As many of you know, I've been a Calvinist from the start. I'll never forget the time I preached on TULIP at Coastlands and freaked a lot of people out. I enjoyed this article and thought it was worth the post. I'd love to hear your comments.

The New Calvinism
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
If you really want to follow the development of conservative Christianity,track its musical hits. In the early 1900s you might have heard "The OldRugged Cross," a celebration of the atonement. By the 1980s you could haveshared the Jesus-is-my-buddy intimacy of "Shine, Jesus, Shine." And today,more and more top songs feature a God who is very big, while weare...well, hark the David Crowder Band: "I am full of earth/ You areheaven's worth/ I am stained with dirt/ Prone to depravity."
Calvinism is back, and not just musically. John Calvin's 16th centuryreply to medieval Catholicism's buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses isEvangelicalism's latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereignand micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination'slogical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time's dawn,God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequenthuman action or decision.
Calvinism, cousin to the Reformation's other pillar, Lutheranism, is a bitless dour than its critics claim: it offers a rock-steady deity whoorchestrates absolutely everything, including illness (or homeforeclosure!), by a logic we may not understand but don't have tosecond-guess. Our satisfaction — and our purpose — is fulfilled simply by"glorifying" him. In the 1700s, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards investedCalvinism with a rapturous near mysticism. Yet it was soon overtaken inthe U.S. by movements like Methodism that were more impressed with humanwill. Calvinist-descended liberal bodies like the Presbyterian Church(U.S.A.) discovered other emphases, while Evangelicalism's loss ofappetite for rigid doctrine — and the triumph of that friendly, fuzzyJesus — seemed to relegate hard-core Reformed preaching (Reformed operatesas a loose synonym for Calvinist) to a few crotchety Southern churches.
No more. Neo-Calvinist ministers and authors don't operate quite on a RickWarren scale. But, notes Ted Olsen, a managing editor at ChristianityToday, "everyone knows where the energy and the passion are in theEvangelical world" — with the pioneering new-Calvinist John Piper ofMinneapolis, Seattle's pugnacious Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, head ofthe Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention. TheCalvinist-flavored ESV Study Bible sold out its first printing, andReformed blogs like Between Two Worlds are among cyber-Christendom'shottest links.
Like the Calvinists, more moderate Evangelicals are exploring cures forthe movement's doctrinal drift, but can't offer the same blanketassurance. "A lot of young people grew up in a culture of brokenness,divorce, drugs or sexual temptation," says Collin Hansen, author of Young,Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists. "Theyhave plenty of friends: what they need is a God." Mohler says, "The momentsomeone begins to define God's [being or actions] biblically, that personis drawn to conclusions that are traditionally classified as Calvinist."Of course, that presumption of inevitability has drawn accusations ofarrogance and divisiveness since Calvin's time. Indeed, some of today'senthusiasts imply that non-Calvinists may actually not be Christians.Skirmishes among the Southern Baptists (who have a competing non-Calvinistcamp) and online "flame wars" bode badly.
Calvin's 500th birthday will be this July. It will be interesting to seewhether Calvin's latest legacy will be classic Protestant backbiting orwhether, during these hard times, more Christians searching for securitywill submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country'sinfancy.

Well, it's good to be back in good ol' San Diego! To the left is a picture of Crystal Pier, an icon in PB. It's one of my favorite places and one of the first beaches I took my kids to when we first arrived back. God has blessed us with typical March San Diego weather, plenty of warmth and sunshine. It's nice to have tanned feet again.

In our 21 years of marriage, we have had three distinct phases so far. The first 4 or so years was finishing college for Kelley, doing youth ministry at Del Cerro Baptist Church and laying the foundation in our marriage. We left a very comfortable situation there to attend seminary up in Marin County and start a new life. God blessed us with 4 amazing years there and once again, we left a very comfortable situation for the unknown when we came back to San Diego to start a church. God was very gracious to us in that he allowed Coastlands Church to exist for over 13 years from core team development to the end.

Now we are in phase 4, returning to San Diego and ready to start something new once again. We are excited about buying another home here in San Diego, stoked that we made some cash on the sale of our home last Fall and way-stoked that just like 8 years ago, we are once again in a great place to buy a house. We've got a decent amount of money to put down and housing prices in San Diego are certainly good for buyers.

Please pray with us that God will open the right doors as we look to him for my next pastoring job and a nice house so we can resettle somewhere here in San Diego.

What's it worth?

