Presby-Musings

Rediscovering Values On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street:  A Moral Compass for the New Economy, by Jim Wallis, Howard Books.   Jim Wallis has never been one to shy away from tough topics.  In God's Politics he stepped all over the toes of politicos from the right and the left on his way toward higher ground in the American political conversation.  In The Great Awakening he called out the religious, political and commercial special interest groups that have long had a stranglehold on the way we think and talk about faith and politics as he envisioned a new way forward in a "post-religious" America.  Now in Rediscovering Values Wallis prophetic voice rings out some hard truths into the canyons of Big Business, Big Banking and an often complicit Big Government.  Wallis is more than a critic, more than a simple naysayer--the kind that we so often hear on talk radio and pitted against one another on cable news.  Like his previous work, Rediscovering Values offe

  Free Book by Brian Tome - Thomas Nelson Publishers Brian Tome is the lead pastor of Crossroads in Cincinnati and is also the author of Free Book his latest offering from Thomas Nelson.  Tome begins his book with a warning.  He declares that he is fed up with Christians who are living in fear, and not living into the hope that comes with freedom in Christ.  In fact, he is so fed up that he uses some strong language (to some perhaps) to make his point.  Tome then declares that there are things that he will say in the cause of Christian freedom that will give more than a few Christians pause, as well as a good many other folk.  Despite his warnings, however, Tome's ideas about Christian freedom are not nearly as controversial as the reader might be led to believe after reading the first few pages--unless a strong belief in the power of the the Holy Spirit and the fact that Christians are part of a larger spiritual battle that is taking place all around them is controversial.  F

  I have baggage.  I have fundamentalist Baptist baggage, as in I used to be one.  Basically what this means is that every time I sense legalism or elitism in Christianity, I get angry and defensive, and usually sarcastic.   Oh, and I have poor self-image baggage--hence the sarcasm.   What this means is that sometimes I use sarcasm to mask my feelings of inadequacy and to make me feel better about myself.  I have baggage when it comes to dealing with certain people because they remind of other certain people that I just can't stand to deal with... I have baggage when it comes to being wrong, as in I don't like to be wrong and when I am wrong, I tend to internalize it and beat myself up for being wrong.   I have some serious baggage.  We all do, but most of don't really talk about our baggage much.  And we definitely don't talk about it in church.   I created a website for my new sermon series for Lent.  The sermon series is called "Baggage:  The Things tha

The Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit   by Francis Chan                                I picked up Forgotten God a year ago this month at the National Pastors Convention that was sponsored by Zondervan and Intervarsity Press.  I am still grieving that this event was canceled this year because books were half price.  I basically blew my whole book allowance plus a hundred or more $$ on books that I am basically halfway through reading a year later.  Forgotten God is one of those books that I finally began reading this month and I was glad that I waited.  The timing couldn't have been better since I was (at the time I started working through it) preaching on the Holy Spirit to my congregation.  It helped to solidify some things that I was thinking and eventually would convey to my flock, and it opened my eyes to some new perspectives as well.   Francis Chan is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley California.  He is an evangelical with