Over the last year I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading blogs, books, and articles about the emerging church. This wasn’t any sort of research endeavor. I was just trying to keep up on what is going on and to get a feel for the issues being discussed. Some of the material I’ve read was written by advocates other materials were written by critics. Much of what I’ve read was interesting, some of it was just plain bad, and quite too often it didn’t really seem to say much (well, there were plenty of words, but little was actually communicated). I’ve come to the point now where I’m bored reading about the emerging church. I’m going back to my Puritan books and works by the Reformers (yes, I know…quite exciting). That’s not to say I won’t be reading any contemporary works (far from it…you can only spend so much time working through thee’s and thou’s). I’m just not going to be spending much time reading in the emerging/ent world.

Yesterday my three and a half year old was giving my wife a lecture on the evils of idol worship. To make his point clear he said:

We never should worship idols or trees or cheerios!

He’s definitely right, but I’ve always missed the part about cheerios when reading Calvin on idolatry. Maybe he was referring to Joe’s post on gluttony.

My three and a half year old son after having a spoonful of ice cream:

Mmmmm….that feels good in my tummy.

A neighbor peeking her head in our front door:

My grandpa has yucky teeth from coffee!

A neighbor sitting at our table for lunch:

My dad is my son.

Gotta love the little people.

This weekend besides doing lots of homework I spent time reading portions of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. If you’ve not read it before or it has been a while since you have I highly suggest working your way through it. Each chapter is a concise summary of a biblical doctrine. I’m always amazed at how simply, clearly, and yet powerfully the great confessions of faith articulate what the Bible teaches on a given topic.

I also spent time reading The Lord’s Day by Joseph Pipa. So far I’ve only read the first two chapters, but have already been given much to think about. Related to both confessions and Dr. Pipa is The Confessing Church, a paper by Dr. Pipa which I also read this weekend. In the paper Dr. Pipa attempts to set forth the biblical basis for creeds and confessions of faith, explain their usefulness, and defend full subscription to confessional standards (in this case he is arguing for full subscription to the Westminster Standards within the PCA).

Ahh…a like-minded brother!