Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

So, I just did a whirlwind tour to Cleveland and back today for a regional SBL meeting, leaving at 5am, presenting at 1:30pm and 3pm, and then, driving all the way back and getting home around 10pm. Long day for SBL stuff to say the least!!! However, I just checked my email and got some more good, SBL news, here's what one email said: "Dear Michael, Congratulations, your paper, 'Decoded: Exploring Rap's Use of Biblical-Apocalyptic Rhetoric,' was accepted for the 2011 Annual Meeting program unity Bible and American Popular Culture." So, in addition to creating and hosting the session titled "Tipping Points" that has a list of stellar scholars, I now have confirmation that I'll be presenting some of my research. I'm super excited because this paper is a bit different from the types of things I usually do; I think it's going to be quite fun!!!

Well, that's what Asbury Theological Seminary's president, Dr. Tim Tennent, suggests. But probably not for the reasons you might expect. Anyway, you can check out the 4-part review of Bell's Love Wins at Tennent's blog by clicking the following link (only the first part is posted so far): Tennent's Blog . In my opinion, it is this type of fair-handed treatment that Christians should be offering up, not the reductionistic, judgmental, close-minded and hateful reviews/interviews like those HERE and HERE .

The last couple of days, the Bell-Bashir Battle Royale video has been floating around the internet. Unfortunately, for the last 7 days I have been incredibly ill, so, I've missed a lot of the conversation. I've barely been able to follow the Tsunami, which is quite a bigger deal, I think, at the moment. Actually, in the Bashir interview, that's the first thing Bashir asks Bell about; he wants to know if God had some kind of hands-off, hands-on role in the whole thing and whether or not God is culpable either way. Sticking with the overall tenor of the video for a moment, I really think Bell and Bashir are interesting to watch. Bashir just comes out swinging from question #1 and really, honestly, I think that Bashir's "isn't it...isn't it" forceful type of questions are quite frankly, unfair. Why? Well, I see in them every bit of our world's love for reductionism. What I mean by that is the desire to want to whittle everything down, to reduce eve...

Ok, so, I'm going to do my best to keep this brief and to the point. I have been putting this post off for days but since I was just interrupted 5 minutes ago, I thought I'd go ahead and post it. Who was I interrupted by? A Southern Baptist preacher and his wife. That's right, at 7pm in the evening, they knocked on my door. When I opened the door, he did the first thing a good Baptist does: Handed me a tract. After that, he told me he was a pastor and then told me about his church. I told him I was a pastor too; he didn't know how to respond. So, I said, yeah, I am a teaching pastor at a new Methodist church. His silence ended as soon as I said that. So, what did he say when he found the words to speak again? You probably guessed it, that's right, he said, "Well, are you saved?" Yep! As soon as I said the word "Methodist" he questioned my salvation. He went on, "Even some pastors aren't saved, did you know that? They can ha...