mikefisher.org

This audiobook seems to have two purposes.  Firstly, to make Jesus the center of Christianity; and secondly to criticize today’s church for not doing so.  I have a few issues with the book.  There is a section which is written as though God were speaking to you.  This kind of thing annoys me because finite men are writing what they think God would say.  (Some admittedly may find this style of devotional writing inspirational and convicting.)  Another issue I have with the book is that it seems somewhat verbose.  In an effort to make Jesus the supreme message of the book, the authors tend to be a bit repetitive and flowery.

However, the central point of the book I believe really is needed today.  Christianity is more about the person of Jesus than about religion or dogma.  The authors really hammer this.  They criticize the church for replacing the worship and pursuit of Jesus with all sorts of other things.

I think the message of Jesus being the central point of Christianity is needed.  I think that the church today really does fail to make Jesus central.  So the core message of the book is right I believe.

However again I didn’t feel quite satisfied.  There are many and long passages of scripture cited in the book, but I feel that a message of the centrality of Jesus should include a lot of focus on what Jesus actually said and did when he was here.  This book seems to spend most of its time saying who Jesus was, which is highly important.  But I think they could have spent more time on his teachings and his life.

In total, I feel the book is worth listening to as a starting point for discovering our need to make Jesus central.  The reader does an excellent job and the recording is top notch, as usual.

This review was written for christianaudio.com’s reviewers program.

The audiobook can be purchased from christianaudio.com.

If you can read this my new Wordpress install is working.  I followed the instructions on this page and used Filezilla to upload the new files.  I was running a pretty old version of WP and read dire warnings about the need to upgrade.

The following was written by Peter Hoover to a message group on August 1 2009. I enjoyed the broad historical background.  I think it is one of the more kind treatments Peter has given the movement.  Peter talks of Charity as running on its plain background, not commenting much on the “remnant” (non-Anabaptist seekers) element which is obviously a large aspect.  However it is still an interesting summary particularly to those interested in history.

I was surprised by the outcome of the little back-and-forth between Peter and Charity Missions over the article on the Russian Mennonites in the missions newsletter.   I’m impressed that CM was willing to take down the article in question, which according to Peter was badly inaccurate.  Apparently their response was generally humble and open which I think is commendable.  Peter wonders near the end of this piece whether Charity’s general tone, particularly toward other plain groups, is changing to a less critical note.  I think it’s possible.  I never heard of Charity working together much with other plain churches until the last couple of years during which they have had several joint tent meetings with other local Mennonite and Beachy churches.

Anyway Peter writes:

The castle at Sand in Taufers, South Tyrol, Italy, where the Hutterite missionary Hans Kräl lay in a dungeon until his clothes rotted away (all but the collar of his shirt that he managed to send as a greeting to his home community). Many other South Tyrol believers got imprisoned, tortured, sold into galley slavery or burned alive.

Is it any wonder the Anabaptists of Hans Kräl’s time failed to see much good in their Roman Catholic background? Not really. Writing on notepads smuggled into gaol, or hiding in mountain forests after the capture of untold numbers of their companions, they produced a steady stream of Klagelieder (songs of lamentation) and passionate judgements on a background they considered dung, as Paul did, to gain Christ.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is a fascinating documentary.

http://www.afa.net/journeyhome/index.htm

In April Michelle and I went to Poland to visit her sister Alison who is working for AIM teaching English at their school Gateway to English. We were there for ten days and the following video slide show contains photos and videos from our trip. There are a number of clips of Alison teaching her classes. We spent about three days in and around the city of Krakow in southern Poland. We were at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp for one entire day and spent another half day at an underground salt mine. This was a once-in-a-lifetime trip during which we left all of our children at home with my wife’s parents. We thoroughly enjoyed it but we were glad to be home again with our children and have been so busy that it took till now to do a blog post about the trip.

Click here to view the video slide show of our trip.

Click below to see the photos.

Poland Pictures

I just dusted off the cobwebs over on my blogroll and added a few new items. Andrew, PD, Nathan, Kirby, Tom, Jethro, Richard, Dorcas, Mark, Wendell, are a few folks whose online ramblings I find interesting. Here’s an aggregator for IGO student blogs that’s pretty interesting right now.

…for the iPod shuffle referred to here. Thanks so far to: Richard, Beth, Japheth, Joe, Marc, Andrew, Seth, and Jordan.

It appears that a bunch of other people are talking about this offer from WOWIO, and some have commented on receiving their iPods.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kirby and lawtay58 for the last two sign-ups. Coming soon: tech review on a popular Apple product.

Yesterday the girls at the store talked about an interesting customer who was in the store the other day. No one knew her but all remembered her because of her strange requests. She wanted certain spices in small containers poured together into larger containers. It’s not unusual for somebody to ask to have large containers broken down into smaller ones but the opposite has never happened. Anyway as the cashiers discussed this customer on Saturday they realized that none of them had checked her out. Furthermore, the customer had been seen going in and out of the front door numerous times and was wearing a long, bulky sort of coat. They even searched around the store to see if she had put any of her “custom” packages back on the shelf but they never found anything. Looks like maybe she was filling her pockets. Oh well. Whaddaya do?

Later in the afternoon a lady came in asking for the manager. I talked to her and she said she had been in the store with her son in the morning. She lived about 45 minutes away from the store and when she got back she was going through her groceries and found a candy bar that she had not put in her cart or paid for. She realized her five-year-old little boy had stolen it. She told me that she had come back to the store to have the boy apologize and wondered if she could bring him in. I said of course; she was concerned that I would not brush it off and tell him not to worry about it. So she brought the poor little fellow in with his head down and feet dragging. He reached into his pocket and gave me a candy bar that had seen its better days. Not sure if I ever pitied a little fellow more. He said, “I stole this. I’m very sorry. Will you forgive me?” I said I surely would and told him that he had a good mother. Then he reached into another pocket and gave me a dollar bill. I asked him whether he wanted to buy the candy bar and his mother said no, he wanted to give it to me. I told him it was OK and then he quickly gave me a big hug. What do you say? I told him God bless you, and then he quickly turned away to leave with his mom. I thanked her then as they were going out the door I heard him tell his mom loudly, “That wasn’t so bad after all!!!”

You have to pity somebody who doesn’t have a mom like that.