Zombie Kid Likes Turtles

My New Year's resolution is to revive my blog, but for now, this is quite an entertaining 17 seconds.

Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama

This is hilarious. People are crazy.

Rubber Duckie, you're the one...who makes my prayer time so much fun...

We talked about prayer again at LOFT on Sunday, and it always seems to force me to wrestle with the deepest issues of the faith. We are supposed to pray because God has revealed himself to be faithful and trustworthy and he wants his children to come to him so he can give them what he has promised them. We all wrote down prayers that were our deepest biggest longings for the world. You know what I wrote down? "Lord, come quickly." It was the only prayer that seemed earth-shattering enough to encompass everything that so desperately needs God's healing hand.

But the thing is, people have been praying this prayer for 2000 years and Christ has yet to come back to earth and make all things new. It sort of feels like I'm being stood up; I've been seated in our booth for a while and I'm on my third Coke thinking, "is he coming or what?" So I give him a few more minutes...trying calling...try texting...still no answer. Then I start feeling a little pissed and a little embarrassed and leave thinking, "what the hell, I didn't want to go out with him anyway."

De-conversion.com has lots of stories from Christians-turned-atheists, and many of them have to do with unanswered prayer. One poster described the practice of prayer as "The Unsinkable Rubber Duckie."
"...those who believe in the paranormal will just go on believing because the belief meets a need. They are like unsinkable rubber ducks. Whenever you think you have sunk them, they just bob back up again." "If I prayed for someone to get well and they did, it was a miracle. If they didn’t, it was God’s will that they didn’t - or perhaps I didn’t have enough faith, or perhaps my own sins were getting in the way, or perhaps I wasn’t being persistent enough. There was always a good reason. 'If they win, they win. If they lose, they win!'"
His point being, I guess, that we're just buoyant with blind faith and the need to believe in something so we just keep bobbing right back up even when God doesn't show up.

I have my days where I trust in God, but the other half of the time I feel like that duckie bobbing in an ocean of hopelessness or the girl that got excited about a date only to be stood up. Even on my best days, there's always this little part of me that says, "I must be kidding myself to believe this. The universe is upheld by triune perichoretic love? There's a loving God that wants to redeem this mess?" Looking at our broken world and our fractured church, sometimes the thought of the return of Christ, or the existence of Christ , for that matter, seems like (to borrow from Shawshank), "a shitty pipe dream."

BUT, the shitty pipe was, ironically, what ended up getting Andy out of Shawshank. And the miserable bloody cross, the most paradoxical place for an all-powerful God to reveal himself, is finally what nudges me back from doubt. If Christ did indeed come to earth, humble himself, and swallow death for us, he is entirely trustworthy. And we can be assured that we are not being stood up, and that our cries and our pleas are not bobbing around uselessly, but being brought before the Father by the Incarnate Son who ever lives to pray for us. The One who bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, and felt our anguish...and is coming back. Soon.

An Odd Place for Snarkiness

I'm doing research right now on pain control in end-of-life care, and my jaw dropped through the floor when I came to this paragraph:

"Part of the problem with pain control is overcoming the false dilemma between psychotropic hedonism and pharmacological Calvinism. Hedonism is the belief that pleasure is good and, in fact, very good. Calvinism is the belief that suffering is good. Puritanism is the fear that somewhere, someone is happy. Nurses and other health care providers need to ask themselves what their attitude is toward pain and the use of psychotropic agents to control pain."

I can't believe that someone would write in all seriousness, "Puritanism is the fear that somewhere, someone is happy." Am I supposed to be learning about professional nursing practice from someone who doesn't know anything about Christian doctrine and yet editorializes about "pharmacological Calvinism?" Good grief.

Who Knew Sabellianism Made Such Great Elevator Music?

I'm way too easily amused.

Today I woke up at 12:45 only to be rushed out the door by my roommates because the buffet at Little India ends at 2:00. I've never even tried Indian food, but today I had it for breakfast.

Last night the KE apartments went to Post Family Farm for square dancing and a hay ride. Now you would think that the square-dancing thing would be pretty chill since we're all in college, but it was just as awkward as as my 8th-grade roller skating parties. Not to mention that I really hate touching people I don't know without exam gloves on and a bottle of hand sanitizer nearby.

