Random

• I had a wisdom tooth pulled this morning -- went well -- clean pull -- no pain or bruising -- no big deal -- except, I was thinking as I was sitting there waiting for the local anesthesia to numb me up -- looking out the panoramic window at the Philippine Sea and the bay -- watching the waves break on the reef -- I wonder, is there any other dentist office in the world with such a view?

• I keep stumbling across blogs that have linked to my crazy4citrus.com site and I'm reminded of how grateful I am for my friends -- many of whom I've never met face-to-face. I know that you're not all citrus obsessed and that you're just helping me out. Thank you. In March the site generated an average of 48¢ a day in ad revenue. It's not quite enough to retire from the missionary support dole, yet. :-) But it's a start. It's really all a matter of website traffic levels.

• So, it was disclosed this morning that the Guam Memorial Hospital, Guam's only non-military hospital, the only hospital to which most of the 170,000 Guamanians have access, has been without an operational fire alarm system for years -- and the fire department has been aware of it! They've got a goofy system where there is a hospital employee who patrols the building looking for fires. ~ Link

Frankly, even if there were competent management at the hospital, the aging facility would still be a major challenge. We need to bulldoze the whole thing and start over.

• Talk about a slow flying plane. In January I ordered a copy of Kenneth Berding's book What Are Spiritual Gifts: Rethinking the Conventional View. Amazon shipped it priority mail on January 29th. It arrived in our PO box today -- April 3rd!

In a nutshell Berding argues that according to the contextual evidence in the letters of Paul, the so-called spiritual gifts should not be viewed as special abilities to do ministry; rather, they should be viewed as the ministries themselves. (p. 32)

...Now if you wanted to describe the special-abilities view, you'd have to use words such as abilities, enablements, and powers. The spiritual-ministries approach, however, uses an entirely different set of words: roles, functions, assignments, and ministries. (p. 33)

If Berding is right, it should refocus a lot of the church's energy in a positive way. Should be an interesting read.

• "Duke sociologist says conservative Protestants save less and accumulate fewer assets." ~ CT Link

Is this such a bad thing?

• Habitat for Humanity shifting toward building more green homes. Green is good. Have I ever mentioned that green is my favorite color? :-) ~ Link

• John MacArthur has annoyed half the Internet with his assertion that contextualing the gospel is unimportant -- or that it's actually a bad thing -- "the apostles went out with a complete disdain for context." -- Link

MacArthur is mistaken in his understanding and assertion. Reality is actually closer to the other extreme. In college communication classes we learned the axiom, "You cannot not communicate." The same can be said of contextualization. "You cannot not contextualize." The issue is whether we do it well or appropriately.

• Apollo Global, Inc, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, has purchased Universidad de Artes, Ciencias y Comunicacion ("UNIACC"), an accredited, private arts and communications university in Chile. ~ Link

• The UK has some cool looking new coin designs ~ Link