The Christian Aristocracy and the Emerging Social Chaos

The Christian Aristocracy and the Emerging Social Chaos - a ministry update from Mo Leverett -

The Church is a fellowship of sinners. And no matter how much we accomplish, how far we pilgrim or how high we climb, we are fortunate to never forget that.

Sanctification is primarily the process of cleansing and binding our wandering hearts to God. It is about the advancement of His Kingdom in us and conforming our rebellious nature to His. Moreover, it is about His turning our reluctance into readiness for the advancement of His Kingdom through us. Above all else, it is a removal of the greatest obstacle to all the aforementioned objectives - the obstacle of our pride.

Central to God’s strategies for sanctification is His sovereign and surgical use of pain in our lives. Pain is the inevitable, unavoidably blunt instrument of Christian sanctification. I once heard Chuck Swindoll, a leading evangelical pastor, say, “When God wants to do the impossible, He takes an impossible man…and He crushes him.”

I heard another popular author quoted recently, saying that “sanctification is akin to open heart surgery without the anesthetic.” It should be added that the longer this invasive procedure is delayed, the riskier and more painful the reality of any prospective future surgical maneuver. Pain makes us desperate. Pain makes us dependent. Pain makes us desire not only relief but healing and change. In other words, pain breaks us and leads us to God.

When I was a younger Christian, my overly simplistic understanding of sanctification was that it was a movement away from pain - a progression of compounding personal righteousness toward a nearly perfected spiritual adulthood. I thought that I would gradually advance toward a plateau popularly called maturity. This maturity, I felt, was gained through the accumulation of a critical mass of knowledge and obedience. Sanctification, I believed, was a spiral spiritual staircase facilitating our upward mobility - away from pain. My perspective has changed.

Soon after the Katrina floods had receded, and going into the ministry’s kitchen and into its industrial sized walk in refrigerator and freezer, I discovered a room full of rotting meat and shelves full of other spoiled food products. Both the sight and the scent turned my stomach.

There were a variety of insects crawling over and through the boxes and containers - bugs I did not recognize. Under everything there was slithering movement. There was a thick cloud of gnats. It took a full day, maybe two, if my memory serves me correctly, to finish emptying both the refrigerator and freezer. I did the work mostly myself with some help from a reluctant but dedicated staffer. After the task was done, some many wheel barrow loads and hours later, the penetrated odor was so strong that all of my clothes had to be disposed of, even after two lengthy washings. It seemed the foul aroma only intensified with each attempt at cleaning.

And never before had I cherished a shower so intensely.

I remember thinking…THIS is the sanctification process. This task begins to approximate the efforts of the Holy Spirit excavating my soul of the stench, darkness, death and spoilage within. Our fallen souls are never entirely made clean of its filth, until we are removed from this shell of a body and this train wreck of a world. And so His work in us tarries.

But the enterprise of removing the filth from the freezers is also a good picture of ministry in the midst of social chaos. It is simply a dirty and sometimes painful business. There’s no way to enter into a place of great need without becoming needy. There’s no way to enter into a place of intense dysfunction and disease without requiring healing and cleansing yourself. So even as you administer the gospel, you eventually stand in the need of it.

I read this week that 1 out of every 100 Americans is now in jail - a higher percentage than ever before in our nation’s history. This clearly, is not a positive social indicator. Of course the urban youth crisis, which has become my professional ministry focus, represents a growing bulk of the incarcerated population. Throughout the years, I’ve had occasion to visit the courthouse at Tulane and Broad to assist those who buttress with their many problems these social statistics. I’ve found myself there as recently as last week.

One of the reasons that ministry in this setting is so important and effectual is that it is within the confines of prison cells, or the serious threat of such, that men and boys finally face themselves and are thus readied to hear the gospel.

In my many years of ministry, I’ve met individuals who have committed murder, those who are self-described whore mongers, drug dealers, thieves and other various violators of the conscience. But believe it or not, they are not the most difficult category of persons I’ve dealt with in my life. None of these persons thought of themselves as holy. In other words, they thought of themselves rightly.