I'm in the midst of going especially crazy indulging my church-hopping fetish. Last week I went to a charismatic church with my roommate and tomorrow I'm going to an Orthodox church. Maybe next week I'll go to that drive-in church on Breton. Maybe I should stop going to church like a movie reviewer. But it's so much fun...

A silly but surprisingly accurate little quiz.

Which theologian are you?

You scored as a Karl Barth

The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology.

Karl Barth 80% Anselm 73% Jürgen Moltmann 60% John Calvin 53% Augustine 47% Martin Luther 47% Friedrich Schleiermacher 40% Paul Tillich 33% Charles Finney 20% Jonathan Edwards 7% Well I think this came out alright. But the fact that I have more in common with Finney than Edwards is rather strange.

Our Heretical Quoteboard

We have this joke in my apartment that everything we talk about is either about sex or theology. And it's true most of the time, especially this one particular night.

Me (looking up from my book): Now here's one Trinitarian analogy I've never heard: the Trinity is like three bulbs making one light. Gee, that's sophisticated.

Jessie: Looks like we've got a heretical lamp over there. (Points to our five-armed lamp.) Let's see, there's Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Sophia, and....

Me: Rob Bell. Everybody worships him anyway.

Jessie: Great, our heretical lamp is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Sophia, and Rob Bell.

Me(a while later): Ok, this chapter is talking about how we can't call God Mother.

Jessie: Why can't we call God Mother?

Me: Something about how God is compared to a mother with similes, but God never self-identifies as Mother like he does Father.

Jessie: I wonder if it would change anything if we had Mother, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Me: I guess the Spirit could still be the love between the Mother and the Son...oh, GOSH! That's almost incestuous. Can you imagine the fertility cults?

Jessie: Now how does the Spirit proceed from the two of them again?

Me: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT!

Needless to say, we agreed that it was best to stick with Father.

On another random church note, Jessie and John and I went to vespers at St. Nick's orthodox church. They told us that vespers was a lot different than their Sunday morning deal and that we should come back some Sunday. It was mostly lots of chanting and incense-swinging. And they said "Lord have mercy" like a hundred times. I hope God has mercy after all that chanting...

Hiatus from my hiatus

Summer has zipped by before my eyes...I've just now realized that I haven't posted anything in over a month.

I have this weird thing where the amount I write is inversely proportional to how happy I'm feeling. When things are going well, I just don't have the patience to sit down and be all deep and angsty...maybe just a few highlights.

Wicked: my aunt called me at the last minute with an extra ticket for Wicked and said, "would you like to go?" and I said, "do you even have to ask?" I was more excited than the kids in my preschool class were about going on the Bozo show. It was a splendid day, and now I'm burning a hole in the soundtrack with "Defying Gravity" and "As long as you're mine."

Camp: my job at camp last summer may have sent me directly to therapy without collecting $200, but I went back anyway. My friend and I pitched a tent and spent the week going down the zipline and pretty much doing whatever we felt like. My favorite doc was back, and we went off-roading in the golf cart and made fun of the kids who did stupid things to themselves.

Harry Potter: what else is there to say, really? The seventh book awakened my hibernating fingernail-biting habit and landed my youngest sister in my parents' bedroom with nightmares. It was long and frustrating at points, but the ending was quite satisfying. I thought that Harry really emerged as a Christ figure in the last chapter, but that could be my "all things" Kyuperness talking.

New Jersey: I leave on Thursday for a roadtrip to my friend Laura's New Jersey beach house with a couple of other girls from the nursing program. For some weird reason I really like roadtrips and am looking forward to it immensely.

And of course there were the trips to Holland State Park, ultimate frisbee games, and ice cream cones...the usual summer stuff. And now work has sent me my final full-time schedule, the booklist is posted, and tuition is due. And so it continues.

Pronouns...HUH!

