U2 Atlanta

Saw U2 in Atlanta on Tuesday - as good as ever. No time to write as I'm headed back out of town today for Presbytery meetings , but here is the setlist.

Set List: Breathe, Get On Your Boots, Mysterious Ways, Beautiful Day, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - Stand By Me, Stuck In A Moment, No Line On The Horizon, Magnificent, Elevation, Until the End of the World, The Unforgettable Fire, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (rework), Sunday Bloody Sunday - People Get Ready snippet, MLK, Walk On

Encore: One, Amazing Grace, Where the Streets Have No Name,

Encore #2: Ultraviolet, With or Without You, Moment of Surrender

U2 set list in Chicago

My friend Matt went to see U2 in Chicago last week. My wife and I are going next month in Atlanta. Here was the set list from the show. I'm giddy with excitement.

1. "Breathe"

2. "No Line on the Horizon"

3. "Get On Your Boots"

4. "Magnificent"

5. "Beautiful Day"/"Blackbird" (Beatles snippet)

6. "Elevation"

7. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"/"Stand By Me" (Ben E. King snippet)

8. "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"

9. "Unknown Caller"

10. "The Unforgettable Fire"

11. "City of Blinding Lights"

12. "Vertigo"

13. "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"

14. "Sunday Bloody Sunday"/"Oliver's Army"

( Elvis Costello snippet)

15. "Pride" (In the Name of Love)

16. "MLK"

17. "Walk On"/"You'll Never Walk Alone" (snippet)

18. "Where the Streets Have No Name"

Encore

19. "One"

20. "Bad"/"40" (snippet)

Second encore

21. "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"

22. "With or Without You"

23. "Moment of Surrender"

Reasons not to Tweet?

Skye Jethani has an interesting post for why he does not use Twitter. He doesn't believe it's wrong or immoral, but just not for him. Here's a summary of his reasons:

1. My life really isn't that interesting
2. I don't like the taste of my own foot
3. You cannot delete a tweet
4. I don't want to become a phantom
5. I respect the written word too much to mutilate it.
6. I don't need another commitment in my life
7. I'm tired of obeying marketers
8. Ashton Kutcher -- Any community in which he is the most popular person probably isn't for me.
9. I suffer from "terminal unqiueness."
10. I already have a witness.

Read the whole thing.
Good stuff, and very valid reasons. You do really have to be careful with Twitter, both because of what you say (and the consequences of it being "out there"), and also because it can become obsessive (both in the "need" you feel to update, and the narcissistic feelings it can encourage).

I do tweet, mostly for fun, sometimes to pass on news, and often to make a joke (often not very funny ones).

Tecmo Bowl rendition of Bengals v. Broncos

Can't believe I'm posting this, but it's too awesome not too. Hate the way the game ended up, but:
a.) I love Tecmo Bowl, and
b.) Gus Johnson is the most exciting play by play guy out there.

Total Church - Short Review

#23 - Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis (2008, 207 pages + end notes)

Grade: A-

Why: In Total Church, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis use the Crowded House (a church planting initiative in England) as a jumping off point for discussing the nature and purpose of the church. The book is divided into two parts. In Part 1 the authors lay out there thesis -- the church ultimately ought to be about two things: gospel and community. The gospel is the content of the church's message and purpose, and community is the context in which this is lived out.

The second part of the book is working out the thesis (gospel and community) as it applies to different ways/aspects of "doing church." Eleven different areas are given chapter-long treatment: evangelism, social involvement, church planting, world mission, discipleship and training, pastoral care, spirituality, theology, apologetics, and children/young people.

I really liked the book, and though I didn't agree with the authors in every jot and tittle, I found their argument compelling and their framework immensely useful in thinking about philosophy of ministry and planning for the future. Too often we can think of "doing church" as administrative work and meetings. Chester and Timmis bring us back to looking at ministry through the lens of "gospel word" and "gospel community."

Fan involvement at the Jungle

The Bengals play the Packers this Sunday. The last time they played, we all thought it would be Brett Favre's last season (how silly we were). The Bengals won and intercepted Favre 5 times. But the most memorable play of the game was a fan running onto the field and taking the ball away from Favre. Whatever happened to that guy (the fan, I know what happened to Favre)?

Christianity and Hollywood

Books and Culture has a really nice interview with Phil Vischer, the creator of Big Idea Productions (Veggie Tales). They talk about the culture of Hollywood, how receptivity to spiritual content has changed since the release of The Passion, and how to do good art faithfully.
An excerpt:

What do success stories like Passion, the first Narnia film, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy tell evangelicals about making successful films?

I've learned the hard way that movies are not a great teaching medium. If you want to engage people emotionally, great—but you can't ever turn to the camera and say, "Now I have three points I want to make about parenting." You can do that on TV. Sesame Street does that. Dora the Explorer does that every day and nobody says, "That's not filmmaking! That's didactic!" The difference is that people do not go to the movies to be preached at. That's the bottom line. The more you preach, the fewer you reach. What frustrates me with the film business is how much time, energy, and money you have to spend to have the opportunity for two sentences of real transparent meaning.

The Passion was such an anomaly; you really can't use it to learn much of anything about the nature of film. You had the most popular film actor in the world making a deeply personal work of art about a religious story. What are the odds of that happening again?