The most distasteful of sinners, the ones most difficult and painful to deal with, are the ones who believe they are not so - ones that believe that they are mature. They tend to pontificate about the declining culture around them, but do not see how they contribute by action and inaction to it. In other words they believe they have been “sanctified” above the social chaos. They are the Christian aristocracy.

Yet Christians are at our best when we are helping others out of a sense of mutual need, a common state of desperation and a deepening sense of universal moral vulnerability. We are at our worst when we assume moral superiority. Those who are subject to delusions of moral superiority fail to see themselves as God does and thus internalize and spread a distorted view of the cause we have been enlisted to represent. Rather than removing the stench, by our spiritual pride we contribute to it.

Christians are God’s appointed sanctifying force in society. We are called and commissioned by the Savior to be salt and light - externalizing our own personal transformation in good works towards the preservation and illumination of the culture that surrounds us. This is true, but may we never forget the source of that sanctifying force. When we think of ourselves rightly we never judge, lest we be judged. On the contrary, we are merciful, so that we might receive mercy.

I read recently that Evangelicals have overtaken Catholics as the predominant Christian sect in America. As we look at the declining social conditions in our country and the emergence of the evangelical church - we have to ask ourselves this question: Why, when we are at our peak in numbers, that we are the least impacting on our culture?

Could it be that our view of sanctification is principally responsible? Could it be that instead of an upwardly spiraling staircase away from pain and problems, that sanctification is actually a descending staircase into them? Could it be that the purpose of sanctification, instead of lifting our heads, is to bow them? Is it possible that when looking at the cultural degradation around us, that it is we, the proud, who are the first who need to repent?

If we do, we will find as always, that God draws near to those who are made low! Moreover, we will rediscover His cause among the least and the lost. Then we will begin to address the social chaos that is presently consuming us.

Tooting my own horn

Below is the official announcement of my new position with Structure from Newsline (Structure Newsline is published three times a year by the marketing and communications department of The Structure Group and sent to our clients). For the full document (you can read riveting accounts about much of what is going on with the firm these days), click here.

Thought this was interesting on the Obama/Wright controversy

Theology in the News

Black Power from the Pulpit

In wake of Obama's speech, author talks about The Decline of African American Theology.

Interview by Collin Hansen | posted 3/20/2008 09:27AM

Sen. Barack Obama sought in his speech Tuesday to answer critics who have called on the Democratic presidential candidate to account for his former pastor's anti-American sermons. Jeremiah Wright, longtime pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is a leading proponent of black liberation theology. On the church's website, Wright says that Trinity's vision statement is based on the systematized liberation theology found in James Cone's 1969 book, Black Power and Black Theology. According to Cone, "The concept of liberation is not one among many themes in the biblical tradition; it is rather the essence of God's revelation in history, and other emphases should be interpreted in light of liberation."

CT editor-at-large Collin Hansen interviewed Thabiti Anyabwile, author of The Decline of African American Theology, about the appeal of black liberation theology.

What did you think when you first heard the sermons from Sen. Obama's former pastor. Jeremiah Wright?

Actually, I had two reactions. First, I thought they were fairly typical kinds of comments whenever African American pastors begin to whoop on political issues. One thing the viewer needs to keep in mind is that in terms of sermonic style, Wright appeared to be in the almost-always-dramatic climax of a typical African American sermon. Those parts of the sermon tend to have great emotional effect, as evidenced by the shouting crowd, but are very often not the main point of the sermon. Second, I reacted like most other people, thinking, Ouch. That's gonna leave a bruise for everybody concerned — Wright, Obama, Trinity, and most viewers.

Has anything surprised you about the wave of indignation that has followed news of these sermons?

I've been surprised that so much effort has been made to saddle Obama with the views of his pastor, and that not as much attention seems to be given to equally controversial remarks made by white pastors. Rod Parsley's comments about Islam barely received a nod.