Recently I came across this fascinating article outlining a new proposal in the search for a gender-neutral pronoun. Ever since people decided it wasn't kosher to use "he" to mean "he or she," the problem has been a thorn in the foot of grammarians. The most common solution has been to use "they," as in, "Why would somebody steal my cab?" "Well, maybe they were late." But that just sounds like nails on a chalkboard to those of use who secretly love books like Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

So what's an anal English speaker to do? A professor of English at Johns Hopkins has suggested replacing he, she, him, her, his, and hers with "hu." Apparently this is pronounced "huh." As in, "War...HUH! What is it good for?" I can see the grammatical need, but I don't know if "hu" would ever catch on. In fact, I'm giggling just thinking about using it seriously in a sentence. Who knows, maybe I'll have to eat my words in 50 years like Old English speakers had to, after yeers of speling lyke thys (or something like that). Well then, out with the old, in with the "hu!"

Grownup?

Tonight I hung out with my good friend Laura, and we decided to grab some dinner at Applebee's and then go to the 8:30 showing of "Knocked Up." (Sorry if those quotes are out of place, Bethany.) We had some time between dinner and the movie so we wandered around Meijer's and played with the appliances.

I dawned on me recently that in approximately a year I'm actually going to be a real, live on-my-own grownup, and that I might actually need things like non-stick skillets and those mini grill sandwich cooker things. And I thought to myself, "Geez, how do people get all this stuff?" And then it occurred to me that they get married and register for everything at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Man, how unfair is it that people who are getting married get all this free stuff and I'm getting unceremoniously shooed out of the nest with a hand-me-down toaster oven from my grandma?

Of course it's not just about toaster ovens. It's about not experiencing the unspoken initiation into adulthood. It seems as if only after I get married will my parents say, "Ok, now we won't look at you sideways when you pour yourself a glass of wine, and there is no way you're sitting at the kid's table at Christmas."

I'm fine with being single, and frankly kind of excited to be able to do whatever I want to after graduation. But life just feels goofy and undefined right now, and I'm wondering whether I'm destined to walk the blurry line between youth and adulthood until I tie the knot...or turn 40.

I've been tagged!

Meg tagged me in one of these chain-blogger things that is giving me flashbacks to all those forwards that circulated around my 8th-grade class. There's a reason these things don't die...they're fun! Here goes:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I got a birthmark lasered off my face in 1st grade and it got me in the newspaper because it was some sort of new technology back in the early '90's. :)

2. One time I got in such a bad biking accident that I knocked my braces right off my teeth.

3. My parents live next door to an Olympic hockey player, Mike Knuble. However, I've seen him more on TV than in person.

4. In high school I was so obsessed with ER that I could rattle off the titles of 8 seasons worth of episodes and give a brief synopsis of quite a few of them.

5. One time a friend and I decided that it would be fun to climb the roof of Commons. We made it, and then had to duck when we saw a Campus Safety car in the FAC parking lot.

6. I went to Belize this past January and learned how to dance the Punta. But only after a couple panty rippers, the national drink of Belize.

7. I was on the golf team in high school. That was a near-disaster, but at least I can hit my seven-iron fairly consistently.

8. I can't stand it when people say "good" instead of "well," but sometimes I slip and do it anyway.

Ok! I tag Al, Andrea, Bethany, Deborah, Evangelicals Anonymous, Joyce, Megan, and Melanie.

Synod Part 2

I watched the discussion of Third Wave Pentecostalism, and I have to say that I was really disappointed. Some advisory committee decided that they were going to adopt the majority report and the minority report was pretty much tossed out without giving the delegates a chance to vote on which one to adopt. Despite all the formalities, it was pretty obvious that they were all a little ticked off, raising several objections to the tune of, "Hey! What about the minority report?" But Synod insisted that they were only going to talk about the majority report. Never mind that the minority report was more clearly reasoned and grounded in scripture and reformed theology (at least in my opinion). They pretty much said that they were going to adopt the majority report, but that they wanted it revised for Synod 2009 because it lacked thorough explanations and scriptural support. I guess it just goes to show that when The Powers That Be can't make up their minds, you have to look at the material yourself and make up your own.

