HARMLESS THOUGHTS

If you have never been to NoiseTrade.com , now would be a good time to visit them. Noise Trade has free music. Yeah sure, there is the option of leaving the artist a tip, but sometimes I don't really know the artist that well.  There have been a couple of times that I have left a tip for an artist that I knew and I believed in supporting their work (or ministry in some cases).  But sometimes I just download something that sounds interesting, but I have never heard of it before. If you haven't been there before, you should swing by and pick up Andrew Peterson's The Lost Boy Sampler .  So far I have loved all of Andrew Peterson's work, and this one doesn't seem to be a disappointment. I also downloaded two albums from The Vespers .  I have never heard of this group, but so far I have really enjoyed what I've heard so far.  In fact, I am listening to them right now. Here is a video of them live in New York.

Taking God Seriously by J. I. Packer was not at all what I expected it to be. I have read a couple of other Packer books.  I have thoroughly enjoyed everything that I have read from him in the past, so when this new book became available through Christian Audio, I was happy to listen to it in order to write a review. Having read these other books by Packer, I was expecting this book to deal with big thoughts of how we need to take God seriously.  I was ready to soak in some over-arching themes on the importance of really listening to God and doing what He says. My first surprise came when he started talking extensively about issues in the Anglican church.  Not only did I not know that Packer was Anglican, I had also never seen him refer to any current denominational issues.  This book contains numerous references to current issues that are plaguing the Anglican church and many other churches in the world today.  Much of this book felt like an address to ot...

The church where I am the pastor has seen some growth lately.  On Easter Sunday we had 4 baptisms, there have been others wanting to join the church, and several others who have been attending on a regular basis for a couple of months now. I am struggling for the words to try to explain how exciting this has been for us.  You need to understand that we were averaging about 25 people, 3 months ago.  Lately it has been closer to 50 on several Sundays.  Then, this Easter we had 75 people in our building, when the previous Easter we had 15.  On a personal note, before the four baptisms that I performed on Easter Sunday, I had only performed three other baptisms total... in my whole life!  It has been very exciting. To top everything else off, the people that are coming are the exact sort of people that I had been hoping for.  Nearly everyone that is new is someone who has either never been to church, or has not been to church in countless years.  ...