool to him even though there's a lot less of him to be seen (Bob's dropped about 80 pounds over the last year or so!)

Pastor Bill is doing a great job up there in the North East U.S. Bill shared an interesting statistic with us: Conneticut is a state with a population of about 3 million people and only 26,000 are evangelical Christians. To put that in perspective: the meeting tonight was hosted by Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale. This weekend at all Calvary's services on it's three campuses, they will have close to that number attend services there. There is probably more people that have CCFL as a home church than urrently reside in all of Conneticut. Bill definitely has his work cut out for him.

Keep up the good work, Bill.

Tools for "Tools" part 2


You can always depend on the Attic Downstairs blog for clever pictures and articles.

props: Water

Ãœber Christ Follower: Ed Compean

I met Ed in Sudan. We were both there working with Far Reaching Ministries on different projects. Ed was taking pictures for an article about the ministry and it's leader, Wes Bentley, for Calvary Chapel Magazine. Compean photographed and wrote about the work FRM was doing in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan. I was teaching at a Bible school that trained chaplains in South Sudan and Ed was there to photograph the graduation ceremony for the next class of chaplains.

Vocationally, Ed was a photographer for a Scripps newspaper based in Southern California. Scripps sent Ed all over the world to get action shots for developing news stories. He spent time in Bosnia during that conflict was hot.

When I went off to serve in the mission field, Ed had become the director of the missions training school in Mexico where I learned (and unlearned) about serving God and making him known in the foreign field. After I came out of the field and went back on staff at my home church in Florida, Ed received and organized youth teams from our church and facilitated an amazing missions experience for our crew in La Gloria, Mexico.

Ed's mantra is "to make God and His glory known to the ends of the earth." But he doesn't just say it; he's doing it. Ed, his wife Kelli, his daughter, Haley, and son, Jackson have packed up their trash and moved to East Africa. Ed planted a church in Nairobi, Kenya, and is exploring ministry in Nairobi's slums and among the marginalized Samburu people.

The Compean's ministry to Kenya is worth getting behind. Give to their ministry by clicking this link. Also, make sure you pray for Ed, Kelli, Haley, and Jackson.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Birthday

Not mine... this blog. Today this blog is one year old. And I still can't figure out what makes people come back...

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Blinkx TV

This site has a great tool for searching for video. You type in a search of the video you want to find, and it builds a wall of video thumbnails for you.

I typed "Springsteen" into this search. Check out what happens when you mouse over the thumbnails (give it a second to load).

That's trick.

Check up on charities


Lifehacker posted links to this useful site...

So sick I can't avoid telling you...

posted by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing

HOWTO made a glowing dead rat LED throwie




This is one squicky DIY project for Hallowe'en: hollow out a dead rat, fit it with magnets and a battery-powered LED and you've got a dead rat, glowing-eyed LED throwie you can toss onto metal things.

Link

Disney Co-Chair recognises 'piracy is a business model'

Giving the Keynote address at Mipcom, Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney has broken with studio convention and recognised piracy as a business model to compete with, as opposed to simply an illegal threat to be battled. Sweeney's pragmatic conversion came after seing - within 15 minutes of the ABC network premiere of Despearate Housewives - a high-quality, ad-free version that had appeared on P2P networks. (link to the rest of the story)

I think it's good to see a company finally start to think about where technology and our ability to access and share what we want the way we want. I'm amazed that any of these media giants call average people with computers pirates. Everything we look at or read or listen to on our computers are copies of copies of copies. That's how computers work.

Entertainment companies are the pirates. They charge 5 bucks for 5 cents worth of coke. They design parks that our kids cry and beg us to take them to, charge us 60 or 70 bucks a head, and then make us stand in lines in the hot sun for hours. Those interned at Guantanamo are treated better. And they call computer file sharers pirates?

It's about time we pay what most of this entertainment is worth: nothing. If I like it, I can listen to it. If I hate it, I can delete it. I'm not stuck with it. That's a beautiful thing.

Note: soon it will be considered piracy to use somebody else's recipe or copy a menu item: (link)

What next? What's the crazist thing you think could be copyrighted?

Belated Summer Re-run

This video has been coming up in conversation too much lately. I think it's a sign that it needs to be re-run.

Does anybody know how this guy's career has been going since this video first hit the internet last year?

Peacemakers

Matthew 5:9
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Romans 12:18
If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.


