Pensees: Bob’s Blog Blurb

Bob,

Ah yes - “To blog or not to blog - that is the question!”

You have nothing to worry about - At least you have your own blog - Some of us are so “not-cool” not only do we not have a “blog-roll” - we don’t even have a blog! Some of us don’t even have the mental tools to know how to blog.

Well, I’ve been allowed to comment here and there - thus I am content! I shall ride off into the sunset blogless!

Straight Ahead my friend!

Joel

PS - Thanks for letting me hang out here in your blog - this makes me cool! My wife has been telling me for years I need to work on my image! This no doubt will be a help to that:)

Joel,

As soon as I figure out how to comment on Pryde’s blog (a blog that you are now officially in cahoots with), I’ll advertise it! I’d like all two of my readers to read some of yours and Tom’s stuff.

You can always hang out at this blog. I might even make a Mozart lover out of you.

Thanks Bob - Mozart - wow! - my wife plays some of that on the piano - My middle son I think is starting to work some of that on his violen. I personally try to not listen to too much of that - way to calming!

But Bob, you should start a music appreciation thing going on your blog. As a matter of fact - you and Scott should join forces and come up with the “Rockford School of Christian Rock & Christian Bach!” You could take the “Bach” part and Scott could take the “Rock” part. You could “tag team” it! Very diverse!

This of course would put Majesty, the Wilds, Brother Tim and the rest of the “Garlock gang” out of buisness - but that’s OK - those guys have had an impressive “run” anyway :)
(just kidding friends - please no hate mail!)

Joel

Hi Bob

Thank you for your positive words in regard to my recent post.

However it does also seem extremely demeaning to announce to one and all that ‘there is a lot of nonesense (sic) at this site’, (done with the underlining.)

Perhaps for my own benefit and for that of your own readers you could elaborate on just what is the ‘nonsense’ that I write.

I am happy to be questioned and where appropriate corrected, (of course you could even be wrong yourself…) but I am not at all happy to be hung out as a fool in the manner you have done here.

Hamo,

I can understand your vexation at my warning to my readers about your site. That’s fair. But that doesn’t obligate me to withhold my warning about what I think is nonsense. This is public venue and, as you feel quite justified to point out my mis-spelling of the word nonsense (albeit subtly), I feel duty-bound, since I am a pastor of some of my readers, to raise red flags about certain sites when I think necessary.

My concern with your site is, frankly, less on what you have written, but in the comments and in the apparent bent of your mind as reflected by the blogs that you highlight in your blog roll. Any of my readers who may go, by my direction, to your good article may also go, by your direction to blogs which, I think, are off-base and sometimes irreverent. Those blogs link to other blogs so that in a mere matter of minutes one is literally engulfed in a sea of emerging confusion among people who one cannot easily discern if they are waving or drowning — to use a phrase so eloquently put by one of your favorite blogs.

I take my shepherding responsibilities seriously so I am not adverse to offending someone in the blogosphere in order that my own flock will be able to clearly note the fact that that my great appreciation for your good article must not be misconstrued as uncritical appreciation of anything else available in your site.

This is almost an aside, but it disconcerts me enough to mention it: one of the bloggers in your blogroll refers to my Lord as a “guy named Jesus.” This seems to be a trend among many of the “emerging” to make the Savior cool or hip. I suppose that my prayerful and constant meditation in the Servant Songs of Isaiah over the past weeks for my preaching responsibilities (another dubious activity for many of the “emerging”) has only intensified my awe that that God of Glory and Holiness should have laid to His charge my evil. It is very difficult for me to call Him “a guy named Jesus.” I’m more inclined to refer to Him as the apostles generally did: Master, Lord, God, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ the Lord, and only rarely in the NT, just Jesus.

I happen to believe that preaching may be empowered by God and is part of His plan for the Church. I do agree, in part, with many of the criticisms of my “emerging” friends on the subject of preaching, but I make a distinction between mere sermonizing and true, biblially-authoritative preaching. It is true that sermonizing and speechifying can be dangerously heady. I do believe, however, that one who preaches in the spirit of the Gospels will have more of the “I-am-not-worthy-to-loosen-His-sandal-straps” mind of the great preacher, John, than the “I-enjoy-my-eloquence” of some of the best of today’s sermonizers.

I admire the resistance to the “status quo” that many in the emerging fellowship exemplify. I myself resist the status quo. I also hear your suggestion that “even” I could be wrong. I’m sure that on many things I am mistaken. However, in my quest for answers I am more inclined to go to the tried and true works of saints who have gone on before us than the jangling logomachy of the emerging blogosphere where no one can tell if they are waving or drowning. I’m sad to say I think most are drowning.

Your article, however, reverberated in my heart. It helped me. It provoked some serious pondering. I am an improved person by it. For that, I thank you. I also wanted some of my friends to check it out. I hope they have. I just wanted them (especially the ones who are young in the faith or who do not know me well) that there is too much possibility or exposure to nonsense through the medium of your site. That’s all.

I’m very inclined to think of you as a brother and it is my sincerest hope that God will prosper your ministry in a way that best glorifies our Lord. We are both sinners.

Bob

Thank you for your reply Bob.

As you say, wherever we stand on different issues we are brothers and sinners.

All the best