I've also been surprised at how deep the ignorance of the African American church and its preaching tradition goes. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the church in either its historical or contemporary form would recognize Wright's preaching in style, and sometimes in content, as essentially what has been preached for at least 100 years in African American churches. There's much to object to in some of the language. But it's essentially what is shared in a lot of churches whenever the comments turn political.

How would you describe the attraction of black liberation theology?

Black liberation theology has its origins in the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Its founder, James Cone, was looking for a theological orientation to explain the aims, ethos, and anger of the 1960s revolution. So, not surprisingly, black liberation theology concerns itself with the political aspirations of African Americans from a fairly radical bent by most standards. It's an effort to do theology from the vantage point of the marginalized and the oppressed. Its main benefit is that it does raise questions that aren't often addressed by most theologians. Its main failure is that it either supplants or equates the biblical gospel with a concern for temporal politics, particularly politics viewed from a politically liberal and self-consciously black perspective.

Liberation theology in Latin America is slightly older than that among African Americans. And expressions of black liberation theology are found in South Africa as well.

Are Wright's views mainstream among African Americans?

It depends on what you mean by "Wright's views." Do most African Americans feel like they've gotten a fair shake in the American experience? Certainly not. Do most African Americans think that racism is alive and well? Yes. Do most African Americans feel that there will be some judgment against America for its hypocrisy and duplicity along racial lines? I think so. But in that sense, most African Americans aren't much different from their white counterparts who decry abortion as a scourge deserving judgment.

But do most African Americans call down damnation on America? No, I don't think so. I don't think Wright's flourish represents even most of the people in his own church. If you keep in mind that historically black preaching aims at emotional effect, it's entirely possible to resonate with the emotion of a point while not at all holding to the particulars of the point. I don't think this is healthy. But it is typical and it may help to explain why 8,000 people could attend that church, hear such things, and continue to love their pastor, serve together, and go about their everyday lives without expressing that kind of sentiment. The preaching moment is primarily affective, not cognitive.

You write, "In the African American experience, the persons most likely 'doing' theology were preachers and civic leaders as opposed to the academically trained theologians of the 'white church.'" How does this distinction shape the resulting theology?

You get a grittier, earthier theology done in the vernacular. There is far less concern for the hypostatic union, for example, than there is for the application of justice in this or that concrete social or political situation. African American preachers look out on people with real hurts, and they are primarily concerned with bringing theology to bear on those hurts, not with precision in a particular doctrine. So, African American theology really tends toward social ethics, not theology proper. At least that's the trajectory it's taken over the last 150 years or so.

Earlier generations of African Americans held in tension both concern for biblical soundness and concern for social justice. In earlier generations the cause of freedom was fought with sound theological ammunition. The irony of African American theology is that as African Americans have gained wider freedoms they've lost biblical soundness. And I think that's part of what you see in Wright's comments.

You conclude in The Decline of African American Theology, "As a consequence of theological drift and erosion, the black church now stands in danger of losing its relevance and power to effectively address both the spiritual needs of its communicants and the social and political aspirations of its community." Does this current incident with Wright fit that conclusion?

I think so. In his effort to perhaps address American injustice from a black perspective, the clips make it appear as though he's left behind anything resembling biblical soundness. Trinity United boasts a statement of values and faith that make it clear that they intend to be "unashamedly black." Well, who would begrudge them that if what is meant is security in who God has made you to be? But if what that statement means, as black theology puts it, we're black before we're Christian, then it's easy to see that culture and ethnic identity have eclipsed the Cross and our identity in Christ.

It's easy to see how the thing most needed — the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ — is neglected, and in neglecting the gospel other important but secondary needs also go unmet, or are temporarily met in the most superficial and impermanent ways. If you lose the gospel, you lose everything. But if you have the gospel, even if everything else seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, you still gain everything. As Jesus says, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" I fear that many have sanded off the sharp points of the Lord's questions by assuming that gaining the world in an economic or political sense is the same as keeping your soul. And it's that basic confusion that ends up making the church irrelevant spiritually and temporally.