I saw in the obituaries (yes, I always read them) that one of my residents at Holland Home died on Tuesday. It was really weird to read that, because I remember giving him a shower just last week. And then I thought to myself, "Man, that was probably the last shower he ever had. I hope I did a good job." He joked with me a little and made me guess how old he was. It turns out that he was 100. And he was very proud that he had been a member at Eastern Ave. CRC every one of those 100 years. I hope that our generation can carry on the work of the denomination that he loved so much.

Synod '07

So I'm sitting here watching the webcast of the Synod discussing the role of women in church office. Within 30 seconds of beginning to watch it, my stomach twisted and I thought to myself, "So this is what the gay folks must feel like." To watch a bunch of middle-aged white men determine your place in the church family is just...well...ugh.

Comparing the Reformed faith with Fundamentalism

I found this on Exiled Preacher's blog and thought it was helpful in articulating why, exactly, I'm not a fundamentalist.

1. Fundamentalism began as a reaction against theological Liberalism. The Reformed faith started as an attempt to bring the Catholic Church back to the doctrine and practice of Scripture.

2. Fundamentalists tend not to respect tradition. The Reformed hold to the supreme authority of Scripture, but value what the church has taught about God's truth in the past.

3. Fundamentalism has a minimalist approach to creeds and confessions of faith. The movement can be suspicious of theological scholarship. The Reformed faith is expressed in elaborate, all-embracing documents such as The Westminster Confession, The Savoy Declaration and The 1689 Baptist Confession. Typically, Calvinists have a high regard for theological study.

4. Fundamentalism makes little distinction between secondary issues and foundational gospel truth. This can make the movement unnecessarily divisive and sectarian. The Reformed insist on the essential gospel truth of God's saving grace in Christ. But they allow for liberty of conscience on adiaphora (things indifferent).

5. Fundamentalism is often stridently dispensationalist and premillenialist in its eschatology. The Reformed faith teaches covenant theology and is usually amillenialist. But some prominent Reformed theologians are postmillenialists and even premillenialists. It should be noted that Calvin said of Chilialism (premillenialism) "This fiction is too puerile to need or deserve refutation." Institutes III:XXV:5. (Sorry, John "All self-respecting Calvinists are premill" MacAthur and followers, but there it is).

6. Fundamentalsim reads the Bible in a literalistic way. Reformed expositors hold that Scripture should be interpreted in the light of the analogy of faith, taking into account grammatical, literary and contextual concerns.

7. Fundamentalism tends to be legalistic, teaching that the Christian life is largely about keeping the rules. Reformed theology has sought to develop a Biblical doctrine of sanctification that is rooted in the believer's union with Christ and the work of the Spirit. The law is a guide to right conduct, but the dynamic of the Christian life is the Spirit of Christ in the life of the believer.

8. Fundamentalism often has a very negative view of culture and the arts. Reformed teaching recognises that all human life is affected by sin, but God, in his "common grace", blesses society with many good things. These good aspects of culture and the arts are to be valued and enjoyed to the glory of God.

9. Fundamentalism is usually allied to right-wing politics. Reformed believers may be found supporting many different political parties. Reformed Christians have campaigned against slavery and racial intolerance. They have worked for a better society, including improved conditions for workers and free education and healthcare for all. The Reformed theologian, Francis Schaeffer was an early advocate of ecological concerns.

10. Fundamentalists share many important truths in common with Reformed believers such as a commitment to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture and salvation through Christ alone. Theological liberalism is a much greater danger to the church than fundamentalism. We may disagree with Fundamentalists, but we should respect and love them as fellow-Christians.

"The noonday demon makes it seem as if the sun barely moves, if at all, and the day is fifty hours long."

-Desert monk Evagrius

Lately I've been trying to fight off that pesky noonday demon when I'm standing in line for the timeclock at 6:25am thinking, "what is the point?" Or thinking about my future filled with never-ending graveyard shifts and awkward blind dates wondering, "what if nobody cares?" Or peeling myself off my mattress in the morning thinking, "Not again!"

My friend's boyfriend in highschool always wore this shirt that read, "Consciousness: that annoying time between naps." It is a classic example of despair, that sense we all have from time to time that nothing we do matters.

