Here’s an interesting quote from the latest issue of Church Production magazine:

There is an element of ecclesiology here that cannot be missed. For example, a portable church that takes the approach of engaging the culture directly with production elements that allow for a culturally genuine worship experience will need to use a different though process than a church whose primary goal in corporate worship is to maintain a tradition or comfort level.

Wow, that statement is packed with presuppositions. Apparently you can choose one of two goals for corporate worship:

• the goal of engaging the culture directly
• the goal of maintaining a tradition/comfort level

Is magnifying and honoring God a possible goal for worship?

Another presupposition: apparently you cannot “engage a culture directly” without the use of certain “production elements.” In the context of Church Production magazine, the implied elements would be video, sound, lighting, staging, etc. It is possible to obey the Great Commission and make followers of Christ without $20,000 video projectors broadcasting live Twitter feeds during the sermon?

Another presupposition: either you can have a culturally genuine worship experience (utilizing these “production elements”), or you can have a culturally ________ worship experience. The opposites of genuine include words like counterfeit, insincere, or false. This seems to be a dominant perception today: either you have culturally progressive worship, or you have insincere worship. There is no other alternative.

Esther Grace decided to be born on Sunday morning, so of course I was not at church. The Wilkinsons were also gone, and Pastor Eric was sick. Then they arrived to setup, and no one ever showed up to let them into the building. So the church family jumped in to help, and they did church outdoors! Not exactly ideal, but there were some positives:

• it was a good chance for the church men to help out
• it was good practice for Pastor Eric – they’ll have a few of their own surprises at GBC Rancho
• we had several visitors, who stuck with us
• we’re in Southern California, not northern Michigan!
• this is a good reminder to pray for the Lord to provide us with a more permanent facility

Just how much information can you fit on one screen? I don’t usually use a setup quite this complex, but just for the fun of it I tried to see how much helpful stuff I could get onto my 23″ monitor (I realize that some people prefer dual monitors, which also work great with L4 because you can float resources in their own windows). In the screenshot below, you can see that I have:

• my custom guide for the passage
• my favorite Bible
• my favorite cross reference resource (NTSK), with Power Lookup displaying the cross references for me
• my favorite Greek and Hebrew Lexicons (see the HALOT tab behind BDAG)
• a frame for commentaries on the passage
• the cool new “cited by” tool, showing me where this reference is cited in any portion of my library that I choose
• the text comparison tool, showing me the translation differences in versions that I have chosen
• and the Bible explorer, showing me info about important people/places/things in the text (not helpful on I Cor. 10:23, but elsewhere)

I don’t actually use this layout (too busy for me, and too hard to get everything to follow just right), and there are many other things that could be added, but this gives you a glimpse of just how much L4 can give you on one big screen.

18 pages into John Sailhamer’s brand new The Meaning of the Pentateuch. Hooked already. These are the men you want to learn from: not those racing to meet deadlines as they churn out books to keep their publisher happy, but those who have made the study of some portion of Scripture or theology their life’s work.

I just returned from the annual Fundamental Baptist Fellowship regional meeting for Southern California. I’m not technically part of the FBF, but many of those men are my good friends and favorite ministry coworkers. The Southern California FBF is struggling, but there are several men who are being faithful, God is at work, and new churches are being planted.

This year’s speaker was Dr. Bruce McAllister, head of the ministerial training program at my alma-mater, Bob Jones University. It was a delight to hear him again. In those formative college years when potential pastors are big on excitement and little on wisdom, he was a steady voice pointing us to humble, holy, passionate, evangelistic shepherding. He loves pastors, and it was a delight to have him challenge us from the Word. As I am reminded of the great influence he has had on my life, many other names flood my memory (in no particular order):

• Dr. Mark Minnick, who modeled how to labor in the Word and doctrine with passion and humility.
• Dr. David Doran, whose tenacity and courage combine (once again!) with great humility and expository precision.
• Dr. Gary Reimers, who loves to train pastors to shepherd their people through the careful preaching of the Word.
• Pastor Dan Brooks, who showed me what a Christ-centered ministry looks like.
• Pastor Eric Sipe, who wouldn’t let me shy away from really loving and shepherding people.
• Drs. Michael Barrett and Robert Bell, who made Hebrew a joy.
• Pastor Tony Miller and Dr. Jim Berg, who held the lines like bulldogs while loving and weeping and praying and shepherding. Though far busier than most, one thing was never in doubt: they were tending to their own private relationship with their Savior. They were humble shepherds, despite some student body opinion.
• Dr. Bob Jones III, who showed that you can have very influential positions, significant authority, and down-to-earth humility at the same time. 
• College and seminary friends like Ron Perry, Steven Mock, and Evan Collier who were less interested in arguing about nuance and more interested in modeling Christ-like attributes like prayer.
• My Dad, whose diligence and faithfulness and godliness influenced me more than the rest of the list combined.

Many more could be named. As I’ve typed that list, one characteristic dominates my impression of all of those men: humility. The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them …. it is not this way among you.

My friend Dr. Chris Osborne is teaching a new online class called “A Biblical Worldview of Science.”  It is “an inexpensive online course tailored for science teachers at Christian schools or any high school student or adult interested in creation science apologetics. This course fulfills the requirements for 3 semester units of continuing education credits for ACSI.” The course is offered through San Diego Christian College.

Chris is especially skilled at helping Christians think through the various biblical models for understanding origins, ultimately helping them to understand the biblical and scientific evidence pointing to a young earth, 6 literal day creation.

The course begins January 11, so if you are interested it would be good to contact Dr. Osborne soon. His email is cosborne{at}sdcc.edu.

I’m working on a topical study on ransom/redemption. My mind is swimming with texts, words, and things to remember to look up and check on. In the process I come across a handy chart in one of my commentaries that I want to return to later. Logos Bible Software 4 gives me three great ways to get back to it. First, I can put it in a “clipping.” These are quick files that contain clippings of anything you want from your library – kind of like a notepad sitting on your desk. (click for full-size images)

So you can see how I copied the chart into the clipping. I could also add this page to my favorites list, so I can return to the page easily:

 If I forget to do either of those things, I can just go back and find it in the history (this isn’t actually the history from that study):

I love how you can see your location in L4 books and browse around the index. This is not really a new feature in Logos 4, but it is a little easier to use, more self-explanatory, and prettier (for lack of a better term). Any time you have a resource open, the frame shows you where you are at in that resource, and gives you an easy way to pop open an index that you can scroll through. Elsewhere I’ve illustrated the cntrl-F search function that is also built into the frame. Very handy:

This post from the lead software designer gives an idea of the incredible amount of work that goes into a program like Logos Bible Software version 4.