What gives you hope for reversing "the decline of African American theology"?

The Lord does. He promised to build his church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. We are steadily being made to conform to the image of Christ, renewed in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. The Spirit will complete that project and he will use his word in the hands of faithful men to do it.

As I look out on the African American church scene, as the Jeremiah Wrights are retiring, I'm finding more and more young men who are committing themselves to sound biblical theology and to carefully working that theology out in African American communities. They are self-consciously aware of the reforms that are needed. They understand that we're in a post-Civil Rights context where we need to think biblically and prayerfully about who we are and about our stewardship of the gospel. Wherever the gospel is recovered and unleashed there is great cause for rejoicing.

Verses for the Fortnight

"And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'"
Luke 4:16-19

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Down, Dad and Me

I grabbed the old book off of the shelf. The pages were soft and yellowed - the cover flimsy, rumpled and torn- the spine nearly half-round and the corners worn through. Happy with my selection I retired to bed book in hand, slid under the covers and began to flip through the first few pages.

Suddenly the smell hit me. Hard to describe- not quite musty, but having that old papery smell. Like years old cardboard transformed by the sweltering summers of the southeast but with an underlying hint of sweetness. Instantly my mind was flooded with memories and emotion. The pressure built behind my eyes and the tears began to slowly trickle down the valley between my nose and cheek.

It was Watership Down, the first book I ever remember reading. I don’t quite know how old I was when I first read it- somewhere between 3 & 5 years old I guess. Nearly every night my Dad would come to my room, sit next to me in the bed and we would read to one another until one of us (often both of us) would fall asleep. And until a few weeks ago, that was the last time I’d picked it up.

I smiled as I finished it last night. Much like that first time reading some 30 years ago I was comfortably in bed. Hazel-rah and the warren at Watership were at peace. I drew deeply of that familiar smell, switched off the bedside lamp and satisfied fell fast asleep.

Thanks Dad. I love you.

That's not in the Bible

As Christians, especially Christians in America, there are many lies we buy into in the name of biblical 'truth'.

In response to that Jean F. Larroux III recently wrapped up a remarkable sermon series aptly titled, “That’s not in the Bible”.

I’ve listened to most of these (insofar as I was able to successfully download it to iTunes) and each one was excellent, but I think my two favorites are the last two in the series, "Left Behind" and “God’s will is the safest place to be!". He debunks widely held myths within American Christendom that are errantly attributed to the Bible … I highly recommend it. Links here:

http://lagniappedata.com//MP3files/LPCpodcast.rss
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=207191288

Titles and Description of the sermons in the series:

08 of 08 "Left Behind"

Is this really the thing that Christians should fear? Will the church be 'Left Behind'? Should Christians fear this reality? Come be challenged by the truth that we should be praying TO BE Left behind- that's right, we WANT to be Left behind....listen and find out why the concept of 'Left Behind' as a 'bad' thing IS NOT in the Bible.

07 of 08 "God's will is the safest place to be!"

Many would claim that the 'safest' place to live is 'in the will of God.' Is that really safe? Is God's will really a 'safe' place? God is good, but is He really safe?

06 of 08 "Money is the root of all evil"

Is MONEY really the root of all evil? This is a common misconception and actually NOT in the Bible....listen and see what is actually IN the Bible

05 of 08 "I don't have Peace about that"

04 of 08 "W.W.J.D."

WWJD- this is on bumperstickers, bracelets, t-shirts and signs in churches all over the United States . In this message we're asking one question- Would God want us to ask "W.W.J.D.?" We don't think so- why? download and listen....

03 of 08 "Christians should not judge"

02 of 08 "God helps them who help themselves"

01 of 08 "God NEVER gives you more than you can handle"

People often say when a situation is difficult- "God NEVER gives you more than you can handle!" What we are doing is poorly quoting the passage about temptation never facing us which we cannot overcome (essentially eliminating all 'excuses' for sin) and attibuting to ourselves the ability to 'handle' anything. As the series title indicates- "That's NOT in the Bible!"

