I’m trying to focus more on getting that big paper done now, which is distracting me from too much blog-related.  However, I promise I will get back to y’all soon.  In the meantime, watch for new twitters.  I’ve been coming across a few amusing/interesting things and just throwing them up there.

I will make one more excuse: with a federal election in Canada coming up on October 14 and the presiddential election in the USA on November 4, there’s lots of political fodder that drags my attention away too.  But I am sure many of you are experiencing the same thing.

Heh.  I read on an economics blog speculation on how the USA would completely collapse if all the hardworking, independent, responsible, conservative people suddenly vanished.  While I don’t pretend to think that all Christians are that way, I think a larger percentage of them are, at least if they are truly following the Bible.  I half wondered as I read it, is this the reason end-times prophecy doesn’t talk about America?  Because when we’re raptured, there aren’t enough people like this left to support the social systems and the nation becomes a non-factor politically?

In addition to the huge workload I have this summer just for the church, I have this paper to write.  I am completing a graduation essay to attain my Master’s of Arts in Christian Studies from ACTS Seminaries at Trinity Western University.  My chosen area of study is church planting in resort communities.  I am actually at a bit of a disadvantage because my program does actually have a church planting specialty, but because I have a whole pile of credit from when I was pursuing a church history master’s, I didn’t have room to take those courses from the Seminary.  However, I don’t know how many people who take that course area actually involved in the leadership of a brand new church plant either, so maybe that balances it out.

Anyway, I have a ton of reading to do to research this paper.  I am probably reading slower than I should.  Normally when I write a paper, I find resources and skim them until I hit upon the areas that I need to include for my paper’s subject.  Instead, I am actually reading the whole book as I know that ultimately, it will serve me better as we think about planting our own church one day.

So, currently I am chewing through the 360 page Ed Stetzer tome, “Planting New Churches in a Postmodern Age”.  Although the resort community seems to be a microcosm or an ultradense monoculture of postmodernism, there is no question that the overall societal trend is towards this philosophy or worldview.  It is good stuff.  I am just looking at the “generation” question right now and he made a very good point - with postmodern cultures it is almost irrelevant to speak of ages as having anything to do with their worldview anymore.  A postmodern could be of any age and they will have more in common in that case than with anyone just close in age to them.  Limiting oneself to a “generation” will not serve the cause of Christ when it comes to these people.

I’d write more but a) I have to actually work on the paper, and b) I have to ride my bike over to get the van out of the shop.  Bye for now.