Technically, I suppose, it should be enough that we matter to God. God created us, sustains us, and heck, God even became one of us. I know that our lives are important and I know about all of Kuyper's "every square inch" stuff (which takes on an interesting new meaning when you're wiping 95-year-old saggy butts in a nursing home). But somehow when the noonday demon shows up he always goes right for the jugular and fatigue and listlessness inevitably ensue. And now it's time to wait; wait for the haze to go away and take the stupid demon with it.

As Forrest Gump said, "That's all I have to say about that." It's been my experience that needy hypochondriacs make terrible bloggers and even more terrible friends. But I'm determined to say it like it is, and sometimes that's how it is.

Chasers war on everything: Evangelicals

I got a good laugh from this little fella. :-)

Summer Reading

Now that I have a little more time on my hands and I can read whatever I want, I'm looking for some book suggestions. The Confessions and the Institutes are already on the list, but I'm also really itching for a novel that's going to suck me in and change my life. ;)

But really, anything is up for grabs. Here's your chance to indoctrinate me!

Ding-dong, the fundy's dead!

Jerry Falwell died today of some sort of heart something. After I saw this pop up on Yahoo! news, I sat biting my thumbnail and thinking to myself, "Should I write something snarky about his double chin, how he thought Tinky Winky was gay and destroying the minds of young children, or how he blamed feminists and homosexuals for 9/11?"

But you know, despite his terribly misguided mindset, he thought he was doing the right thing. And honestly, I shudder to think about how many times a day I say something ridiculous despite my best intentions. At the end of the day, all of us, whether we're fundamentalist tele-evangelists or intellectual Calvinites, know about as much about God as an ant knows about the internet.

All I know is that I'm thankful for the grace that is bigger than the pitiful person I am and the best-laid plans that seem to always blow up in my face. Falwell is probably thinking the same thing right about now.

Life in Christ

My sermon notes this week included a reference to Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth whom Paul preached to in Acts 16:14-15. "The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, 'If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.' And she prevailed upon us."

Jack highlighted how the gospel evoked in her a sense of hospitality and openness to others. Hospitality is decentralizing...it insists that we push our own agendas aside for the sake of others. Jack mentioned that "participation in hospitality is participation in the life of God" and this got me thinking about God's life in the Trinity. In Engaging God's World Plantinga writes,

"At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two. I know it sounds a little strange, but we might almost say that the persons within God show each other divine hospitality. "

He then goes on to talk about how hospitality means that we "make room for others and then help them flourish in the room you have made."

And then I started thinking to myself, "Man, how many interpersonal problems stem from a lack of hospitality?" I can't make room for some peoples' crazy personalities. I'm envious of some people and I don't want to make room for them and help them flourish because I want what they have. I'm stinking self-absorbed because I think there is only room for me, me, me. I don't want to make room again for people who have hurt me. And on and on.

And isn't one of the biggest barriers to a relationship with God a lack of hospitality and perpetual self-absorption? The idea of being forever self-giving and exalting others is so far removed from our propencity toward selfishmess. And yet, the book of Acts tells us that a little taste of grace should evoke in us the desire to participate in the life and love of God, making room for others as God makes room for us.

In Phillipians 2 Paul says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, consider others as better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." And then the next section goes on to talk about Christ's humility. This sounds really funny, but I've always been kind of fuzzy on what humility actually entails. Not bragging? Not showing off? Shrugging off compliments? But a couple of months ago I went to mass with my roommate and her friend just because I had never been to a Catholic mass, and the priest at IHM finally gave me a working definition: "Humility is using your gifts to help others."

So if hospitality is making room for others and humility is how we use our gifts to help them flourish, these two go hand-in-hand. I almost feel like we should smush them together: hospimility. :) Or not.

Which brings me to my obligatory "ah-ha!" moment. "Ooohhhh! I get it! That's why Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and said, 'Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.' Because what we do for others reflects our participation in the life of God because God is communal within God's self!" Well that only took me 21 years to figure out.

And I leave you with St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

"Prayer of the Trinity" by NT Wright

I found this on CICW:


Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:

Set up your kingdom in our midst.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:

Renew me and all the world.