Stuff White People Like

This blog, Stuff White People Like, is hysterical.

If you want a good laugh, check it out. Notable entries are "#27 Marathons", "#2 Religions that their parents don't belong to" and "#30 Wrigley Field".

Below is a sample entry:

#62 Knowing what’s best for poor people

White people spend a lot of time of worrying about poor people. It takes up a pretty significant portion of their day.

They feel guilty and sad that poor people shop at Wal*Mart instead of Whole Foods, that they vote Republican instead of Democratic, that they go to Community College/get a job instead of studying art at a University.

It is a poorly guarded secret that, deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.

A great way to make white people feel good is to tell them about situations where poor people changed how they were doing things because they were given the ‘whiter’ option. “Back in my old town, people used to shop at Wal*Mart and then this non-profit organization came in and set up a special farmers co-op so that we could buy more local produce, and within two weeks the Wal*Mart shut down and we elected our first Democratic representative in 40 years.” White people will first ask which non-profit and are they hiring? After that, they will be filled with euphoria and will invite you to more parties to tell this story to their friends, so that they can feel great.

But it is ESSENTIAL that you reassert that poor people do not make decisions based on free will. That news could crush white people and their hope for the future.

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop

I can't believe there are legitimate Christian thinkers who think this guy might be a heretic. This article is remarkable in its simple, accurate description of biblical truth.

Enjoy this bit from Time Magazine. B

N.T. "Tom" Wright is one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought. As Bishop of Durham, he is the fourth most senior cleric in the Church of England and a major player in the strife-riven global Anglican Communion; as a much-read theologian and Biblical scholar he has taught at Cambridge and is a hero to conservative Christians worldwide for his 2003 book The Resurrection of the Son of God, which argued forcefully for a literal interpretation of that event.

It therefore comes as a something of a shock that Wright doesn't believe in heaven — at least, not in the way that millions of Christians understand the term. In his new book, Surprised by Hope (HarperOne), Wright quotes a children's book by California first lady Maria Shriver called What's Heaven, which describes it as "a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk... If you're good throughout your life, then you get to go [there]... When your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you heaven to be with him." That, says Wright is a good example of "what not to say." The Biblical truth, he continues, "is very, very different."

Wright, 58, talked by phone with TIME's David Van Biema.

TIME: At one point you call the common view of heaven a "distortion and serious diminution of Christian hope."

Wright: It really is. I've often heard people say, "I'm going to heaven soon, and I won't need this stupid body there, thank goodness.' That's a very damaging distortion, all the more so for being unintentional.

TIME: How so? It seems like a typical sentiment.

Wright: There are several important respects in which it's unsupported by the New Testament. First, the timing. In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state. St. Paul is very clear that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead already, but that nobody else has yet. Secondly, our physical state. The New Testament says that when Christ does return, the dead will experience a whole new life: not just our soul, but our bodies. And finally, the location. At no point do the resurrection narratives in the four Gospels say, "Jesus has been raised, therefore we are all going to heaven." It says that Christ is coming here, to join together the heavens and the Earth in an act of new creation.

TIME: Is there anything more in the Bible about the period between death and the resurrection of the dead?

Wright: We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish text from about the same time as Jesus, says "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," and that seems like a poetic way to put the Christian understanding, as well.

TIME: But it's not where the real action is, so to speak?

Wright: No. Our culture is very interested in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in what I've called the life after life after death — in the ultimate resurrection into the new heavens and the new Earth. Jesus' resurrection marks the beginning of a restoration that he will complete upon his return. Part of this will be the resurrection of all the dead, who will "awake," be embodied and participate in the renewal. John Polkinghorne, a physicist and a priest, has put it this way: "God will download our software onto his hardware until the time he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves." That gets to two things nicely: that the period after death is a period when we are in God's presence but not active in our own bodies, and also that the more important transformation will be when we are again embodied and administering Christ's kingdom.

