These artistic evangelicals, though still relatively small in number, are striving to be creators of culture rather than imitators, said Dick Staub, a Seattle-based radio talk show host and author of "The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture In an Age of Christianity-Lite." There is a desire, he said, to avoid inventing a parallel arts universe with Christian knockoffs for Christian audiences.

"They want to make art that connects to everybody," Staub said. "The call is first and foremost to make good art."

“They want to make art that connects to everybody” That sounds kind of...umm...missional, doesn't it? And yet too many "Christians" would criticize these efforts as not being "Christian" enough. I must to confess, I myself have said of certain Christian bands or singers that I'd wish they would be more open or up-front with their faith. Now I wonder, how Christian must a Christian's art be?

On a narrow, leafy street in Northwest Washington, where Prius hybrid cars and Volvos are the norm, one man bought a flashy gray Hummer that was too massive to fit in his garage.

So he parked the seven-foot-tall behemoth on the street in front of his house and smiled politely when his eco-friendly neighbors looked on in disapproval at his "dream car."

It lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and scratched into the body: "FOR THE ENVIRON."

Jennings Police Department employee, Eleanor Beal was just crossing the street to go to work when something dropped from the sky.

The sky wasn't falling. She says it was worms, large tangled clumps of them.

Beal says, "When I saw that they were crawling, I said, 'It's worms! Get out of the way!'"

She even called her co-worker outside to prove she wasn't making it up.

Sure enough, she saw worms, and globs of them.

Advance scouts?

British blamed for Basra badgers

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

But several of the creatures, caught and killed by local farmers, have been identified by experts as honey badgers.

The rumours spread because the animals had appeared near the British base at Basra airport.

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.

Now here's how I would handle that press conference:

REPORTER: Mr. Scott, what is your response to charges by the local population that British forces have released badgers to keep the locals in line?

ME: Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!

HOMER NOD: Yesterday I said that a bunch of old Greek dudes figured out the original seven wonders. I stand corrected:

The traditional "seven wonders of the world" all existed more than 2,000 years ago and were all in the Mediterranean region. The originals were selected by one man, believed by many to be ancient Greek writer Antipater of Sidon.

I'd like to be a list maker. List makers get things done. They know what needs to be done and they know how far along they are. I sit around sometimes wondering, "what should I do next?" Usually that "next thing" ends up being sitting on my buttocks (aside: one must imagine Forrest Gump's voice whenever reading that last word) doing nothing particularly productive. Ya know...like blogging.

The great thing about list makers is that live life with an incredible sense of accomplishment. Every time they cross something off the list it tells them they're making progress. My wife even has a habit that has boggled me for years, but it works for her. If she does something significant during the day that wasn't on her list, she'll add it at the end of the day. Then she immediately crosses it off. Go figure.

Like I said, I'm not a list maker. But I recognize the value of lists, and there is a part of me that wishes I was better at making and maintaining lists. Oh, I've tried...multiple times. It's just not in my DNA. It used to frustrate me to no end until I figured out that's exactly why God gave me the wife He did. Isn't He smart that way?

Even though I'm not a list maker I happened upon a list of things to do yesterday that I'm going to adopt for my own. It won't be hard to maintain it either, because my wife is more than excited to help me stay on track.

Back around 200BC a bunch of Greek dudes got together and asked the question, "What's the most amazing thing you've ever seen?" They talked and talked and talked and finally came up with a list that has been historically known as the Seven Wonders of the World. Today that list is obsolete, because six of the original seven wonders no longer exist. They're gone, destroyed, kaput.

So a bunch of modern smart dudes got together recently and decided we need a new list. They came up with 21 candidates and people have been voting online for the sites of their preference. The winners of this list will be announced today. (You can check it out here.)

As I was reading about this list of candidates, it struck me: wouldn't it be great to visit each of these places before I move onto heaven? And BOOM, my to-do list was born. The Colosseum in Rome. The Statues of Easter Island. The Pyramids of Giza. The Great Wall of China. Now that's a list I can get excited about. It may take me the rest of my life to scratch each one off the list, but--WOW--it'll be worth it.

In a way I can say I've just become a list maker. That feels good.

I guess I can cross that one off my list.

