Karis member Aarik Danielsen interviewed Brian Regan, one of my favorite comedians, for this week’s Ovation section in the Tribune. Regan is performing this Thursday at the Missouri Theatre.  Check out the following quotes.  They have some relevance for contemporary preaching, I’m convinced:

• On authenticity in shows: “You don’t ever want to look like you’re mailing it in where you’re kind of on stage, going through the motions and basically reciting your act. That’s bad news, man, if you ever look like you’re reciting your own material. You want to be living it, and you want it to feel like it’s coming out right then and there, truthfully and honestly and happening at the moment. It’s a quest — you don’t always hit it, but that’s the goal is to make it look like it’s immediate.”
• On relevance to the entire audience: “I want most of my stuff to just come from the perspective of a human, the human condition. It’s not a joke about being a male. I don’t want to write too many jokes about being a guy or about being a dad or about being a husband. Anything that factions off the audience, to me, it’s starting to go in the wrong direction if you hit on that too much. I want to do jokes that have to do with being a human. Going to the eye doctor — everybody does that — or going to the emergency room or buying greeting cards at a greeting card store. Things where everybody in the audience can go, “Hey, man, I’ve experienced that. I know what he’s talking about.”
• On the message’s importance over the messenger: “I’m not interested in being a TV star — that doesn’t affect me in the least. Not that I wouldn’t want to do that if my comedy was associated with it. If that could help get my comedy famous, I wouldn’t mind going along for the ride. The point is to make the comedy famous, not me personally. For that reason, maybe I’m not as in the public eye out there as other people just because everybody has different quests. My quest isn’t to become famous. My quest is for my comedy to become famous. If it could be famous and me stay anonymous, that would be the perfect world.”

Karis is proud to be a part of the Acts 29 Network and to be supported monthly financially by Mars Hill Church.  The church’s pastor is Mark Driscoll.  This week, Mark was on ABC’s Nightline, debating the existence of Satan.  He did a fabulous job.  The video is found here.  The website is a bit messed up.  Some persistence is required.  Sometimes the video just randomly starts over and you have to replay it.  But the debate is well-worth watching.  Great job, brother!

Karis member and Community Group leader Aarik Danielsen, also a Mizzou journalism grad student, did this great commentary on KBIA about beards (click here to listen).  Do we judge people based on appearances?  Do they prevent us from loving each other?  Great words, Aarik.

Check out this article in the New York Times.  An excerpt:

Over past three decades, the increasing availability of ultrasound equipment has assisted India’s cultural preference for sons and distorted the sex ratio across the nation. As the equipment has become more affordable, special ultrasound clinics have opened even in the most impoverished parts of the country.

Before undergoing an ultrasound test in India, pregnant women must sign a form agreeing not to seek to know the sex of the fetus. Doctors who disclose the sex during an examination can be imprisoned for up to five years. But the law is widely flouted. Studies suggest that doctors often give coded hints, by remarking for example, “Your child will be a fighter,” or by offering pink or blue sweets, as appropriate, on the way out. Successful prosecutions are rare.

Read this article by Michael Horton that sums up well, I think, the point of the Evangelical Manifesto I mentioned yesterday.  From the article:

We propose a two-fold strategy. First, we will have to clear up this confusion about the gospel and cultural values. Being pro-choice I believe is morally wrong, but it is not heretical. God will never be anyone’s mascot and will never allow himself to be worshipped in either the carved image of the donkey or the elephant. We cannot impose our will on the American electorate anymore and we will have to stop it. We’ll have to stop shaking our fists at our neighbors. We must call the church to a cease-fire with the world over gays in the military and engage in spiritual warfare for their hearts and minds for the first time perhaps in forty years. Second, we’ll not only have to recover gospel proclamation, but we’ll have to learn how to interact positively again with our culture. When the church was facing a really hostile culture in the first century–a lot more hostile than ours–Paul instructed the early Christians to “Make it your ambition to lead a quite life to work well with your hands so that you may win the respect of outsiders and have enough to give those in need.”

Luke Daugherty, our Pastor for Worship and Mission at Karis, and a gifted writer and Mizzou J-school grad, has some great thoughts about our broken, American way of life here.

Today, “The Evangelical Manifesto” was released.  This document, spearheaded by Os Guiness, attempts to reclaim the term “evangelical” from today’s popular definition perpetuated by the media– a large voting block of ignorant rednecks who care only about abortion and homosexuality.  This document does a fine job of expressing that the term’s original meaning had to do with the gospel only, and that clinging to that biblical gospel does not mean that you are hostile toward the surrounding culture.  In fact, holding to the gospel makes you the exact opposite!   I have signed the document.  I encourage you to read the summary, as well as the entire statement.

I read this today from Colossians 2:20-23:

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations- “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” ( referring to things that all perish as they are used)- according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. 

Translation: legalism simply does not work.  Not only is it biblically wrong, but it’s practically foolish.

Check out this great NY Times article by David Brooks. Wouldn’t the world be different if we focused less on us and more on our callings from God? Of course, the article could go further– our task is not just to not think about ourselves– it’s to think about others. It reminds me of this quote from my favorite musician of all time, Rich Mullins:

And especially in a day when so much emphasis and so much pressure is put on us to esteem ourselves. I don’t know how anyone can wake up with morning breath and pillow head and feel any self-esteem. That is not the sort of thing that I want to put my faith in. And in the church—it’s unbelievable to me that this whole follishness about esteeming yourself has leaked into the church. I kinda go, ‘Christ didn’t ask us to esteem ourselves.”

I think if Christ would have asked, I think He would probably say, “Look, buddy, you’d be lucky if you could forget yourself. If you could lose yourself, you’d be luckier than if you found yourself.” It would be wonderful if you knew the names of the trees between your house and where you work, between your house and your church. If you knew that was a tulip tree and that was a redbud. It would be great if you knew the names of the constellations. It would be great if you knew something about your neighbors. It would be a lucky thing for you if you forgot yourself, if you lost yourself.

HT: Jeremy Linneman

This summarizes a key goal of “Theology at the Forge,” as well as the overall ministry of Karis:

“The renewed mind.”  The mind of Christ.”  “The Christian mind.”  Harry Blamires popularised this third expression in his book of that title, which since its publication in 1963 has had widespread influence.  By a “Christian mind” he is referring to not a mind occupied with specifically “religious” topics, but to a mind which can think about even the most “secular” topics “Christianly,” that is, from a Christian perspective.  It is not the mind of a schizoid Christian who “hops in and out of his Christian mentality as the topic of conversation changes from the Bible to the day’s newspaper.”  No, the Christian mind, he writes, is “a mind trained, informed, equipped to handle data of secular controversy within a framework of reference which is constructed of Christian presuppositions” (John Stott).