TIME: That is rather different from the common understanding. Did some Biblical verse contribute to our confusion?

Wright: There is Luke 23, where Jesus says to the good thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." But in Luke, we know first of all that Christ himself will not be resurrected for three days, so "paradise" cannot be a resurrection. It has to be an intermediate state. And chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation, where there is a vision of worship in heaven that people imagine describes our worship at the end of time. In fact it's describing the worship that's going on right now. If you read the book through, you see that at the end we don't have a description of heaven, but, as I said, of the new heavens and the new earth joined together.

TIME: Why, then, have we misread those verses?

Wright: It has, originally, to do with the translation of Jewish ideas into Greek. The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally. But Greek-speaking Christians influenced by Plato saw our cosmos as shabby and misshapen and full of lies, and the idea was not to make it right, but to escape it and leave behind our material bodies. The church at its best has always come back toward the Hebrew view, but there have been times when the Greek view was very influential.

TIME: Can you give some historical examples?

Wright: Two obvious ones are Dante's great poetry, which sets up a Heaven, Purgatory and Hell immediately after death, and Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine chapel, which portrays heaven and hell as equal and opposite last destinations. Both had enormous influence on Western culture, so much so that many Christians think that is Christianity.

TIME: But it's not.

Wright: Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do.

TIME: That sounds a lot like... work.

Wright: It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.

TIME: And it ties in to what you've written about this all having a moral dimension.

Wright: Both that, and the idea of bodily resurrection that people deny when they talk about their "souls going to Heaven." If people think "my physical body doesn't matter very much," then who cares what I do with it? And if people think that our world, our cosmos, doesn't matter much, who cares what we do with that? Much of "traditional" Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here.

TIME: That's very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.

Wright: Yes. If there's going to be an Armageddon, and we'll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn't matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

TIME: Has anyone you've talked to expressed disappointment at the loss of the old view?

Wright: Yes, you might get disappointment in the case where somebody has recently gone through the death of somebody they love and they are wanting simply to be with them. And I'd say that's understandable. But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

SEC Football Domination

• LSU's 2007 BCS National Championship is the Southeastern Conference's fourth in the 10 years of the BCS. Tennessee won the BCS National Championship in 1998, LSU in 2003 and Florida in 2006.
• The SEC is the first conference to win back-to-back BCS titles.
• The SEC is 11-4 all-time in BCS bowl games. The SEC has won four BCS bowl games in the last two seasons.
• The SEC's seven bowl wins this season is an all-time high for any conference. SEC had six last season (previous high).
• The SEC's 7-2 bowl record this season is first among the automatic qualifying BCS conferences (.778 percent) and second overall (Mountain West - 4-1, .800 percent) this season.
• This season, the SEC posted a 47-10 record against non-conference foes (.825 percent), which is the highest percentage of all FBS conferences. 47 wins ties an SEC high all-time (last season, had 47).
• The SEC now has 184 bowl wins in its history, which is tops in FBS.
• The SEC's bowl win percentage of 52.8 (184-164-13) is percentage points ahead of the ACC's 143-128-5 percentage of 52.7 for tops among FBS conferences. Records are using 2007 conference alignments.

AND

Next week’s Super Bowl matchup between New England and New York features 21 former SEC players. And yes, Mississippi State and Ole Miss both are represented.

New England Patriots (13)
OT Wesley Britt, Alabama
RB Heath Evans, Auburn
RB Kevin Faulk, LSU
WR Jabar Gaffney, Florida
CB Randall Gay, LSU
DL Jarvis Green, LSU
WR Chad Jackson, Florida
DL Rashad Moore, Tennessee
DL Richard Seymour, Georgia
WR Donte’ Stallworth, Tennessee
WR Kelley Washington, Tennessee
TE Ben Watson, Georgia

New York Giants (8)
CB Kevin Dockery, Mississippi State
QB Jared Lorenzen, Kentucky
QB Eli Manning, Ole Miss
LB Reggie Torbor, Auburn
CB Corey Webster, LSU
S Gibril Wilson, Tennessee
QB Anthony Wright, South Carolina
RB Danny Ware, Georgia
NOTE: There’s also Giants RB Brandon Jacobs, who lettered at Auburn for one season, before transferring to Southern Illinois University.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all of you the merriest Christmas and best wishes for a joyous New Year! Rejoice, our Lord and Saviour was born this day!

