Guess I’d better comment on a new link.

Matthew and Louise Starr are aquaintances - friends of friends. They are spending a year in Brazil on an evangelistic mission. Was directed to this site by the friends whose friends they are. Thought it would be interesting to add to the “link list” and keep tabs on them.

Oh, also added a link to Aesop’s fables - just for interest’s sake.

I’ve made a few additions and one subtraction to the list of links in the sidebar. Please note that my linking to a blog or a website does not indicate I agree with all or even most or even any of the things written there! This blog being mainly for my own benefit (it would be for Paula’s too if she ever got on here ) I’m mainly providing a quick way for me to get to certain webpages…basically because I haven’t figured out RSS feeds :).

So here are the additions:

1) Tim Chester. Not really new. I had him there but inadvertantly hid him from public view…which meant he was hidden to my view too. Fixed that problem.

2) Vinoth Ramachandra. Known about this guy since University when he spoke at a TSCF camp. Have read a couple of his books and have been interested in his ideas ever since. A Sri Lankan theologian with a wider worldview than most Westerners.

3) Thomas Jay Oord. An Open Theist, this guy majors on the theology and philosophy of love. I disagree with much of what he says, but he is worth an ear because he’s a great example of engaging with a broad spectrum of disciplines and bringing Christian ideas to bear on them.

4) Kiwi-made preaching. A place where preaching is being contextualised to New Zealand culture.

5) The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. Just find it fascinating. Not a Christian site (though with some Christians involved), these people recognise love as so important that they’ve set up an institute to research it and apply it in different areas of study and life. Speaks openly about love and religion and science.

For quite some time I’ve used this blog as a place to write (mainly) theological thoughts and thrash out different ideas and concepts - not riveting stuff for most of you, I know.  (Yes, this is a shared blog between my wife and I, but I am the one cares about blogging).  In the process, I’ve tried to keep from revealing too much about our circumstances, even going as far as editing some posts in order to remove references to the city we live in. 

That’s about to change.  I’ve decided to take this blog in a different direction.  My intention is to make it far more local, link to local sites and comment on local issues and news items.  This doesn’t mean there will be no more theological posts, but there will be less.  It also doesn’t mean that there will be no posts about things wider than our city and region, but the focus will be Cairns and the surrounding areas.

Who cares?  Well, I don’t know.  Maybe very few people :).  But I’ve been convicted for a while that my blog reading and thinking cover topics and issues that don’t even touch the place I’m living in right now.  I mean, who cares what the Southern Baptists in America are arguing about?  Just how important are the discussions of theological minutae taking place in other countries and cultures when I’m not taking part in anything of substance where I am?  It’s all well and good to follow the development and reasonings of a certain group of people and what they are doing, but Jesus hasn’t called us to live vicariously.  He calls us to live out the gospel ourselves.

So, slowly and surely, there will be change here at Kiwi and an Emu.  How long will it take?  I don’t know.  What will it end up looking like?  I don’t know.  (It will require a big revamp).  But that’s the re-direction I’m heading in - this will be a Cairns-based blog.

I’ve tried to pare back the number of links in the sidebar and so got rid of a lot.  Initially I deleted all the blogs under the “Not Friends’ Blogs” category, but I found that I wanted to refer to their posts or was just plain interested enough to want to check out their blogs and had to google them to get there.  So, back they came.

Of course, as always, many of the links under friends are blogs also.

Thanks to Glenn’s planet, I’ve added another blog to the link section.  It’s called, The Continuing Adventures of ASBO Jesus.  Check it out.

That’s one of my aliases.  Apparently.  At least, according to this entry on what looks like a completely random computer maintained blog.

Ahh, with a little googling, I discover that I have been mixed up with another blog that is actually called tohu va bohu and is a transliteration of the Hebrew in Genesis 1 that means in English “without form and void”.

Curious way to describe your blog.  Still, it seems that the latest post written there isn’t “without form and void”, so perhaps they’ll need to change the name soon.

I’ve added the blog Parchment and Pen (the blog of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries) to the Site-seeing section.  The contributers include C. Michael Patton, Dan Wallace, Ruth Tucker, Paul Copan, J. Ed Komoszewski, and Robert Bowman, though to be honest, I’ve only really seen Michael Patton and Dan Wallace write much.

