Overdue

No I'm not talking about a library book (my wife is the town librarian so I never have to pay late fees). Rather, I'm talking about my complete lack of blog posts over the past couple weeks. I could make excuses, like that I had family in town, but it mainly boils down to not having anything pressing to blog about and not trying hard enough to come up with something.

With that said I wanted to start out this posting with the mentioning of a perculiar college sport in North Dakota: rodeo! Yes that's right, at some of the colleges in ND (and I presume in other similar states) you can actually letter in rodeo. Here I thought it was bad that I could letter in speech and debate in high school (and yes I did have a BMOC letterman jacket!). I wonder if colleges give out rodeo scholarships to promising high school seniors. It reminds me of a funny Brian Regan joke (if you've never heard him before check him out!) in which he considers if doctors ever go about procedures like rodeo cowboys. That's 4.5 seconds on the belly button tie, a new state record!

Last Friday I had my licensing council. In the Evangelical Free Church pastors are first licensed and then within a couple years go through the ordination process. I think of licensing as a probationary ordination. Basically I had to submit a 20 page paper outlining my theological agreement with the EFCA statement of faith. Then I met with two others pastors from the area who asked me questions about my paper. Although there were some areas that came up in which I could devote some more time thinking through, they approved me for licensing. So my info was forwarded on to the national office for final approval.

To round out this post I thought I'd mention a few books that I've read recently. A friend recommended the book "Moneyball" which is a look at the Oakland A's front office and especially in how their GM, Billy Bean, has developed a new way of looking at baseball that helps smaller market teams compete with the big boys. Instead of going after the free agents with tons of homeruns and runs batted in, Beane prefers guys with high on-base percentage. Instead of drafting expensive and risky high school ballplayers, Beans goes after lesser scouted college players with a high obp who he can acquire at a fraction of the price.

I also re-read John Grisham's "Playing for Pizza". It's about Italian football and in particular an aging back-up NFL QB who has one last chance for glory...playing for Parma, Italy. Of the redeeming qualities in this book is the concept of loyalty. The main character has received very little loyalty from NFL teams during his career and so while playing in Italy and an opportunity for a better position comes available, will he remain loyal or bolt for the door?

Finally, I recently picked up Collin Hansen's book "Young, Restless and Reformed." Collin was a journalism student at Northwestern and after college began working for Christianity Today. During his time at CT he wrote one of the most talked about articles in a long time on the resurgence of reformed theology among a younger generation of Christians. And no doubt because of its large success, he was asked to turn it into a book. Collin's writing has a very similar feel to Lee Strobel's journalistic writings "Case for Faith" and "Case for Christ". He does a great job painting a well-rounded picture of where this resurgence has come from and how far reaching it has gone. I find it interesting that the two major streams right now among 20-30 something Christians seem to be reformed theology and the emergent church.

Please pray for Harmony as she's at a library conference in Bismarck this week. Please pray for me to get over a cold that I've had for the last couple days before Sunday.

By God's Grace, Jeff