You learn something new every day

As is customary during finals week, I am planted on the couch with two empty popcorn bowls, three empty pop cans, one can of pop I'm still drinking, and a bag of dark chocolate kisses. I'm mowing down the kisses like it's my last day alive, but I think the fact that dark chocolate has so many cancer-fighting anti-oxidents justifies it slightly. Plus it's finals week.

I was all excited because I bought myself chocolate ice cream too, but our freezer is not freezing, and thus it is soupy. The maintenence man came and infomed me that the empty pop boxes we had stacked next to the fridge were preventing the warm air from escaping from behind the fridge so it wasn't able to cool down. So I removed the boxes and the fridge is feeling cooler already. But this makes me wonder, what other silly things don't I know about everyday appliances? It's not too much of a hassle in the Calvin apartments where you just put a request in on Knightvision, but what about the real world? Am I going to have to pay some guy with a plumber butt $60 every time I don't know something stupid like that? Graduation is looking scarier every day, and it's not just 'cause of the fridge.

Singing the Song

Sunday is always a good blogging day because church gives me so much to digest. This morning Jack preached on a passage from Acts (11...I think), but I will just straight up admit that I don't remember how it connected to the last bit of his sermon, which is about all that I remembered, probably because it was a story. Jack told a story about how he and his wife were walking around San Francisco and they came across a rather large, unattractive woman with a boom box. She then pushed the button and began to sing a song so beautiful that people were throwing $20s at her and one man even whispered to Jack's wife, "This is a gift." As she sang, he said, she began to appear more beautiful, leading Jack to conclude, "The song transforms the singer."

The song transforms the singer. This was especially encouraging to me because I have always felt subconsciously that I had to have a good voice in order to sing the song. I have this "all or nothing" mentality that leads me to think that I have to have all my ducks in a row in order to even begin to think about singing. Doubts? Insecurities? Inferiority complex? Selfish desires? All reasons to sit this one out and let those super-spiritual people who really know the song belt it out.

But you know, hearing that God gives broken people this song to sing in order that they may be transformed just makes me want to cry with thankfulness. And if we sing this song with all we've got, how can it not transform us? People whose hearts sing, "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again" live in the hope of the resurrected Lord and the anticipation of the day when we will finally see God's face.

Every so often I will take home the liturgy and tape a song on the wall. I think that "I am the Bread of Life" sums up our song well.

I am the bread of life;
they who come to me shall not hunger;
they who believe in me shall not thirst.
No one can come to me
unless the Father draws them.

(Refrain)
And I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.

The bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world,
and they who eat of this bread,
they shall live forever,
they shall live forever!

I am the resurrection;
I am the life.
They who believe in me,
even if they die,
they shall live forever.

Yes, Lord, we believe
that you are the Christ,
the Son of God
who has come into the world.


Seriously, how is this not so exciting that you want to pee your pants? Ok, I'm done. ;)

Question of the Day

So...I have decided to revive my blogspot and give it a little test run. I'm going to keep my Xanga up and running for now, but we'll see what happens.

I was just having a discussion with my roommates about how we should go about sharing the gospel. I'm a little skeptical of Billy Graham-type crusades where everybody is in an emotional uproar, they go up to the front to get "saved," and then the next day two-thirds of them are back to the same ol' same ol'. But maybe I'm just jaded. My roommates said "Well, if God uses it to save people, then who cares?" That is pretty darn hard to argue with. If I had my way, we would drag everybody to catechism class to be seduced by our sexy Reformed theology, but that isn't exactly practical. So what do you think? Am I being an intellectual snob? Should we suck it up and embrace a pragmatic approach to evangelism?

Here's a quote from The Scandel of the Evangelical Mind that pretty much summarizes my concern:

"The form of revivalism that eventually came to prevail as the dominant mode of evangelical church life was activistic, immediatistic, and individualistic. As such, it was able to mobilize great numbers for the cause of Christ. But also as such-with its scorn for tradition, its concentration on individual competence, its distrust of mediated knowledge-American revivalism did much to hamstring the life of the mind."