As of September 6, 2009 Pastor Sterling Quinn has taken the position of Lead Pastor at Terrace Bay Gospel Assembly. Pastor Sterling’s wife Danielle has been working in the community for a maternity leave at the Terrace Bay Clinic.

If you have ever come into contact with children, you will quickly realize the amount of questions one little brain can process.   My dad was pretty good at putting up with the endless stream of information my little mind required during movies.  And that seems to be the time when my children ask the most questions; during a movie.  It gets to the point sometimes when you just have to hit pause to answer all the questions – or tell them to be quiet.  Dave Matthews has a song written from the perspective of a child.  The questions and comments of this child are hard, deep and searching.  And many times kids do come out with these questions.  Here are the words to the song.  It’s called “Mother Father”.

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For fathers day:  Some hard questions we still ask.

Our family bought a GPS for the car and I love it.  We can travel through the States, type in “Water Park” and boom, it brings us to a water park.  Awesome!  You want a Tim Horton’s, type it in and boom, you’re there.   Looking for that bike store that someone told you about, the GPS brings you right there – “turn left in 100m”.  It has saved us from going in circles many a times.

Now imagine you want your GPS to tell you that where the local grocery store is and it says “Don’t got there, you might get your car scratched by a cart”.  You tell your GPS that you want to go out for a nice dinner.  It replies “No, you may get food poisoning”.

That just wouldn’t work.  The whole point of GPS is to tell you where you can go, not where you can’t.  And that is the main emphasis that Paul is making when it comes to being under the “LAW” or under the “GOSPEL” in his letter to Timothy.

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One of the great things about buying a “Greatest Hits Compilation” of your favourite music artist (at least for me) is the “re-mix version” or “unreleased track” or “free b-side songs” that are usually added on as a bonus.  Unfortunately, this book is an “Emergent Greatest Hits” book with no bonus tracks.  I actually had to look at the publishing date half way through the book to see if this was an old release.  That is the greatest flaw of this book.  The emergents claims that they are a conversant type of group – well it’s time for them to change the topic.

Does this seem harsh?  Yes maybe, but for a book published in 2008, I did not expect to read the same stuff I did 8 years ago.

But there was some stuff  I did like about the book.  And of course some more things I didn’t.  So, let’s change momentum here and bring out the positives.

My thinking in buying this book was this:  I am a pastor who deals with people who feel let down or have given up on Christianity.  And this book does reach out of those type of people… and I will definitely pass this book on to them.

Here are a few pastoral highlights.

Highlight #1 – faith is not a system of beliefs but a relationship

Highlight #2 – meeting physical needs is directly connected to spiritual needs (holistic)

Highlight #3 – sin management vs. story involvement (read the book for definitions)

As a pastor, I  can use this stuff, and I really think people who are struggling could use it too.

Here are a few pastoral lowlights.

Lowlight #1 – Pagitt spends a chapter on deconstructing “systematic theology”, and yet uses that same system to make his case for holistic living.

Lowlight #2 – He tends to say that the bibles narrative is “holistic”.  He uses the word “integrated” to describe the main theme of the bible.  Wright would strongly disagree (and so would I)

Lowlight #3 - Pagitt goes nowhere with this book.  Great, it’s okay to practice yoga and write books in coffee shops, but what was the point?  Maybe he did this so he can write another book about the same stuff.  (sorry for my sarcasm)

My thinking is that this book was written for the person searching.  Well, if there is someone searching the used book shelf, they can buy my copy.  Again, sorry for the sarcasm.  Read it and judge for yourself.  I have to admit though, I was reading Wright’s “Justification” at the same time – night and day, night and day.

The other day I was listening to a radio program that discussed the power of the exclamation mark.  The purpose of the show was to help the listeners understand that the exclamation can be both overused and underused thanks to text messaging, email and facebook.  The punctuation mark once had some punch to it. Now it is overused making it seem cheesy or, underused, making it seem harsh.

Let me show you how this is true in both cases.  Have you ever seen a text message or facebook message of a tween?  “OMG!!!  LOL!!!  !!!!!”.   That would be considered an overuse of an exclamation point.

The undeuse of the xclamation mark would look something like this (let me set up the scene for you):  An employee is asked to put together a business strategy for the upcoming fiscal year.  Hours and hours went into this business plan by the employee.  Finally the document ends up on the desk of the CEO a day early.  The employee is beaming with pride and anxiety as it is delivered.  The employee leaves a note for the CEO to text the employee with some thoughts on the business plan.

