Co-author of Annointed Expository Preaching, David Olford will be at First Baptist Church in Cameron, MO for a two day minister’s and wife’s conference March 30-31, 2007. We would love to see you here.
According to director James Cameron (Titanic) this is the century’s greatest archaeological find.
Cameron claims that Jesus ossuary has been found along with his “wife” Mary Magdalene and “son” Judah. The problem with this story is that although the same grave contained the names, Mary, Mary the Master, Judah son of Jesus, and Jesus son of Joseph, these were all very common names in the first century.
Update: Check out this news report. The reporter actually says, “With a story this good, facts are not going to get in the way.”
Update II: Cameron is claiming to have found Jesus’ bones, etc. However, not one has ever been able to explain away the empty tomb. Who rolled the stone away under Roman guard? Why would grave robbers fold the burial cloth? Why would the disciples think to mention the cloth? No one in all of history from that time refuted the claim of the empty tomb, they only sought to explain it away. Why would eleven men die (torturously) for a lie? One of them would have finally said, “Stop, we made it up!” They didn’t. Christ is real. He was fully man and fully God. That is the only way my sins could have been paid for on the cross. He reversed the curse of Adam, by living sinless and dying in my place.
Gedde’s Apartment in Galati, Romania
Good job, Troy. Love the blog. It will help us as we develop a strategy in Galati, Romania. So far I have 19 people going with me among three teams this summer to work with you.
My friend Toby Frost at the North American Mission Board just finished an independent study on Emergent Church where he blogged for 40 hours, read a list of books and interviewed three leaders (Brian McClaren, Ed Stetzer, and Doug Pagitt). His paper is being published in the Midwestern Journal so I can’t put it here yet. But it has a great perspective coming from someone viewing from the outside. You can read one of his articles that is still in the top two pages of “Remarkable” on the Emergent Village website. It is called “Making Evangelism Good News.”
The original article is also here.
Can those two words co-exist? From my perspective, most of what I hear and see from the Emergent Church Movement has been a dance on the edge of practices that many consider unbiblical. TSK provided some great information about Chuck Smith’s (Sr.) reaction. Someone help me out here. I am not out to beat up the emergent church. I would like to understand it. Our local experience has been a tendency toward some newage type practices like contemplative prayer (ie. transendental meditation).
The following article is an example of some of the struggles evangelicals (here the Missouri Baptist Convention) and Emergent Churches (like The Journey) are having.
I am not used to getting comments… I didn’t think people actually read this stuff. Thank you TSKÂ (TallSkinnyKiwi)Â and Michael for being my two readers. Michael - I’d be glad to explain some of this stuff to you. I might have used the big words because I don’t understand it all so well myself. 
You can also ask the Tall Skinny Kiwi (Andrew Jones). Sorry, TSK, I didn’t get you mentioned in my paper. Maybe together we can stop the great exodus from the church. Again, thanks for noticing.
[this had a broken link that should now be fixed]Â
Some of you may be wondering what kind of stuff I am studying in seminary. Here is one of the papers that I did for my last class. [Emergent Church Critique] Few of you may have heard of this movement, but the Emerging Church is probably a great deal more influential than you realize. The larger question is: how can we reach the next generation? This movement is trying to do that - not necesarily in a biblical way - but I think we can learn from them and the questions they are asking. It is a very liberal movement that we need to be aware of in church life. Magazines like Christianity Today are featuring authors and articles about this movement. At best, you can read my paper to help you go to sleep at night. 
Correction (2/16/07): I don’t want to be guilty of stereotyping all emergents of having the same theological beliefs. My study was focused on Emergent Village. Unfortunately what happens among conservatives is that we tend to use a “guilty by association” mentality. Having said that, you will see in my paper that there are some concerns about how emergents often approach biblical interpretation from a postmodern perspective that can open them up to misinterpretation. The best article I have seen from an emergent perspective that looks critically at emergent is Scot McKnight in “Five Streams of the Emerging Church,” in Christianity Today.
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