There is a move among evangelicals to work toward peace and to understand the people with whom we are at odds. Scripture teaches us that this is a worthy endeavor. Peacemakers will be called "Sons of God."

Out of Ur blog posted this article about secular world leaders discussing the challenges the world faces because of war, disease, famine and poverty.

The following quote is an interesting and thought provoking for me as an Evangelical Christian:

"I saw in my encounters with Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists that we have a lot of learning to do about who these people are. We have fallen into stereotypes which reinforce our positions rather than seek out the points of commonality that lead to partnership on global issues. When a man says to you, 'I was raised by a mother who taught me that all things belong to God and that I must handle what is given to me with care and generosity,' and he is a Muslim, I have to stop and ask 'what have I been missing all these years?'” (link to full article)

So what are you thoughts? Is it possible for Christians to do good and represent Jesus in global initiatives like these? Or do we need to have a "hands-off" approach when it comes to these issues and leave it to the world to navigate through without any influence from followers of Christ?

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Forget airbags, silicone breasts will do

Kudos to Jan at The View from Her blog for digging up this story...

SOFIA (AFP) - A woman in the northern Bulgarian town of Ruse has survived a car crash thanks to her silicone breasts which acted as an airbag, a newspaper has reported.
The 24-year-old ran through a red light and crashed her car into another vehicle at a busy crossroad in the middle of town Saturday, the daily Standart said Monday.

"The two cars were crumpled past recognition in the crash but the woman's silicone breasts acted as airbags and saved her life," Standart wrote, citing eyewitness reports.

But survival as well as beauty comes at a price as the woman burst her silicon implants in the crash.

This isn'tthe first time I've blogged about fake mammaries...

The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals

Christianity Today published the following article about the books that have shaped modern (and like it or not, post-modern) evangelical thinking:

 50.Revivalism and Social Reform
Timothy L. Smith
The new evangelicals were rightly wary of the liberal "social gospel." Yet they knew Jesus called them to serve the oppressed. Historian Timothy L. Smith destroyed the myth of the "heavenly minded" evangelical and helped us remember our history of personal and social holiness.

 49.Knowledge of the Holy
A. W. Tozer
The Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor and mystic invited us behind the curtain and into God's presence.



 48.The Hiding Place
Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill
The staple conundrum of late-night ethics discussions in Christian college dorms—Do you lie if the Nazis knock on your door asking for the Jews you are hiding?—was a question ten Boom lived.


 47.The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
F. F. Bruce
Yes, they are. And it took F. F. Bruce only 120 tiny pages to show it.





 46.Out of the Saltshaker and into the World
Rebecca Manley Pippert
"Christians and non-Christians have something in common," author Rebecca Pippert noted. "We're both uptight about evangelism." Out of the Saltshaker helped generations of fearful students (and other would-be evangelists) to loosen up.


 45.The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Mark A. Noll
Few people have accused evangelicalism of being an intellectual movement—but now we feel bad about it, at least.



 44.The Gospel of the Kingdom
George Eldon Ladd

Ladd's work called a generation of evangelicals to a higher level of scholarship, and his "already-but-not yet" take on God's kingdom influenced charismatic theologians and cessationists alike.


 43.Operation World
Patrick Johnstone

he who, where, what, why, when, and how many of unreached peoples.




 42.The Purpose-Driven Life
Rick Warren
A recommended resource to have on hand when faced with a home intruder (a la Ashley Smith) or when seeking to turn around an African nation (a la Rwanda).



 41.Born Again
Charles W. Colson
As we now know, the metamorphosis of a Nixon administration crook into a prison evangelist wasn't just a phase.



 40.Darwin on Trial
Phillip E. Johnson
This Berkeley law professor's takedown of scientific naturalism launched Intelligent Design and gained creationists a level of public attention they hadn't enjoyed since the Scopes trial.


 39.Desiring God
John Piper
Who expected a Calvinist Baptist to redeem hedonism for Christ?



 38.The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
Lesslie Newbigin
"A profound rethinking of missions in a pluralist context," says Wheaton College English professor Alan Jacobs, who nominated the tome.



 37.God's Smuggler
Brother Andrew with John and Elizabeth Sherrill
Brother Andrew's autobiography "instilled in me a concern for the persecuted church and ignited courage in my heart to serve those who suffer for Jesus," writes Charisma's editor J. Lee Grady.


