I've Moved!

Well, I've done it... I've moved on to Wordpress. I just liked the layout better and since I am certainly not going to take the time to learn how to create my own layout, I'm going to follow many others and head on over... check it out.

Here’s how it works:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Mark in red the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov are both better though)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (uh, department of redundancy)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (uh, someone left The Moonstone off the list)
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (uuuugh)
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (again... redundancy)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

List originally from the NEA via Geof’s blog via The Vicar.

Maybe, I'll make my own list someday soon.

Seminary Preparation ... Part the Third

So I started this little series off with a link to a BB Warfield article on the importance of a devotional life for theological students. Well, I've found a great post on "How to Waste Your Theological Education" and alot of it rang painfully true as I prepare to get my application in the mail this summer.

If I (and other men) are called to pastoral ministry, why do we throw away so much of the opportunities that we are given as we prepare for and participate in a theological education. This should be a time when we are not just preparing our hearts, but also our minds; a time when we should continue a quest toward humility rather than knowledge filled pride.

Here are some of the ways in which it is suggested that a theological education is wasted and some of the ones I would either have a propensity towards or I have seen lived out among other friends who are in seminary ...

1. Cultivate pride by writing only to impress your professors instead of writing to better understand and more clearly communicate truth.

2. Perfect the fine art of corner-cutting by not really researching for a paper but instead writing your uneducated and unsubstantiated opinions and filling them in with strategically placed footnotes.

3. Mistake the amount of education you receive with the actual knowledge you obtain. Keep telling yourself, “I’ll really start learning this stuff when I do my Th.M or my Ph.D.”

6. Neglect personal worship, Bible reading and prayer.

7. Don’t evangelize your neighbors.

11. Find better things to do than serve in your local church.

12. Fill your life with questionable movies, television, internet, and music.

... and the list goes on and on.

Check it out and question whether your intentions and actions reflect what God has called you to or your own desires and sinful nature. I've been realizing more and more how painful it is to look at the things I do and really question why I do them.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Music for the Mid-Week

OK, so its not really mid week anymore, but, it's pretty close. These are both from Josh Ritter's newest album, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. To be honest it's still not my favorite album of his, but it is definitely beginning to grow on me. His previous album, Animal Years, is one of my overall favorite albums. He's really just a great artist ... inventive lyrics, beautiful instrumentation, great songwriting overall.

Anyhow, here they are, enjoy...

Seminary Preparation ... Part the Second

So I have been assigned the task of preparing a sermon. Granted, I won't be preaching in front of the whole congregation, but in front of the staff. Originally I was assigned something from the Sermon on the Mount, but that was deemed too difficult for someone who has never preached a sermon before ... apparently it's hard enough even for my brothers who are seasoned by years of ministry. Then I thought I might do something from one of Paul's epistles, but alas those are hard as well for the novice, so I'm shooting for a Gospel narrative. I have chosen Christ's baptism in Matthew 3. While that should give me plenty to work with, I am still a little nervous about how one moves from point A) choosing a text to the final product, a sermon.



It was suggested that I read Bryan Chapell's Christ-Centered Preaching. In the opening chapted, Dr. Chapell eases my burden a little when he reminds me that,"Ultimately, preaching accomplishes its spiritual purposes not because of the skills or the wisdom of a preacher but of the power of the Scripture proclaimed. Preachers minister with greater zeal, confidence, and freedom when they realize that God has taken from their backs the monkey of spiritual manipulation."

And yet, preachers are still called to wrestle with the Word, to mine its depths for the truth that is there and to not come at it with ulterior motives. I still have to prepare the sermon, deliver it and receive the feedback from ministers far more seasoned in sermon preparation and the realities of day to day ministry than I am. To be honest, I am a little scared ... I still feel unworthy to do what God has called me to do, to minister his word and shepherd his people. Thankfully, the Lord makes his servants ready for the calling he has for them.

Here's a verse for thought:

For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11 (ESV)

Friday Funny

A little levity for your Friday, courtesy of our friends at Altoids...

Seminary Preparation...Part the First

As you may already know, I am planning on going to seminary beginning summer or fall 2009. I realize I've been saying that for a while, but I have finally started the application process and, Lord willing, I'll hear an affirmative back from Covenant Theological Seminary sometime in the early fall. I did my 'official' visit at the beginning of March and it really confirmed what I had already been leaning towards. Check out these pictures from my visit ... it snowed a foot the first day I was there.

This is where I stayed and when heading back across the field sunk in well above my knee more than once

Look at that snow, it was crazy, everything was closed for the day.

It was coming down pretty heavy for a while (thats the library)

As I prepare for seminary over the next year my coworkers and other friends who have gone ahead of me have recommended many resources to help me prepare for my studies. Obviously, spending more and more time in Scripture and prayer are foremost on that list, but there are various books and other resources that have been highly recommended. So I'll post periodically on these as I read them.

The first one is BB Warfield's The Religious Life of Theological Students. I've found it very helpful in thinking through my seminary prep and eventual studies. He starts out saying, "A minister must be both learned and religious. It is not a matter of choosing between the two. He must study, but he must study as in the presence of God and not in a secular spirit." He goes on to emphasize that, "A minister must be learned, on pain of being utterly incompetent in his work. But before and above being learned, a minister must be godly."

My hope is that I will continue in spiritual maturity and godliness, above and beyond any other preparation over the next year. It will be hard, no doubt, but much more beneficial than anything else I could do in preparation for seminary and eventual ministry.