Kelley and I watched a great movie tonight, "Flash of Genius." It tells the story of Dr. Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent wiper. It's a fascinating story of one man's quest/obsession to prove to Ford Motor Co. and the world that he truly was the inventor of this product. If you've seen the movie, you know how it ends. I won't give that away here. I would love to hear from any of you who have seen it though. It's a classic story of "gaining the whole world, yet losing your soul." (Mark 8:36) In the process of fighting for what really was rightly his, he lost his marriage.

It's a great movie because it makes you think about fighting for what is legally and rightfully yours, but at what cost?It's moral victory for Dr. Kearns in the end, but a sad scene when his wife walks away. I feel for the guy because it's great to see the little guy take down the giants (Dr. Kearns vs. Ford Motor Co.) but sad to see his family suffer. To me, it comes full circle to the wisdom of God's word on the value of our families above our jobs. Any time I see a movie where someone "sells their soul" for gain, it makes me dig deep and remember the greatest blessings God has given me, a personal relationship with Him and a beautiful wife and 5 amazing children.

The great Northwest

I'm a firm believer that you need to make the most of every day and every situation. For as long as we're here in Washington, we are trying to do that. We took some great photos of all the crazy snow we had here and now I've got these great pics from the hike we took a few weeks ago with my sister. I'm still not quite sure where we were, somewhere about an hour out of Bremerton, past Seabeck along the Hood Canal? Regardless, it was Washington at it's finest, sunny, clear and near the water and mountains.

Bishop of what?

Now that all the excitement has (somewhat) calmed down from the inauguration, it's interesting to see just how "tolerant" Obama was with his invites for those who prayed and spoke at the big event. Diversity seemed to be the key word on Tuesday. As with most politicians, Obama did his best to please everyone (always a mistake) by inviting opposing clergy such as Rick Warren and Bishop V Gene Robinson. I find it interesting in the debates of gays vs. not gays just how intolerant and angry most gays are with those who are not gay and don't openly accept and condone that lifestyle.

Rick Warren applauded the President-elect this week for inviting the openly gay Episcopal Bishop V Gene Robinson to pray at the inaugural opening ceremony. “President-elect Obama has again demonstrated his genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together in search of common ground,” Warren said in a statement. “I applaud his desire to be the president of every citizen.”

Yet Robinson gave what seems to be a typical response to Warren's invitation to pray at the inaugural event: Robinson was among the critics, calling the Warren invitation a “slap in the face”, according to The Washington Post. If those who are gay are all about "tolerance" and "diversity" why can't their response be a little more positive when someone who doesn't share their view is asked to pray or speak?

Yet to me, as a pastor myself, this is where the Bishop Robinson issue gets weird. In preparation for the event, the bishop said he has read inaugural prayers throughout history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were”, according to the New York Times. For his prayer, Robinson said he is “very clear” that it “will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scriptures or anything like that”. “The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer,” he said.
Robinson said he might make the prayer out to “the God of our many understandings”.

I'm thinking at this point that he may want to opt out of the Christian faith. Maybe he needs to be Bishop of his own religion. It's like he sort of wants to still be affiliated with Christianity by being an Episcopal Bishop, yet doesn't want to do anything crazy like say a Christian prayer at the inauguration. Brother, pick a side. And we wonder why so many non-Christians want nothing to do with our faith. I can't blame them for being confused.

And kudos to Rick Warren for accepting the invitation to pray and doing such a good job on Tuesday.

This Washington weather is kinda crazy! These last few days we've been teased by the sun. I left the house this morning with my boys in the midst of thick fog and arrived home at 5pm in even thicker fog.

However, the reason we left the house this morning was to go on a hike with my sister Cindy, her husband Dave, my niece Stephanie and their dog Rascal. We hiked somewhere up near Hood Canal. Once we got there the sun was actually out and we had a blast. Not only that we hiked to a beach! A Washington beach, but a beach none the less. The whole hike/experience was absolutely beautiful. These sunny days really show off Washington's beauty.

I took a bunch of great photos on my sisters camera so once she emails the pics to me, I'll post some here. We are enjoying our time with family here and soaking in every opportunity we can. Even though our time here in Wa. will be shorter then I had originally planned on, we're doing our best to enjoy the extreme weather change from San Diego.

A night away

Thanks to the generosity of my parents, and sister, Kelley and I got a night away to celebrate our 21st anniversary. I'm so blessed to have such a great wife like Kelley. She is the love of my life and fantastic mother to our 5 wonderful children. I am a man blessed beyond measure and am daily grateful for God's goodness in my life. Here's a few pics of the killer room we got at less then full price 'cause the girl at the front desk was way-cool.