After all, when someone says, "We need to get back to preaching the Gospel," how can a Bible-believing Christ follower argue with that? Yet "preach the gospel" seems so simplistic and/or formulaic.

It's been pretty well established that the gospel covers more--much more--than four-point salvation.

I have to admit, there was a time when the commando-style, in-your-face street-evangelism was exciting. But it didn't take long to realize there had to be more to "sharing the Gospel" than that. It provided a great feeling but the feeling never lasted. Eventually it seemed little more than the Christian version of a one-night stand.

So what is the Gospel? Let's check out what Paul says:

Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 NIV)

Most scholars agree that the book of 1 Corinthians is probably the earliest document in the New Testament. That would make this reference the first recorded explanation of the Gospel. And Paul makes one thing more than plain: Christ's death and resurrection is the primary central issue of the Gospel.

So if we want to know what the Gospel is, we have to understand that the Gospel and the Atonement are completely inseperable. Again to those who are Bible students, the previous statement is bound to elicit an unimpressed, "NO DUH!" But the challenge comes not in realizing the Good News is that Jesus came to be the atonement for our sin, but in how we communicate the fullness of an Atonement Gospel to people who don't even know what the word "atonement" means.

Face it, there are many Christians and hard-core theologians that cannot sufficiently summarize what the atonement is. Open any introductory theology book and you'll learn there are countless theories about the atonement. There's the penal-substitution theory, there's the redemption theory, there's the judicial view, etc. But start talking about these theories and views to the common lay person and their eyes glaze over and before long they are lost.

Can atonement be simplified? I believe it can. No matter what you believe about the atonement, this much is true: Jesus died so we could become everything God originally intended.

Think about that for a second. If we cannot separate the Gospel from the Atonement that means the good news isn't that we can be saved from hell. The good news is that you, me, everybody and anybody can become exactly what God created us to be.

That's good news indeed.

A lot has happened in the last couple of años. When I was blogging two years ago, I was paying the bills by manipulating little switches in little boxes called computers. It paid well but I had realized something many years previous: what I did didn't matter much in the cosmic scheme of things. Not that there is anything wrong with programming; it's a worthwhile and profitable profession. I just knew that God had called me to something else.

If you have read the two or three blog posts I managed to scrape out over the next twenty-four months, it is evident that I had lost my taste for political commentary. To tell you the truth, I believe this was a God-ordained thing. He knew I was going to need every bit of mental energy I had in the work that He was very soon going to call me.

And call me He did.

In August of 2005 I began pastoring a church in the San Diego suburb of Lakeside, California. When I started, I was the only paid staff. The church has been around for almost 70 years. It's had its ups and downs and I came in just shortly after one of its downs.

The previous pastor had served for only nineteen months or so. He'd done a great job bandaging up and unifying a very hurt and lost church. Unfortunately, he had to move to Washington to take care of his gravely ill mother. That's when I came in.

I had never been in full-time ministry, so taking over a church and flying solo as my first go has been quite the challenge. I've learned much in the last 100 weeks, made countless mistakes, goof-ups, and bad judgment calls. But with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, faithfulness to God's Word and unshakable love for the congregation and the community we've seen God move in remarkable ways. The church is strong, growing, and looking for God around every corner. We're biting off much more than we can chew, confident that God will fill in the gaps.

That's the kind of church I want to be a part of.

Here's the biggest lesson I have learned. When you make yourself available to God, you get a front row seat to watch what He is doing. Anyone can sit back in their study and grow in "the knowledge of the Lord." But that's not enough. You have to get in game to really experience God's power. You've got to stick your neck out, take risks, invest in other people and take action when you have absolutely no idea what you are doing.

When you do that, God shows up--and trust me, you want to be where God shows up.

It's cool.

What makes "how do you do church?" such an interesting question is that when you think about it, the question just doesn't make sense. After all it's me asking "how do I do Bryon?" I can't "do" Bryon. I can only "be" Bryon.

I think what faith geeks like me are really asking is "is the church still 'being' the church?" We start to see the church expressing itself in different ways and it scares us. Fear causes us to condemn. Here's the problem: It's easy to judge from a distance.

You know what scares me? The church condemning the church. "Felt-needs is wrong focus." "The church should be run by the older elders." "Purpose Driven is heretical." "Preaching topically is Satan at work."

Allow me to respond to this theologically: BULL!

