Having just arrived in a new city, one of the first tasks at hand is finding a new body of believers to worship and fellowship with.  This can be a little intimidating, and in fact, this will be the first time that my wife and I can literally “go anywhere we want” (meaning, we have no prior connections or obligations to any particular body of believers here).

Since early in my life, I’ve been a member of the PCA and have attended PCA churches.  There’s many things that I really love about the PCA and their style of worship.  I am thankful for the gospel-centered focus that every PCA church I’ve attended has had (which, unfortunately, is often neglected in favor of “relevance” and “accessibility” by many mainstream churches today).  While there is a large amount of diversity within PCA churches, they tend to be generally more liturgical, formal, and theological.  So, this is, of course, the form of worship that I feel most comfortable and at home with.  Of the three PCA churches I’ve attended in my life, I think that each one has been progressively slightly more formal than the previous.  When I say formal I’m talking about things like; use of responsive readings, hymns vs. contemporary music, style of preaching, church architecture, etc.

This most recent Sunday I was invited by some good friends to visit their church with them and share lunch together afterwords.  I enjoyed attending a small, local Bible church with them on Sunday morning.  The music was contemporary, the setting was informal and small, they had a multimedia presentation, drums, guitar, the whole bit.  I loved it.

I think that part of why I enjoyed the service so much was because it was so different from what I’ve had previously.  I know that my heart is sinful and so can become dead to any form of worship given long enough exposure to it.  I have no doubt that after participating in this style of worship for any length of time I would become lazy and apathetic in my worship, and that a highly structured, liturgical, formal service would likely be a balm to my soul.

Following the service I was talking with my friends over lunch about worship and the church.  I was only half joking when I said I wished that I could attend a church where they radically altered their style of worship every six months!  I’m not sure where my wife and I will end up attending church (and I must wait for her to return home from international travel before we make any kind of decision anyway), but wherever we go, we will be part of the body of Christ and enjoy fellowship with believers, and that’s an amazing thing!

Wow.  So, it’s been awhile.  I’ve been silent the past few weeks as a result of some major life changes as well as some major laziness.  Let me shed some light on both of these.

Major life changes - my wife and I have just finished moving cross-country.  I’ve been busy packing, driving, unpacking, and job hunting.  I think I’m pretty close to securing some exciting employment, but I’ll hold off on saying anything until it’s certain.  Thankfully my wife’s job is already lined up, so we’re not necessarily worried, but I will definitely breathe easier when I’m officially employed as well.  My dad helped me drive all of our stuff across the country, and I really appreciated his help and getting to spend some time with him.

So…all that to say, it’s been a very busy past month.  I’ve got a couple of exciting ideas bouncing around for the site and hopefully we’ll be seeing much more activity here in the coming weeks.

Now then, in regard to laziness.  Let me share a story to begin with.

I really love soccer.  It’s probably not my favorite sport but it’s close.  I’m not really that good at soccer, nor do I follow it closely - but I love playing and watching it.  A few years back I had the opportunity to play soccer on a cool Sunday night with a really diverse, really interesting group of college international students.  I think we probably had at least six or seven different languages represented in our game.  We had students from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latina America, and of course, North America - it was great!

Since I was one of the weaker players, I hung back and played defense.  I was playing pretty decently - making a few good passes here, making some poor passes there.  Now then - in comes the opposing team’s offense, barreling hard down my side of the field.  I attack (too aggressive), miss, and the ball rolls past me.  Frustrated, I started to get up slowly, seeing the play already past me and thinking I didn’t have anything else to contribute.  As I’m rising to my feet, one of my team-mates, a large Eastern European man, runs past me shouting in a thick (Russian maybe?) accent, “Get up!  Keep going!”  He wasn’t angry, nor dissapointed even in my sloppy play - he was just so into the game and he was encouraging me to get back into it too.

