If you haven’t heard, Michael Jackson passed away yesterday, putting most of the world in shock.  He had planned a big comeback tour, with some people buying VIP passes up to $16, 000 on ebay.

Madonna was interviewed after she heard the news, and it was her quote that made me think.  She said:  “I can’t stop crying over the sad news,” pop star Madonna said in a statement. “I have always admired Michael Jackson. The world has lost one of the greats but his music will live on forever.”

His music will live on forever.  That statement says alot.  I wonder if everything else he had done will live forever also?

Thanks to Steve for this:

Terrace Bay Gospel Assembly is now receiving resume’s for those interested in the Sr. Pastor Position.  TBGA is a community focused church that is revelant and relational.  If you are interested in applying for this position please send your resume’ to:

Terrace Bay Gospel Assembly c/o Kevin Bahm

Box 298

Terrace Bay, On

P0T 2W0

or email to:  terracebaychurch@yahoo.ca

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.

Well, just to let of our readers know, I have accepeted the position of lead pastor at West Edge Church in Port Credit (Mississauga),On.  We are really excited what God has in store for our family, yet at the same time, sad to leave the ones we have ministered to here in Terrace Bay.  This blog will be updated for the next three weeks, when, hopefully, Terrace Bay’s new pastor can take things over.  It has been a pleasure serving the Terrace Bay (and blogging) community and looking forward to keeping the conversation going when we move down south.

You can check out West Edge’s site here:  www.westedge.org

Bri

I just listened to an extensive interview with singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn.  He was asked what he had learned in the past thirty  years.  His response “I Don’t Have High Expections of Anything”.  Brilliant.

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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