"For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."- Isaiah 9:6

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Dad, you can quit sending me reminders to post on the blog!

Here's a life update for the Batch and the Holly the last few months.

We're very well settled in our house in Houston and loving it. It has a wide open floor plan and we've thrown some parties already and have two more on the books at the moment- a Baptism party for a friend's son and a Christmas Eve celebration- the Spirits will flow at both (pun intended). A big shout out to Dad and Carolyn for making the all night road trip from Starkville to Houston to be here for the first celebration, a housewarming party in October (they say 70 is the new 20, right dad?).

Holly has been enjoying her work with Christ the King Presbyterian Church and survived her first Capital Campaign which successfully secured funds to build a permanent facility for the congregation. She's in a bit of a lull there at the moment, but expects things to begin to pick up speed as we get closer to beginning construction.

I'm preparing to begin a new position at my company, much different from the consulting work I've done in the past. I'll be directing the front line customer service team for our software business, basically leading the team that is the face to many of our customers.

We had a very busy November, traveling to New Orleans early in the month for a company meeting and service project (pictures here) and at the end of the month making a trek from Houston to Jackson, MS/Birmingham, AL/Fayette, AL/Starkville, MS/Biloxi, MS and back again (not to mention that I-10 was closed between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, LA).

We've got a vacation planned soon to Turks & Caicos with three other couples from college to celebrate one of the couple's 10th anniversary. Then we'll be back home again in time for Christmas and then we're off again for a few days to catch family and friends getting married just before the new year.

Crunchy Cons

Reading a great book at the moment- Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party).

I care little about the Republican Party anymore- in my estimation it is no longer conservative (at least in the traditional sense of the word) and is only substantially different from the Democratic party in rhetoric and little in substance. However, the book does describe a 'sacramental' approach to modern life that I find compelling. Much of what the author, Rod Dreher, describes resonates deeply with me. This is his own "Manifesto" which is an extreme summarization of the points in his book:

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Read it if you're curious about a flavor of conservatism other than the typical Republican corporatist, moralist blah.

Aftermath

Heard this poem, written by by George Held and read by Garrison Keillor, on The Writer's Almanac on NPR this morning.

It resonated.

Aftermath

It's not the storm itself—wind and rain lashing shore,
uprooting trees, toppling poles and dousing lights,
flooding cellars and roads, capsizing boats—
but the aftermath—the bright calm, the pair
of drowned cats crumpled against the picket fence,
the parlor of Izzy's shack open for inspection,
the walls fallen flat on all sides, your own
roof filling the front yard, covering your car,
and your own twin daughters dazed by Nature's
petulance—that makes you reconsider
your life and weigh your possessions and the cost
of putting down stakes too near the coast
as the globe warms, and storms grow worse.

Official Houstonians

We closed on the house here in Houston this morning so we're officially Texas residents once again! Yehaw! Unfortunately, the link below to pictures of the house doesn't work anymore now that we've closed and the house isn't in the MLS system. We'll try to get some new pictures posted once our furniture arrives and we get things into place.

More to come soon...for now, praise the Lord for his abundant goodness to us in selling our Biloxi home and purchasing a home here! We are blessed!

Ecstatic

We closed on the sale of the Biloxi house Friday afternoon and drove back to Houston Friday night.

We're in the option period on a house here in H-town (in the middle of inspections and negotiating things to be fixed). To see pictures, click here:

Hopefully, we'll be settled here within the month. We'll keep you posted.

B

The rumors are true...

We have a contract on our house.

We are very thankful.

And cautiously excited.

We'll be ecstatic once closing is final.

Give thanks.

B