Here's what Jesus said:

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23 NIV)

This is Jesus' prayer for the church. Notice He's not praying for the apostles. Neither is He praying any of the other 500-5000 disciples that at one time followed or were currently following Jesus. In this part of the prayer, Jesus is praying for those who "those who will believe...through their message." That's you and me.

What's His prayer? It is that we be unified. He could have prayed anything. He could have prayed that we be accurate, or effective, or perfect or any of a couple-o-dozen concerns. But He chose to pray that we be unified. Us in Him, Him in us and we in each other.

Why did He pray this? It's no mystery, He tells us. He says if we are unified, then "the world will believe that You (the Father) have sent me."

Did you catch that? He didn't pray that we have an awesome outreach program. He didn't pray that we get the Gospel down just right. He says the best way to convince the world that Jesus is the Son of God is for us to be unified. That ought to make us stop and think before we start to rant about how someone else is "doing church" wrong.

What's the measure of church? Again, let's go to Jesus:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:34-35 NIV)

"This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." (John 15:8 NIV)

Love and fruit. If we love Jesus we will obey His commandments. If we love Jesus we'll love each other. If we love/abide in Jesus we'll bear fruit. It's that simple.

The question we should be asking isn't so much "how is church done elsewhere?" Instead it should be, "What's the best way to be the church where I am at?" "How do I love those Jesus has put in my community?"

If that means I show middle-class yuppie types that, yes, the only fulfilling purpose in this world is to align with Jesus and the Father then that's what I do. If it means I stand in the gap for the alcoholic father so he can come face-to-face with his destructive habits and finally find true freedom in Christ than that's what I do.

But it never means I look at what God is doing in another church through other methods and judge it as "watered-down" Christianity. Because I'm not there. I'm here. God hasn't given me that population/community/people-group to love. He's given me this one.

And if I don't get this one right...

Today neither the Republicans or the Democrats have anything to commend them to the admiration of future historians and there exists no one in either party who can possibly lead them out of the swamp. McCain? Pelosi? Obama? Gingrich? It is to laugh. Then cry.

...Joe cites Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute,

"The controversy over what to do about Iraq has congealed into two camps: supporters of the President who lack a clear plan for achieving victory, and critics of the President who have a detailed plan for America’s defeat."

That's it. I realize now the biggest reason is that I had lost hope of anything getting better. The Repubs don't have the backbone to do what it takes to win the war in Iraq (which is the real reason we lost in Vietnam) and the Democrats don't have the integrity to put their country's interests before that of their party (not that the Repubs do much better on that count either).

Two years later and nothing has changed. Pathetic.

Twelve months ago, after the election and resultant fallout, I was completely burnt out on politics.

Because of the Florida debacle in 2000, I wrote off the left-wing's moonbatism as an understandable response. I did not agree with it, but I could see how one could feel the way they did. This response fueled an out of whack anger in which the campaign against the President began almost immediately after he took office in 2001.

Like I said, it was understandable. So I was looking forward to 2004 when we would have another election and finally put the matter completely to rest. I expected that no matter who was elected, we could then start fresh and begin to concentrate on what is best for our country as a whole instead of what is best for my party or your party.

I guess I had unrealistic expectations.

The partisanship of 2004 paled in comparison to that of 2005...and in 2006 the only thing Democrats and Republicans can agree upon is that even though it is illegal for Members of Congress to take bribes, no one has the right to actually hold them accountable when they do.

I am an idealist. I believe there are good men and women in our government who want to serve the best they can and want what is best for our country. Such honorable persons might even get elected to Congress or the Senate. The problem is that once there, they find themselves completely powerless to effect change because all the power resides in the party hacks who have been serving countless terms and whose first priority after getting elected is to beef up their re-election campaign fund.

I am encouraged to see that the internet has played some part in the role of our government in the last few years. That a silly moniker like "Porkbusters" is actually recognized on Capitol Hill says that regular people can make a difference. And, although I despise almost everything Markos Molitsas stands for, it says something that big name politicians make time in their schedules for something that is little more than a blogfest on steroids.

Will we ever get out of the partisan hackery we see in American politics today? It's hard to imagine. But this thing I do know, and it gives me endless hope. This country has been through much worse times than these and it has always come through them stronger and wiser. This time won't be any different.