I was looking over my transcript from graduate school today, and I was a total nerd. In addition to all of my required classes (and completing the degree in a year), I took extra classes in German, an upper level Applied Dance class, and Aerobics…just for fun.

If you’re near Grand Rapids, be sure to go to Calvin College’s fall preaching conference. Todd Farley is giving lectures on The Lively Sermon. I’ve had the joy to sit under Todd for a semester, and let me just say, he has incredible preaching skills. It’s a treat you do not want to miss.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve gotten to know Reggie Kidd, and I’ve come to appreciate him as a faithful man of God, who is open and honest with what he believes. Over the past few semesters, I’ve had a few discussions with him concerning the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul, and when I told him that the PCA had adopted the MS Valley Report (we were at a class session when the vote came in), I could see the look of frustration on his face.

I asked him why he never wrote anything on the subject that might have swayed pastors to vote the other way, and the answer was that he just didn’t have the time. It looks like he found the time recently, and his thoughts are right on the money:

I’ll be leaving Florida in a few hours, and as usual, I’ve gotten to see some glimpses of God’s glory. Friday was Bob Webber’s memorial service. This was the memorial service that the family chose to attend. It was good to see Joanne again, to see that love she has for Bob. You know how they say some couples were “made for each other”? It’s that way with Bob and Joanne. When Jim Hart asked her if she’d rather be called Bob’s wife or widow, she replied, “Wife.” I was standing right next to her and heard her mutter under her breath, “Forever and ever.”

The mother of one of my classmates passed away suddenly on Monday. My classmate handled it with great faith. His father was diagnosed with terminal cancer on the last day of last term and was supposed to be in heavenly glory by this term, so this has been a bit backwards for the family. She had gone into the hospital on Wednesday and seemed fine on Thursday. She found out that a hole in her esophagus. This, in turn, caused acid to leak into her blood and poison it, causing her organs to shut down. She started taking a turn for the worse on Sunday while we were at the beach. By Monday, they were going to take her off the ventilator by evening, but she didn’t make it that long. It was shocking to me how quickly it all happened. I guess that with her husband dying of cancer, she probably didn’t feel the need to fight for her life. My classmate kept saying, “She always said she didn’t want to live without dad; now she doesn’t have to.”

Another classmate who had missed last semester (due to a viral heart attack) was back again this semester. He told the story of how, through misdiagnosis and wrong treatment, his blood was thinned to the point of leaking out of his stomach. He woke up in a puddle of blood (after having been changing bandages for several days). He thought he was going to die, so he prayed with his father, who is also a pastor (I believe). When he came back into the room five minutes later to take him to the hospital, there was a crusty scab that looked like it had been there for days. Incredible.

On Sunday I hit the beach after worship and stayed in the water a couple hours longer than everyone else. After the beach, I went to a worship service. Brian McLaren was the celebrant, and I had a good chat with him on the glories of teaching English (He was an English prof. Before going into the ministry and then public speaking). He reminded me once again why my background is oh so useful for what I hope to do in the future. Of all the well-known pastors and theologians I’ve met over the years, I have to say that McLaren is probably the most approachable. He’s had this “Hey, guys, what’s going on? Can I play?” smile on his face for the last three days.

Hmmm…I’m too distracted to blog anything else.

So guess who wants to study at IWS if he can get the funding? The Most. Rev. Emmanuel Kolini, Archbishop or Rwanda. Pretty cool, huh? So, I could be like, “Yeah, Archbishop Kolini is in my program, but I’m a year ahead of him.” Heh.

I’m looking forward to Brian McLaren next month. That should be interesting.

Bob Webber died today at 6:10 PM in his wife Joanne’s arms. I am both saddened by this news and rejoicing that he is now in the arms of Jesus.

“Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world; in the name of God the Father Almighty who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you; in the name of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. May your rest be this day in peace, and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God. Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Bob. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.”

Update: I find it a bit spooky how sometimes you know something is happening to someone very far away. I was telling Rachel this afternoon that I had been checking my email all last night and this morning, just waiting to hear that Bob had died. Here is the email I got just a few hours after telling Rachel that:

I just spoke with Joanne Webber. Bob had a particularly bad night last night and has experienced an increase in pain and other associated symptoms. These are additional signs of the approaching end. Joanne and Bob have asked for prayer, that his death may come in the Lord’s time with minimal lingering and a sense of God’s peace and joy.

When I met Bob, he was strong. He looked like he could pull a wagon on his back. He deteriorated so quickly, but then he held on for so long. He lived so much longer than the doctors expected (almost four months longer than the expected four weeks), and yet I am still so shocked.

Sometimes I am seriously scared about what my students don’t know. ACT’s and GPA’s are on the rise, but intelligence doesn’t really seem to be. Now it’s one thing if we’re trying to analyze a poem and a student throws out a dumb comment. That’s how you learn. Conversing, trying to understand something that stretches your mind. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Let’s take some examples from this semester. When talking about Donne’s Sonnet XIV yesterday, my students were stumped by the language: usurped, chaste, ravish, enthrall. They didn’t know what those words meant. Nobody in the class knew what they meant. Finally, someone piped up and said seriously, “Chaste is when someone’s after you.” I, of course, took a deep breath and taught them some new words, but I was stunned.

Later in that class period, another student asked, “Why does he have to beat around the bush? Why can’t he just say what he means?” My colleague Megan had a great answer: “Because he’s not a rapper.” Sadly, this is what students in a state college are like. Rap and hip-hop are the dominant musical genres on our campus. Another colleague, an Auburn PhD, once made the comment that our upper-level and graduate students are top-notch. They can hang with students at major research universities. But our incoming first-year students are at a much lower level than at other universities. On the one hand, it’s great experience. On another hand, it’s just…sad.