Ok…so that’s sort of a random story, but for some reason this memory is sharp, crisp, and clear in my mind.  Often times when I am discouraged by my failure this memory serves to comfort me and reminds me of the Gospel.  We fail and fall down, and are hesitant to rise for fear of failure again, but there is Jesus yelling at us, “Get up!  Keep going!”

So - am I little dissapointed in my ability to contribute to this blog regularly?  Absolutely.  Am I going to quit?  Nope.  Stick around - good things coming.

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”  And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”  And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”  Then He said to me, “It is done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.”

Sometimes, following God’s will for our lives can be a difficult thing to do. I’m not even entirely sure what the phrase “God’s will” means in context of talking about one’s life. I’m not convinced that when presented with an array of choices, one is “God’s will” and the others are not. Rather, I guess being a good Presbyterian I remain committed to the idea that God knows what choice we will make before we will make it, but the choosing is still our own.

Practically I suppose this means that we have the freedom to make choices in life without agonizing over the question of whether it is God’s will for us or not. Certainly we should seek wisdom and counsel in decision making, but sometimes it’s good to move beyond fear and embrace our freedom in Christ to “just do it.”

More on this later - lots going on in my own life right now preventing me from posting more regularly, but expect some updates later this week.

I am a twenty-something currently residing in the Greater Philadelphia area, hoping that I’ll pick up some of that brotherly love for which the city is so famous. I love music, economics, and reading, and wish I could produce something of merit in all three disciplines. My loving wife promises to meticulously edit everything I post so that you can be sure my writings are grammatically superior to those of my colleagues.

Though I’m now a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, I was raised Lutheran, which has influenced my love for liturgy and the church calendar. Two of my interests are history and sociology, so you can expect posts asking questions about Christianity from those perspectives. I look forward to the opportunity this blog will allow in writing about my ideas and allowing others to interact with them.

I am a bibliophile and a bookseller. I spend most of my time buying and selling books, reading books and drawing in sketchbooks. When I grow up I want to tell visual stories on screen, monitor or page. So, many of my post will be about art, culture and beauty from a Christian perspective. I grew up in a baptist and then when I was in highschool my family joined a church that was ‘charismatic, covenantal and reformed’. I currently attend a PCA church.

Like Eric, I’m interested in a more ecumenical vision, although I am protestant, many of my friends and favorite authors are Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

For more on me you can check out my personal blog or my art blog.

I am a “secret nerd” (or not so secret, depending who you ask), and enjoy: building computers, linux, Free and Open Source Software, teaching myself web design and coding, video games, and science fiction/fantasy literature. I also love to spend time with my wife, my youth, and our cats (in that order of importance).

I have been affiliated with the PCA for most of my life, and in general find myself with an interest in all things theological and philosophical. I studied history and philosophy in college, and am currently serving as a youth pastor with intent to head to Seminary in a few years time.

I am most interested in seeing this website become a place for thoughtful, loving, and engaged discussion between the oft-fractured and segmented portions of the Christian body. It seems to me that many times our Christian presence on the web takes the form of (pick your poison): vitriolic hate, ignorant blathering, or denominationally-centric theological debates. Maybe there’s a place for the third item in that list, but certainly not the first two. My hope is that we can bridge denominational, theological, and cultural barriers through the sorts of discussion and interaction that our current Christian “web presence” distinctly lacks.

Now that I’ve broken the ice a little bit…let’s see if we can’t get Andrew and Stephen to post a little bit about themselves as well.

Today I learned my first lesson on blogging: always back-up your work as you write. I lost the entirety of my first “real” post earlier when BloGTK crashed on me running on Ubuntu Linux. So far I’ve been unsuccessful at retrieving the data and am more or less resigned to the fact that I’ll have to rewrite it. Oh well, could have been worse.

While I’m here, let me talk briefly about out current structure and setup as we get started. Readers should notice three primary blog contributors for the near future; myself (Eric), Andrew, and Stephen. I’ll leave it up to each of us to say anything personal about ourselves, but let me just say that I’m very excited to have these two excellent men on-board with me and think you will benefit from their unique and varied perspectives and interests.