Friday Notes

In his newsletter this month Bob Webber asks the question: Is God the object of our worship or the subject of worship? He has also started a blog.

There is an RNS article out on churches which utilize the virtual presence of a preaching pastor via satellite. It features Craig Groeschel of Life Church in Oklahoma City (which happens to be one of our Covenant churches). It is obvious that in some contexts this approach works very well. But I will ask again, what are we saying about the gospel, which hinges on an embodied presence of a Savior in humanity, if the primary presentation of that gospel is disembodied? Are we nudging closer and closer to a modern form of Gnosticism -- devaluing the physical reality?

Wilson Koppula, who is the pastor of the India Community Fellowship church which meets in our building on Sunday afternoons, stopped by to leave some information. He is taking his family to India for a month. This will be the first time they've been back as a family in 10 years. Pretty exciting.

Some of the weather gurus are predicting 102 degrees in Turlock today. If we hit that it will be the first triple-digit day of the year. It got so hot yesterday that we actually turned on the A/C for the first time. And you know it's hot when WE turn on the A/C.

Happy Canada Day to all of our relations and friends north of the "boundary".

The pictured flag is the original Maple Leaf which was flown in 1965 when they adopted it as their national symbol. According to Canada.com they are pulling it out of storage for today's festivities. Today marks the 138th year since confederation.

Bob Smietana is taking on both the mainstream media and the Bush administration in the matter of the African AIDS situation. Sometimes Bob figures out the best way to make everyone unhappy. I suspect he's right, though.