Rachel and Kyrie are reading a Spanish book in the other room, and I heard Rachel just say, “Let’s go learn some Spanish, so you can talk to your grandpa.” That cracks me up even though it’s the truth. Kyrie is looking at Rachel likes she’s crazy and like she’s speaking gibberish.

I really like Amy Lee’s voice, and I liked Evanescence. I was kind of annoyed a few years ago when Lorelei made a crack about them on Gilmore Girls. It still bothers me.

In my persuasive writing course, I let my students pick a few projects for writing assignments. For one of the projects, we’ll be watching Loose Change, a 9/11 conspiracy film. It will be interesting to see if they can understand the depth of argument in that film and come up with arguments against it. Without any leading, I expect two reactions: 1) acceptance 2) dislike without any true rebuttal.

Over the past several years, I’ve had many students who have served in the Middle East. In addition, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many men serving in the reserves. Never have I had a soldier who was against the war in Iraq. All think that Americans don’t understand what they’re doing over there. They’ve learned to control their anger when people lash out at the President and the troops. I find it crazy that they can control their tempers when people are making disparaging comments about what they do with their lives. They have incredible self-control.

During the State of the Union address, I was really disappointed with the way the Democrats acted so mechanically. They stood many times, just to keep themselves from looking bad. They sat on their hands whenever Bush said something they didn’t like, but if he tagged something like “support our troops” onto the end of his sentence, they stood to applaud. It was very fake.

I think I’ll be voting for Barack Obama in the primaries this year (not that it matters here). Even though he’s a social liberal, I at least sense that he’s an honest politician. That probably has something to do with the fact that he hasn’t been a politician very long.

I find it funny. David was playing the hero by marrying Bathsheba. When he acted as a kinsman-redeemer, he was coming off as a great guy. That had to make him feel even worse when Nathan said, “Thou art the man.”

Mime is used as a form of prophecy in the Old Testament. It’s used in Tabernacle worship. Paul uses the mime motif in Corinthians. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote mime plays. High church Christians use liturgical gestures from medieval mime. Try getting your priest to use mime in your worship.

There’s good precedence for Congregational, troupe, and soloist dances in Ps. 149-150, Ex. 15, and 2 Sam. 6:14-16 respectively. Try to get your priest to agree to that too while you’re at it.

There’s a biblical artistic hierarchy of Bezalel’s, Oholiabs, wise ones, and willing hearted ones. We need to bring this to the church.

The Bible is filled with vulgarity, obscenity, profanity, nudity, bad language, fornication, and adultery. But it’s always used for uplift.

Evangelicals tend to think of themselves as Bible-believing Christians while thinking of liturgical Christians as those that don’t care about the Bible. But how much time is devoted to prayer and Scripture reading during worship in each of these church traditions. Go to one church of each kind, and bring a stopwatch. It’s pretty incredible to see how much more devoted to the Word liturgical churches are.

So life is good.

My good buddy, Nathan Blevins, got engaged.

I’ve read a bazillion books in the couple weeks, and even though it tired me out, I feel relieved to have read everything I wanted to read on vacation. I have an off day tomorrow before I leave for Florida on Wednesday.

Tomorrow is my nephew’s birthday.

My niece started walking a couple of days ago.

She did it while we were on a double date with Forrest and Rebekah. The date had no kids. It was awesome.

I just finished the rough draft of a paper for my course on the historical and biblical foundations of worship. I still have to proofread 25 pages (or get Rachel to do it!), correct my footnotes, and rearrange my bibliography, but I hope to finish that by Tuesday so that I can turn the paper in by Wednesday, a full week before the deadline.

Then I can begin working on a presentation I have to give in Baton Rouge in just under two weeks. That speech is a week from this Friday, and it’s early in the morning, so we’ll get to shoot over to the Big Easy and enjoy the French Quarter for a couple of days.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this has been one long tunnel.

This morning I read about how Bush has cut the deficit in half, just as he promised, but he’s done it three years ahead of schedule. I started to reflect on all the good things he has accomplished instead of the normal list of all the problems he’s created. I mean, let’s be honest; taxes have been cut dramatically. The economy is the strongest in…well, forever. The stock market is higher than…ever. The unemployment is lower than, you guessed it, than it ever has been in our history. Underemployment is down. Salaries are rising waaaay faster than inflation. Revenues have climbed at 11.7% while spending is down to 7.3%.

So why do Americans hate Bush? Well, I think it’s a no brainer that the War in Iraq is at the top of that list. But the Democrats voted for this war too. Oh, but that was before they voted against it. But Clinton surely wouldn’t have bombed Iraq for suspecting Weapons of Mass Destruction. He was a great president.

Okay, maybe Bush has poor reasoning. Let’s see what he said in a speech after bombing Iraq:

Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.

Boy, that Bush sure is an a…wait, nevermind. My mistake. That was from a speech by Bill Clinton. Like most Americans, I forgot that Bill Clinton spent his presidency bombing Iraq.

So what’s the problem? Bombing other countries is just an American pasttime. I mean, that’s why we supplied Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden with money and arms. Making the war even, makes it fun!

Okay, let me get back to my point. Yesterday, I had the imam of a local Islamic community speak in my class about Islam. (For those of you who object to my bringing a Muslim teacher into my class, just keep this in mind: Islam is a major power. It is growing. My students will all encounter it. Wouldn’t you rather they encounter it in my classroom? )

The imam made a comment about Bush’s religious language that started me thinking. The biggest reason for this never-ending war is that it is full of religious language. The Koran orders Muslims to defend the rights of other Muslims who are being attacked for their religious beliefs. If Iraqis believe this is a religious war, the insurgency will never end. This is how the insurgency recruits other members: “The Koran orders you to defend your brothers.” If this were just a war about democracy, I think you would see less resistance.