As I’ve said before, Dan Wallace is one of my favourite scholars, mainly because he is open to honestly considering evidence that would make him completely change his mind.  He believes in inerrancy, but counsels students to consider the problem passages seriously and, if persuaded that inerrancy cannot hold up, to go with that conclusion.  He considers the central belief to Christianity to be the gospel, not biblical inerrancy.  I like his honesty and willingness to come to less than popular conclusions.

I know very little about Michael Patton, but his posts indicate that he, also, is someone who asks the hard questions and is willing to come up with far more than pat answers - and even non-traditional ones if the Biblical text points that way.  Anyone with that tendency gets high marks from me.

Bible.org is the home of the internet based NET Bible.  It is full of free resources and Dan Wallace has been heavily involved in this.  Some great articles there from people all over.  Don’t know why I haven’t added it before.  It’s under Good Websites, though at this stage I’m not sure I remember what the difference between Site-seeing and Good Websites is.

UPDATE: Okay, I’ve reorganised the links section again - cut a couple of links and renamed the categories.  Hopefully it makes more sense.  I’m hoping that one day Paula will include some links of her own, because it’s fairly one-sided at the moment and she has a better variety of interests than me - but unfortunately they don’t coincide with the internet very often.  I’ve added the EziBuy site and the baby site that keeps sending us updates.  Don’t hold your breath for more from that quarter.  Paula will likely never get around to adding anything else.

I decided to clean up my links.  My main reason for doing so was that I was reading blogs that discussed Southern Baptist and American Christianity and issues that really have little to do with me.  I’m happy to keep informed, but I think it better not to be more familiar with a Church situation in America (or anywhere else for that matter) than I am with that in my own locality.

So, I culled.  I’ve left “Good Websites” and “MP3s” pretty much the same for now, combined “Blogs” and “Friends” and another category together into “Site-seeing Itinerary” and included the following sites for the following reasons… (Note, everything is subject to change).

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Thanks to Glenn, who knows I talk alot but often don’t get around to doing it, for creating a new design for the blog here.

Thanks, mate.  This is still true.

Until I have time, this is merely a notification of the beginning of the Thunker Blog at this web address. Hopefully I’ll be able to move my posts from my previous address here soon.

I’m having a bit of fun in my frustration. Fun frustration. Changed the name again. “I Thunk It Good, Man”. I was going to just have “I Thunk”, but it sounded too much like “Imonk” which is definitely taken. Then changed it to “Thunking”, then “Thunker”, then “The Thunker”. Yeah, “The Thunker Blog” (though I know I’m only a thunker).

After emailing Aaron the Aaronator about how I liked his blog, he wrote back saying that he thought one comment I left was from a girl because I signed it “Ali”. Here I was thinking people would think I was a Islamic Fundamentalist! So, I decided to change the blog’s name. At this stage, “How blog of me!” has won the day, but expect it to change every now and then for a little while - I’m not even sure there is anyone but me reading this, so I don’t expect a huge outcry! At some stage I’ll have to settle down on a name, but that day has not yet come.

I’ve entered the new world of blogging. Will this last or is this a mere brief foray into the fascinating arena of opinioning? We’ll have to wait and see.

Actually, the main purpose for this blog is to communicate with others I know, to discuss ideas that they have put forward, or ideas that I may put forward, without having to resort to email. I’ve had the idea for a couple of weeks, but now that my main hotmail account seems to have become inaccessible to me (still trying to sort it out) I thought this would be a good alternative - and a good way to tell people that my main hotmail account is inaccessible to me.

So, what will hopefully appear here in the future (as time allows - which may mean gaps of weeks and months) are thoughts and comments on the following topics (in no particular order):

- Church Membership. A response to Matt Cameron’s essay about how evil it is.
- Love - what is it?
- Spirit baptism
- Time
- Oh, and anything else I think of over time.

I may need to mention, of course, that they will be mainly Christian topics. Can’t help it. I’m stuck. Got nothing else to talk about. Sorry.