We are dealing with another death in the family and I had my first final for Ohio Dominican which I think I did great on.  I wanted to talk about several things that I have been thinking about, but I haven’t had time to look into them.

Lifestyle evangelism, this is what it is called when you move away from the older evangelism model of “Where will you go when you die?” or Here is the Roman Road and being more vocal to living the gospel in front of people, but I have been thinking that in our effort to move away from the more aggressive older style to being more passive we may have allowed the pendulum to go to far.  Are we simply modeling a good morality if we leave Jesus to far out of the equation, If the life we are living doesn’t have Jesus at it’s center than it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Last night Heather and I went to see the show “Wicked” last night.  It was the first time in years we had been to see a Broadway show, but it was very good.  It is the prequil to the Wizard of Oz.  Wicked tells the story of how Elphaba the green skinned little girl became the Wicked Witch of the West.

She met Glinda in school and they became friends, it tells the story of how the Scarecrow, Tinman and Cowardly Lion came to be as well.  The second act tells the story of the movie, from her point of view so you get that Back to the Future II feeling, where you get to see what was happening behind the scenes.  The comedy was great, cute and quick, with plenty of references to the movie.

Nessarose: What is in this punch?
Boq:   Lemons, and berries, and pears.
Nessarose: Oh, My.
If it comes to your town it is worth the time.

I am looking to begin a group reading of the Bible in July.  I have planned to go through the NT, and take the rest of the year to do it, I know that may seem pretty slow but I am also planning to take time to study things I have questions about, and look up things I have been putting off for some time.  I am interested to know if anyone would like to join me.

Have we seriously come to the point where any form of physical contact is considered bad?  Has anyone see Demolition Man, where they didn’t allow such a thing?  The world was turned into a giant wimp world.  Kids need to learn how to act properly and simply telling them no does not give them that opportunity, not to mention the studies showing how much people need physical contact.

This is another example of how stupid we are becoming as a scociety, people get hurt, people feel bad it happens part of life is learning how to deal with it properly we can not have a world that doesn’t offend anyone and still have freedom.
Va. Schools No-Contact Rule Is a Touchy Subject – washingtonpost.com

If I only believed it to be true and possible.
Townhall.com::My Contract with America::By Rudy Giuliani

This is a post from May 20th 2006 just over a year ago and it still means more than most of the things I have said here.

The man who was Don

I read a recent article that says there are an estimated 115,000 children in America that are orphans and 65 million evangelical Christians.  That is one child for each 565 evangelical Christians in America.  Why is this?  If “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27)  Then why are we not practicing this more?

I know several families that foster and adopt children as a ministry and do a great job of it.  My own spiritual father (Don Nonnenman) had more children through their house then I can remember, but it seems like we should be able to eliminate the need for orphanages if we were truly to live missionally.

             Heather and I have talked about our desire to have a lot of kids in our home although not all biologically ours.  We have decided to wait until we are done having our own to bring others into the house, but I can’t wait for that day.  I don’t try to be cynical but I can’t help but notice that a lot of the churches and Christians that I know are more interested in receiving the blessing of God in the form of a new car than helping a widow or an orphan.  If the missional church is going to be more than just the newest catch phrase for churches to use in their marketing it is going to take all of us as Christians stepping up and making sacrifices in our own lives that help those around us.