 36.Left Behind
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
The book launched a series that launched a marketing empire that launched a new set of rules for Christian fiction. The series spent a total of 300 weeks—nearly as long as the Tribulation it dramatized—on The New York Times's bestseller list.

35.The Stork Is Dead
Charlie W. Shedd
Shedd published his sex advice for teens in 1968 and got evangelicals talking about the topic four years before The Joy of Sex was published.

 34.This Present Darkness
Frank E. Peretti
InterVarsity Press editor Al Hsu says Peretti's horror thriller "challenged evangelicals to take spiritual warfare and the supernatural seriously." Maybe, in some cases, too seriously.


 33.The Late Great Planet Earth
Hal Lindsey with C. C. Carlson
In the beginning—before the Left Behind series was a sparkle in the cash registers of religious booksellers—there was The Late Great Planet Earth. It's hard to imagine that Jenkins and LaHaye would have sold 43 million copies of their bestsellers if Lindsey hadn't first sold 15 million copies of his dispensationalist hit.

 32.The Cross and the Switchblade
David Wilkerson with John and Elizabeth Sherrill
Amazing things started happening when, in 1958, a country preacher arrived—Bible in hand and Holy Spirit in heart—in the ghettos of New York City. Christian Retailing reports that "more than 50 million copies are in print in 40-plus languages of the book that gave birth to the ministry of Teen Challenge."

 31.The Next Christendom
Philip Jenkins
The Penn State professor confronted North American Christians with the shocking truth that they were not the center of the universe.



 30.Roaring Lambs
Robert Briner
Back in the early '90s, when engaging the culture wasn't the "in" thing to do, Roaring Lambs inspired countless Christian artists to become artists who are Christians.



 29.Dare to Discipline
James Dobson
In the permissive '70s, Dobson did what he still does best—calling us to focus on the family.



 28.The Act of Marriage
Tim and Beverly LaHaye
The explicit marriage manual told men how to satisfy their wives. "Fundies in their undies," joked religion scholar Martin E. Marty.



 27.Christy
Catherine Marshall
A privileged city girl finds faith and a husband in rural Appalachia—sounds like a TV series to us.



 26.Know Why You Believe
Paul E. Little
Now we do.




 25.Boundaries
Henry Cloud and John Townsend
Sometimes, it's good to say no. This, in a nutshell, is the message that some ministry-weary Christians still need to hear.



24.The Meaning of Persons
Paul Tournier
Swiss physician Paul Tournier awakened us to the deep interconnectedness of the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.

23.All We're Meant to Be
Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Nancy A. Hardesty
Scanzoni and Hardesty outlined what would later blossom into evangelical feminism. For better or for worse, no evangelical marriage or institution has been able to ignore the ideas in this book.

 22.The Genesis Flood
Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb
In 1961, hydraulic engineer Henry M. Morris and biblical scholar John C. Whitcomb infused young-earth creationism with new energy. They argued that the biblical deluge could explain fossils and geological layers.


 21.The Master Plan of Evangelism
Robert Emerson Coleman
Using Jesus' methods, Coleman showed the intimate, indispensable relationship between evangelism and discipleship.



 20.A Wrinkle In Time
Madeleine L'Engle
Madeleine L'Engle told CT that when she tried to be a Christian with her "mind only," she ceased to believe. But then she realized that God was a storyteller. Her 1962 classic modeled the power of imagination to energize belief.


 19.The Cost of Discipleship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Although cheap grace has entered into the common vocabulary of evangelicals," says theologian Roger Olson, "the full weight of Bonhoeffer's exploration of true Christian discipleship has yet to be borne by many of us." Translated into English in 1949, Bonhoeffer's classic remains a devastating critique of comfortable Christianity.

 18.The Divine Conspiracy
Dallas Willard
With this call to discipleship, "Willard joins the line of Thomas a Kempis, Luther, Fenelon, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Zinzendorf, Wesley, Frank Laubach, Dorothy Day, and other master apprentices of Jesus," wrote Books and Culture editor John Wilson in a review, praising the University of Southern California professor's "philosophical depth" and "penetrating understanding of Scripture."

 17.What's So Amazing About Grace?
Philip Yancey
With trademark self-deprecation, Yancey wrote: "Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it, and I am one of those people. I think back to who I was—resentful, wound tight with anger, a single hardened link in a long chain of ungrace learned from family and church. Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God."

 16.Basic Christianity
John Stott
The slim volume "has introduced more people to Christ than any book I know other than the Bible," says author James Sire.



