bobschaefer.com

I’m breathless - on an Evangelical blog, I find this lovely essay on rightly dividing Law and Gospel (a Lutheran preoccupation, and one of our great gifts to the Church). And in the process, the author drives a stake through the heart of much of the way America does church. (We Lutherans like to call that sort of slaying the Second Use of the Law.) I SO need to get both of the books the author referenced…

Thought-provoking article in Time about a handful of congregations who are putting Twitter to use in their church - even inviting it into the worship space. I’m pretty confident this wouldn’t take off at any of the congregations I’ve served, but it’s a helpful challenge in my mind, to think about how technology migh be put to use for the sake of the Gospel. There’s a place for Twitter, I think…

As quoted in The Language of God by Francis S. Collins:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?

Well, I did my time “behind bars” yesterday, and although I haven’t (yet) met my “bail” of $1300, I’ve come a long way since this time last week - as of yesterday, I’ve raised $805 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Woo-hoo!

Of course, I really haven’t done much at all. All I did was ask. It’s my family, friends, and the members of St. John’s who have done all the heavy lifting here. They’re the ones who helped me (almost) make my “bail.” They’re the ones who are making it possible for a kid to go to camp. They’re the ones who are heroes here.

None of them asked for anything of me at all, but I want to thank all of my donors publicly. I am so grateful for you, and for your generosity!

Those who gave:

• Carolyn Butts
• Dorraine Carpenter
• Lavonne Craven
• Scott and Deb Fredendall
• Carolyn Golz
• Steve Hagen
• Dorothy Helgesen
• Mel and Ruth Janes
• Nancy Jorgenson
• Lois Krajeck
• Howard and Laverne Krueger
• Barbara Lawrenz
• Neil and Joann Lien
• Keith Miller
• Hazel Neuman
• George Nickels
• Michael Nisse
• Ken and Sue Reese
• Roy and Jeanette Rosser
• Jim and Jan Schaefer
• Anonymous Donors

For a good cause, that is.

I will be “behind bars” this Wednesday from 10:00-11:00 at Halverson’s in Stoughton. I’m raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Bail has been set at $1300, and I’ve got a long way to go! You can make your donation online by visiting the official MDA site. Every donation is tax deductible.

Don’t let me get sent to Gitmo for not making bail! And don’t let a kid with MD miss out - please give today.

A camp friend of mine added this awesome picture to his Facebook album tonight. (Yes, that’s me in the middle.) Don’t ask me what we were doing that day - some sort of camp contest, I would guess - but I have to say, this one made me laugh out loud when I saw it! Thanks, Mike.

OK, maybe not quite in the clinical sense. But I’ve spent a rather obscene amount of time the last few weeks working on my new version of the St. John’s web site. (It’s now online, BTW, at www.stjohns-lc.org.)

I’m really pleased with the reactions I’ve been getting; one of my colleagues e-mailed me: “I’M SO JEALOUS.”

The real test will be whether I can convince people at church to learn how to post to the site, and then whether they’ll do it. I worked with Debbie, our secretary, on it today. Posting news as she gets it is an extra task for her, but I thought she took it in stride. We were able to add an update about our pastor emeritus’ health, and I think she felt goof about doing that without a lot of help from me.

I’m very happy with WordPress as a platform. I love that I can add all kinds of useful plugins to it that let me tweak both the platform and my sites. And it feels good to go open source. I think this will serve the church well for a long time to come.

Time to get some supper… but I wanted to get a new post up here, since all my time lately has been spent on that OTHER site!

I think my eyes are starting to cross.

I’ve spent most of the day working on a major overhaul of the church’s web site. (The changes aren’t live yet, though.) Lots of putzy work, tweaking code, troubleshooting, and such. Lots of staring at a screen. Lots of eyestrain.

Things are coming along pretty well, although I’ve run up against one scripting error that I can’t seem to figure out. The supposed answer is literally as easy as changing a “1″ to a “9,” but that doesn’t seem to do anything for me. Hoping some answer will come to me when I’m able to see straight again.

When I came up for air, I saw that Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl - I’m sure my father-in-law enjoyed that game!

I need to drag my sorry butt to bed, though. It’s been a long day.

I’m posting to the new WordPress-based blog using Windows Live Writer. This is just a test to make sure they’re interfacing correctly.

I’ve now transitioned my site over to WordPress. What that means, for practical purposes:

1. The blog is now my main content. This has been true for a couple of years, but it’s now official. I’m putting the blog front and center, and merging it completely into the site. Other pages will get added, but they’ll be there to supplement my writing on the blog.
2. The address for my blog has changed. Now you’ll just come straight to www.bobschaefer.com, without having to add the extra “/blog” bit to the end of it.
3. The look of things might change more regularly. It’s easy to change themes in WordPress, and it might take some experimenting before I settle on something I want to use long term. Bear with me - I wanted to get the main transition done right away so I can start using WP.

There are other differences, some of them very important, but they’re going on behind the scenes. For my fellow bloggers, consider this a recommendation - WP is worth using! For my family and friends who aren’t the least bit interested in techie, bloggy stuff - sorry… most of the bumps should be over now.