Essentials

I created this page for those of you who haven’t been here very long (and those of you who have but are still not familiar with the lay of the land here in this little neck of the blogosphere), to give you a little something to help you find your way around.  Here is a sampling of what I believe to be the best and/or most essential pieces that I have written here over the past two and a half years that I have been here:

First of all, there’s something very important that you need to know about me.  Read Joe’s Deep Dark Secret

Now, read Q&A with Guest Blogger Billy Phenix, in which I sit down with a longtime friend who is on the family ministry staff at my church and answer questions about my “secret”.  Here is Part 1, and here is Part 2.

Making My Peace with the Catholic System of Things is about my coming to terms with growing up in the Catholic Church.  Here is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Book Review:  The Shack by William P. Young: It seems that I am now a beneficiary of all the hype surrounding this book.  In just two months this has surpassed my review of the movie 300 as the most popular item on this blog.

The Bulldog Tooth: I am an inveterate Georgia fan, and every year I make it a tradition to predict the scores of Georgia football games in the upcoming season.  Read The Bulldog Tooth (my predictions for the 2004 season) to see the full story of how the Bulldog Tooth name came about.  Here are my 2005 predictions, my 2006 predictions, my 2007 predictions, and my 2008 predictions.

Please Beat Florida…PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Written on the day of Florida-Georgia 2007, this was a direct appeal to the Georgia players and coaches (Georgia had lost to Florida 15 of 17 times prior to 2007) to quit making excuses and just beat Florida for once.  (Think it might have worked?)

Not Exactly Feeling the Love: On Evangelical Protestant-dom’s Rather Shaky Relationship with the Rest of the World: I have found out the hard way over the years that there is not a lot of love for Georgia outside of the great Bulldog Nation.  Some of this has to do with the fact that people have devoted their allegiance to our sworn archrivals (Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia Tech, etc.), but a lot has to do with the way typical Georgia fans carry themselves.  We yell and scream and bark like bulldogs, and that does not go over very well outside the Bulldog Nation.  Our enthusiasm for our team often translates into a level of obnoxiousness which many outside the Bulldog Nation find unbearable.

And when I look at the state of evangelical Protestant-dom as a whole and its relationship with the outside world, I see a lot of parallels.  Read on to find out what these parallels are.

I’ve written some other juicy diatribes as well:

A Melange of Thoughts from the Weekend:  Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Another Michael Spencer Post: From the summer of 2007.  A sermon series at my church and a post on Michael Spencer’s blog (which, alas, is no longer there) came together to create a perfect storm in my heart.  Here is the result.  We evangelicals have created a movement with vast quantities of what passes for spiritual strength and vitality.  But in the midst of it all, where is God?

Could I Get Some Humility…Please? We now have a lot of things that we consider essential to our faith which the early Christians did not have.  And the early Christians had a lot of things which are in very short supply nowadays.  How much of a disadvantage did the early Christians have because they did not have the things which we consider so essential?  And are we missing out on anything because we lack the things which they had?

The Wilma Water Wars: The SBC Takes a Black Eye over the Alcohol Issue: When Hurricane Wilma ravaged southwestern Florida in the fall of 2005, Anheuser-Busch wanted to help out with the relief effort.  So they sent down some water in cans with the Anheuser-Busch logo on them.  Bad idea, thought Southern Baptist relief workers on the scene.  Here is my take on the situation and on the Baptist view of alcohol which motivated them to respond in the way that they did.

Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort Lay the Smackdown on Charles Darwin!!!!!: From the fall of 2009.  That November was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species; Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort chose to mark the occasion by distributing specially modified copies of Darwin’s work on specially selected university campuses.  Bad idea.  Very bad idea.  Why?  Read all about it here.

Why Don’t We Do This More Often? Communion is always the high point of my church’s annual Labor Day singles retreat.  Unfortunately, communion is something which only happens three or four times a year in most evangelical churches.  In this post I look at some of the reasons why evangelicals object to having communion more often and why I don’t think these are good reasons at all.

Fight Club:  Confessions of a Broken Heart: A few years ago my church did a series called “Fight Club”.  The point of this series was that your relationship with your parents is so important that you must fight for it no matter what.

Over the last few years my relationship with God has been somewhat dicey to say the least.  These posts represent my attempt to fight for this relationship by deconstructing the aspects of evangelical Protestant-dom which have been most harmful to my conception of God and my relationship with God.  In part 2, I talk about the evangelical approach to prayer.  In part 3, part 4, and part 5, I talk about the evangelical approach to worship.  In part 6 I talk about the age-old evangelical compulsion to “witnessing”, “relational evangelism”, or whatever else you would care to call it.  In part 7 I talk about evangelical conceptions of what it means to hear from God.  In part 8 I talk about the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and all the baggage that usually comes with it.  In part 9 and part 10 I talk about evangelical Protestant-dom’s lack of emphasis upon the Gospel.  And in part 11 I conclude by talking about how our approach to spiritual formation has turned us into the sort of disciples that we are.