Two days later the employee receives that message.  It says:  Great.  We’ll talk.

Can you imagine what the employee was feeling when receiving that message?  They are wondering if this is good or if this is bad. An exclamation point would change the whole feel of that message.

The person doing the radio commentary of the exclamation point said that the power of the punctuation marked died when talking and the hand written letter died.  I think he made his point.  It’s true, we don’t write many letters anymore.  But there is a positive side to our lack of writing letters.  Since we don’t write letters much anymore, when you do get one it has great impact.  You feel extra special (or extra angry depending on the contents of the letter).

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Remember the movie that starred Charlton Heston called “The Ten Commandments”.  For the year it was made in, the special effects were top of the line.  I remember two scenes from that movie.  The first one being the mass exodus of the Israelites through the Red Sea.  I watch it now and I cannot believe how cheesy the effects are – but back then it was considered the best.  They left Egypt because they were slaves.  All they did was make bricks.  And I also remember Moses holding the Ten Commandments on the mountain.  Awesome!

Well, the reason for the whole movie (and the bible story) is this:  Israel were brick making slaves, and now they are not.  The Ten Commandments were a guide for how this new community were going to live.

Now, when Moses finished getting the 10 Commandments from God, God had a couple more things to say to Moses and Israel.  God told them “Don’t build any altars with cut stone”.  What does that have to do with anything?

Well, let me tell you!  Israel is going to worship God.  Worship takes place somewhere – in their day it was at altars.  If they start making fancy altars they will be doing what they did in Egypt as slaves, making bricks.  In other words God says “You were slaves in Egypt, you will not be slaves again – even religious slaves”.  God sets a standard here – he wants a relationship, not a religion.

Hundreds of years later a guy named Paul (who was an Israelite) wrote a letter to a group of people who had the same struggles as ancient Israel did – that religion verses relationship struggle.  Do you know what he wrote?  Paul said “There is nothing that can separate you from the LOVE of God”.  Love is a relationship word.  God is looking for a relationship – not a religion.

This Sunday we are going to look more closely at this command by God and how Israel always seemed to want to be back in slavery.  Check in later for the audio!

A classic for your viewing pleasure!

There are two things I need to admit when reviewing this book. 

First, I had written Brian McLaren off.  If you have read any of his books you would quickly realize that he was being extremely repetitive.  I understand that the general public may not read all of his books, but it  just seemed that since the “New Kind of Christian” series to “The Secret Message of Jesus” to “Everything Must Change” Brian went on and on about the same themes.  Those themes being:  the Kingdom of God, Jesus in his historical setting and how the current systems (economic, spiritual….) are not working.  I am greatly indebted to his insight but honestly, I was getting a little bored.  BUT, when I realized that this book was part of a series edited by Phyllis Tickle and that Scot McKnight was doing one of the themes, I decided to pick it up and give it a try.  In short, I bought the book not because of McLaren, but because of all of the added features that came along with it.

Second, like all books, there is nothing new said.  This book is a “Readers Digest” version of other great books about the “comeback” of sacred practices.  (Just a side note:  I am co-reading Jacques Ellul’s “The Subversion of Christianity” at the same time.  The premise of his book is that the only things that should be considered ‘sacred’ are God and redeemed humanity.)    Back to my point.  In the introduction McLaren mentions a few authors that influenced this book.  I highly recommend just reading those books.  Those books include Eugene Peterson’s “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”, Dallas Willard’s “The Divine Conspiracy” and Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline”.  If you do not have the energy to read those books, McLaren is the way to go.

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 Have you ever botched something up so bad all you could think about was how you were going to fix it?  It happens to me frequently. 

As we continue our journey through Exodus, we come to the part of the story that directly follows the Ten Commandments.  It is an odd little story where Israel says to Moses “You talk to God, we’re too scared”.  This was the beginning of a long line of things Israel botched up.  What do I mean by that?

Since Israel decided to use Moses as a mediator between God and themselves, that was how things would be done from then on.  In other words, God would speak only through priests or prophets from that time forward.  They really messed things up.

But that is not the end of the story.  Listen in on Monday to hear how the author of Hebrews reconciled a history of mess.

This song searches the soul.  It is also really good.  Enjoy.