 15.The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism
F. H. Henry
Henry's call to cultural engagement seems unremarkable today. That's because we took his advice to "pursue the enemy, in politics, in economics, in science, in ethics."



 14.Let Justice Roll Down
John M. Perkins
The civil rights activist got white Christians thinking about his three-pronged solution to America's systemic race problem: relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution.


 13.Evidence That Demands a Verdict
Josh McDowell
Who says faith is only for the heart and not the head? Not Josh McDowell.



 12.Power Evangelism
John Wimber with Kevin Springer
Lifestyle evangelism is great, but signs and wonders are spectacular.




 11.Celebration of Discipline
Richard J. Foster
It "opened the door for many evangelicals to intentionally practice spiritual disciplines and find a connection with the church throughout history," writes Phyllis Alsdurf, professor of journalism at Bethel College.


 10.Evangelism Explosion
D. James Kennedy
This more than any other book ("The Four Spiritual Laws" is a pamphlet) gave evangelicals a systematic way to share their faith. It made the question, "If you were to die tonight, do you know for sure that you would go to heaven?" standard evangelistic fare.

 9.Through Gates of Splendor
Elisabeth Elliot
The account of the martyrdom of five young missionaries at the hands of a feared "Stone Age" tribe in Ecuador helped launch a generation of cross-cultural evangelists into the world's hard places. Author Jerry B. Jenkins told CT, "The story left me feeling spiritually slain."


 8.Managing Your Time
Ted W. Engstrom
Evangelicals have historically been entrepreneurs and mystics, so we have run into much personal burnout and organizational chaos. With this book, Ted W. Engstrom gave evangelical leaders permission to organize their ministries rationally and efficiently.

 7.Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Ronald J. Sider
"God is on the side of the poor!" Sider writes. To neglect them is to neglect the gospel.



 6.The Living Bible
Kenneth N. Taylor
One of the first in a wave of easy-to-read, modern English versions of the Bible, Kenneth N. Taylor's Living Bible came out in 1971, complete with its signature green cover. Book design has come a long way since then.


 5.Knowing God
J. I. Packer
Packer was magisterial in substance, but adopted the tone of a fellow traveler. He convinced us that the study of God "is the most practical project anyone can engage in."


 4.The God Who Is There
Francis A. Schaeffer
"This book, and its companion volumes, accomplished something startling and necessary: It made intellectual history a vital part of the evangelical mental landscape, opening up the worlds particularly of art and philosophy to a subculture that was suspicious and ignorant of both," writes John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Regent College.

 3.Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
Anyone who has read this far into the list doesn't need any explanation about why Lewis's work of apologetics placed this high—right?



 2.Understanding Church Growth
Donald Anderson McGavran
Although evangelicals have always been enamored with large and growing numbers (e.g., the Great Awakenings), it was Donald McGavran who gave us phrases such as "church growth" and "the homogeneous unit principle" and who made the endeavor a "science." Today, every pastor in North America has a decided opinion about whether or how much he or she buys into church-growth principles.

 1.Prayer: Conversing With God
Rosalind Rinker
In the 1950s, evangelical prayer was characterized by Elizabethan wouldsts and shouldsts. Prayer meetings were often little more than a series of formal prayer speeches. Then Rosalind Rinker taught us something revolutionary: Prayer is a conversation with God. The idea took hold, sometimes too much (e.g., "Lord, we just really wanna …"). But today evangelicals assume that casual, colloquial, intimate prayer is the most authentic way to pray.

Heard, but Not Seen
John and Elizabeth Sherrill may be the most influential Christian authors you know nothing about. They appear three times on this list—step aside, C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer—as co-authors of God's Smuggler, The Cross and the Switchblade, and The Hiding Place. Ghostwriters extraordinaire, longtime editors of Guideposts, and founders of Chosen Books (now a division of Baker Publishing), the couple also published Charles W. Colson's Born Again. Their specialty: testimonials to the power of God's Spirit. And, it seems, bestsellers.

I've read 43, 42, 41, 39, 37, 34, 33, 32 (as a comic book when I was a kid), 29, 28 (yee-haw!!!), 17, 13, 10, 4, & 3.

I'd like to get around to reading 48, 46, 30, 19, 9, 7, & 1. But none of those are currently on my nightstand.

Is there anything that I missed on this list that you would suggest as a "must read"?