The movies inspired by the Narnia stories and the Lord of the Rings are also tough test cases. How many Narnias are there? How easy is it to come up with another Lord of the Rings? It's not.There's Tolkien and Lewis and then everybody else. Besides, Narnia had a 50-year history of engagement with fans—and a grandfather-clause evangelical exception for the use of fantasy and magic. You can't get away with that today. Now, if we go to another fantasy world, we need to find Jesus there—literally.

That is why for some evangelicals, the Harry Potter books are seen as being straight from the pit. Even if Rowling says she's employing Christian themes, forget it. How do you write a Christian fantasy today? I have no idea. I don't know that you can. I think we've killed it. I think we are so concerned with how oppressed our worldview is and so defensive that we've painted ourselves into a corner. And thus, we can't tell the kind of stories that Lewis or Chesterton would have told to share the gospel. It's kind of depressing, frankly.

Read the whole thing.

Public Transit in Cincinnati

I have no idea how we can afford this, and I know there are some good reasons to oppose it, but I have to admit it makes me excited to think of the possibility of good public transit in Cincinnati. In particular, I think it will make the city a more desireable place to live.

That said, some of my good friends (for whom I have much respect) oppose it (at least in its proposed form). I'll admit I am pretty ignorant of the issues, but looking at this map, I get excited about the possibilities for Cincinnati. What say you?

Comparing Obama and Clinton on Health Care

Interesting post from Rod Dreher about Obama's health plan. He's been writing about health care reform for the Dallas Morning News and decided to go back and look at Clinton's speech on health care reform back in 1993. Pretty similar. And then he began to do some research on analysis of why Clintoncare never came to fruition. Dreher wonders if Obamacare is not primed for the same fate. Look at this analysis of Clintoncare's political demise:

Bob Blendon, a public opinion scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health, said of the Administration: "They misread the mandate, read it much too broadly. Since people are very cynical about government and the President only had 43 percent of the vote, they wanted reform, but they wanted something easy to understand, something that did not look as threatening as the Clinton plan. The Clinton White House read it as much too broad in terms of trust in President and Mrs. Clinton."

Read the whole thing.
What do you think? Will Obama's plan succeed where Clinton's failed? And if so, what differentiates Obama from Clinton? Is it the plan, the political climate, the state of the GOP???

Text of the President's speech

The text of the President's speech to schools was released yesterday. You can read it, here. I think folks would be hard-pressed to find anything controversial in the remarks.

John Piper liked it. Here are his favorite excerpts from the speech:

* I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
* I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
* But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.
* Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
* And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.
* Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class.
* Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class.
* Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
* And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it.
* You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
* And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.
* What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
* You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment.
* You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.
* You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
* If you don’t do that - if you quit on school - you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
* I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life.
* But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams.
* Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around.
* Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
* But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home - that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude.
* That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
* Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
* Today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them.
* Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book.
* I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
* But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
* That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures.
* If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
* Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.
* So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
* And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
* But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you.
* So don’t let us down - don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
* Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America

The President speaking to school children is a good thing

Or so says, John Piper. And he hopes his daughter hears the speech.

And I agree with him. The "outrage" over the President "bypassing parents" seems pretty silly to me. If you send your kids to a government-run school, then the President of that government ought to be able to speak to them. In fact, every President should speak to the children at the beginning of the school year.

Anyway, you should read Piper's post about this. Piper hopes it's an answer to a prayer he has been praying for Obama (and the country):

Father, the condition of our schools and families is so broken that nothing seems to be working, especially for the poor in our urban centers. Help our president to have the courage to use his amazing place of influence to speak into this situation in such a way that boys and girls would take their studies seriously and put school above sport and homework above hiphop and graduation above gangs.

O, Lord, create a culture where it is not cool to fail. Give our President the courage to call all children, especially ones who feel hopeless about academic work, to fight for knowledge the way gangs fight for turf.

And as the President plans his speech, help him to feel as helpless as he really is to meet the greatest needs of the children, so that he turns to Jesus who alone has the answer for the ruin and the wrongs of our cities. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The Shack -- again

About a year ago, I gave my take on William Young's The Shack. I didn't like it very much (maybe an understatement). I just saw Trevin Wax's review of the book, and thought it was worth recommending, especially this bit.

When you deal with non-fictional characters, you inevitably open yourself up to criticism.

Let’s say you meet an author who wants to use your grandparents as the main characters in a novel. The author tells you that the narrative will be fictional, but that your grandparents will have the starring roles. Sounds great! you think.

But when the manuscript arrives in your hands, you discover that the story does not accurately represent the personalities of your grandparents. The relationship between them is all wrong too. Grandma berates Grandpa. Early on, they run off and elope (which is totally out of character). At one point, they contemplate divorce.

When you complain, the author responds, “Remember? I told you it would be fictional.”

“Yes,” you say, somewhat exasperated, “I knew the story would be fictional, but I thought you would get my grandparents right. The grandparents in your story aren’t anything like my grandparents.”

“Who cares?” the author responds. “It’s a work of fiction.”

“Well, I care,” you say, “because people will put down this book thinking that my grandparents were like the way you portrayed them.”

My biggest problem with The Shack is its portrayal of God. I understand that the book is a work of fiction, not a theological treatise, and therefore should be treated as fiction. But the main characters are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are actual Persons. To portray God in a manner inconsistent with his revelation to us in Scripture (and primarily in Jesus) is to misrepresent living Persons.

When people put down The Shack, they will not have a better understanding of the Trinity (despite the glowing blurbs on the back cover). They will probably have a more distorted view of God in three Persons.

Right on. Read the whole thing.

HT: Justin Taylor