Saturday, August 9, 2003

11:37 PM Pat Buchanan speaks the truth in his column Yes, Virginia, There is a Culture War, based on the election of an openly-homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church. Buchanan’s conclusion is worth quoting:

America is again a house divided. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” moral community in which we grew up has dissolved irrevocably. Christianity, dying in Europe, is under siege in America. A paganism that holds homosexual unions to be “sacramental” — the Rev. Robinson’s term — is ascending. The sad sundered Episcopal Church is a mirror for America.

12:52 PM Here’s the Legacy Campaign prayer request for today: “Praise God that His Word stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).”

12:48 PM Arrived home last night about 11:30 PM. Just before the final service at Gull Lake, I was chatting with a couple who had been at the conference all week. When the wife mentioned that they had both attended Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, I said that Marlene and I had attended there as well. Turns out they knew Marlene because she was the secretary in the Music Department during the years they were there (they graduated a year before we did). And we have many mutual friends, including Tom and Fay Phillips and Mike and Betsi Calhoun who serve with Word of Life. Small world.

The folks at Christian Focus Publications sent me a copy of The Transforming Community: The Practice of the Gospel in Church Discipline by Mark Lauterbach. A few months ago I read the manuscript and wrote a brief endorsement that is printed on the back cover. This is the finest treatment of church disicpline (a tricky and often messy area of church life) I have read. Well-writen, thought-provoking, biblical, and pastoral in the very best sense of the word. Pastors and elders in every church would do well to read and heed this book.