I was struck by the clarity of IGO’s Brief Statement of Mennonite Doctrine. As Christians living in this world of swirling ideas and competing worldviews it is not always easy to define quickly what we believe based on our understanding of the Bible and God’s will for human beings. Yes, we can say, “I believe the Bible”. But a people from the LDS or from the Jehovah’s Witnesses can say the same thing and yet be living by a code that is world’s apart from our own.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the blog entries from the first group of young people to go through this ground-breaking form of Bible school and missions work. There is the usual youthful foolishness, however at the same time they seem to have gained a view of the world that is perhaps more balanced than someone who only sees the wealth and luxury of American living.
Today’s message by Ron Bontrager preached at New Hope Mennonite church was taken from Romans 6-8.
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Melvin Lehman the director of Faith Builders Educational Programs has written an excellent article concerning today’s conservative young Christians; especially those with Anabaptist-like beliefs. It is very insightful and accurately portrays my generation. I highly recommend it.
You can download the PDF at:
http://www.fbep.org/downloads/The%20New%20Conservatives_MBL.pdf
Well, today I got an email saying I’ve been accepted at this year’s Youth Bible School. I’m pretty excited about going, since I haven’t been back East for over 2 years now and I’ve never been to YBS at Ephrata Christian Fellowship. HB from our church went last year, and came back with glowing reports of it, so it should be a good experience. Now I’d better head on over to kayak.com and get myself a plane ticket.
I was teaching a 76 year old man yesterday how to use his iMac computer and he asked me a very good question.
“What does the word ‘default’ mean?”
I had to think for a second, because even though I’m always setting defaults in the BIOS or resetting IE to defaults, I didn’t pay much attention to the term before. So, I said, “Well, defaults are the setting that came with the computer, the way the designers, manufacturers and computer software engineers designed it to be before you customized it”. The answer seemed pretty satisfactory, but it got me thinking about the defaults in our lives. What defaults has God programmed into us, or are there no defaults, just continuous variables? I’ll have to think about that one some more.
In other news, I’ve been checking out the TNIV version of the Bible that was completed two years ago and which has been recorded by a whole cast of professionals in audio format. It’s going on sale this fall. I’ve got half a mind to get it. It sounds pretty amazing.
