Today in Blogworld 02.26.14

Mike Leake

Is Sexual Orientation Analogous to Race?

This discussion is heating up folks.

Avoid Every Appearance of Evil

1 Thessalonians 5:22 is often used to restrict personal freedoms. But that is quite likely a misreading of the text.

My Evangelical Story Isn’t So Bad

We keep hearing stories of how terrible it was growing up in evangelical churches and why we ought to leave. I appreciate this piece by Derek Rishmawy. He shares his testimony and his thankfulness for evangelicalism.

Is the SBC Positioning Itself to Be Able to Oust Half Its Churches?

I haven’t been able to follow this discussion as closely as I’d like (having been trying to recover from getting two teeth extracted), but it looks to be one of the first big issues that we’ll see at this years SBC Convention.

My son thoroughly enjoyed this grammar lesson. He literally laughed so hard he peed his pants…or did he?

(HT: Aaron)

How to Improve Your Daily Blogging

Mike Leake 1 Comment

You read somewhere that it is a good idea to blog daily. So, you made that one of your blogging goals for the new year: post something every day by noon. 

And it worked.

You started out invigorated. Ideas kept rolling from your noggin to the computer. With increased writing your traffic naturally increased. Before you know it a handful of people who didn’t give birth to you are actually following  your blog. And you are actually becoming a better writer.”This writing daily thing is easy”, you tell yourself.

And then you hit a brick wall.

Nothing comes to you. You don’t feel like writing daily anymore. But you also don’t want to bring your new year’s resolution. You’ve grown to appreciate the rewards of daily blogging, but at the same time you are worried that your cheap deodorant isn’t holding up with your profuse sweating as you try to get something out into the ether by 11:40. 

For weeks now your writing is following a predictable pattern. In the morning you stress out, wondering what you are going to write for the day. Finally, you throw something together and hit publish at 11:56. You live off the high for the rest of the day, at least until it dawns on you that you have to do the whole thing over again tomorrow.

And let’s be honest. You are keeping up on the promise of quantity but the quality is suffering. More than half the time you are embarrassed to hit publish. When you finally do, you find yourself hoping that nobody reads it and that it doesn’t go viral on a Fail Blog. 

So how do you blog daily AND blog with quality?

I don’t pretend to have this mastered. Far from it. But I do believe that I have improved. Here is one way that happened: I got ahead.

If you can find a way to write a couple of weeks in advance you will have a wonderful advantage over the blogger that is sweating bullets 15 minutes before her usual posting time. When schedule a post a couple of weeks in advance this gives you time to edit and to tweak it. (As an example this post was written two weeks before publish date, and I’ve tweaked it a couple times).This also gives you time to let others look over your work. And perhaps the greatest advantage—you can change your mind. Blogging ahead will give you the freedom to hit delete.

Sounds like a wonderful luxury. But how can you even think about getting ahead when your sweating bullets to meet your daily deadline?

Consider doing one or two of these things:

  1. Recruit Guest bloggers. Listen, nobody is knocking on the door begging to write at Borrowed Light. It doesn’t come with a ton of glamour. But when I asked for a few writers I didn’t have difficulty filling out a weeks worth of articles*. There are plenty of people who love to write and would be honored to write for your audience. Just ask.
  2. Take a break. Unless you are Tim Challies you don’t have a crazy streak of consecutive days blogging. And even if you do, you’ll never pass Tim because he is a robot and likely has articles scheduled until sometime in 2046. I know it is hard to imagine but you can take a week off of regular blogging and it won’t cause your blog to implode. In fact it might even improve it.
  3. A week of quotes. If you absolutely cannot bring yourself to take a break and are convinced that you cannot get guest bloggers, there is still one more thing you can do. Raid your bookshelf for some great quotes. Have someone like John Owen be a guest blogger for you as you plunder one of his works. Type up a week or so of this type of post and then get yourself ahead.

Get yourself a week or two ahead and stay there. Take advantage of it. (I’m guilty at times of not taking advantage of the extra time to do editing). If you get a week ahead you should be able to write at about the same pace as you are now, but instead you are doing it ahead of schedule. If you want to really keep ahead have a guest post or two every week.

If you want quantity and quality on your blog this is one way to grow towards that.

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*And I’ve been blessed with some talented writers that have submitted articles that I’ve been honored to publish.

Today in Blogworld 02.25.14

Mike Leake

Jesus, The Antidote to BTS

Jared Wilson explains Blame Transference Syndrome (BTS) and how Jesus is the antidote.

If Daniel 3 Were Written Today

Trevin Wax has written a few pieces similar to this. I always love his writing but I believe he particularly shines when he writes in this fashion. This is a great way of thinking about contemporary issues through a biblical lens.

MLB Implements New Home Plate Collision Rule

The Posey Rule. Boo!!!!!

A Simple Way to Explain the OT to Children

I love it. And I think, with a couple tweaks, it’s a way to explain it to adults as well.

Hopefully my friends in the South will appreciate this. And I don’t want to spoil it for you but I think the goat in this film would be up for an Oscar:

Review of The New Calvinism Considered by Jeremy Walker

Mike Leake

I don’t like the phrase New Calvinism. Any time I’ve seen it thrown around its usually as an insult. And for that reason I was a little cautious when I picked up Jeremy Walker’s book, The New Calvinism Considered. But my unrest was quickly calmed. Instead what I found in the book were words from a friend.

I would likely fit the bill for a new Calvinist. At times I’m proud to wear that moniker. Like when Mark Dever is interviewed about the rise of this new Calvinism. I’m happy to be thrown in that mix. But at the same time there are things within this movement that cause me to shake my head. Sometimes I want to distance myself from this movement.

Apparently, that’s normal. As Walker notes the New Calvinism is not monolithic. In fact it is quite difficult to pin down.

Any survey and assessment of this order is admittedly like a snapshot of a recently discovered animal: just when you think you have captured the essence of the creature it moves again and you discover something new.

But even still there is something to this New Calvinism. It’s probably not as scary of a monster as some make it, nor is it going to save the world as some of my fellow Calvinists seem to think. Though it is difficult to pin down, New Calvinism is old enough now to take a look at and give some helpful critiques and commendations. Jeremy Walker aims to give the reader a pastoral and irenic assessment of the movement.

I believe he succeeds. His tone is tremendous. You can tell that he has the heart of a pastor and never once did I find him using a tone other than irenic. He’s writing as a friend, though outside the movement he’s giving us a great picture of ourselves and even being kind enough to suggest ways to improve.

Some that are not fans of the movement will likely need to read chapter three and really consider the commendations. I love Walker’s tone and his willingness to learn and commend a movement of which he disagrees. But I’m guessing that most of my readers do not fall into that category. Most of my readers are likely either unaware of, friendly to, or entrenched in this New Calvinism. So it will be of interest to note the critiques.

What are his critiques?

You need to read the book to really get a feel for these critiques, but here they are in summary form:

  • Pragmatism and commercialism
  • An unbalanced view of culture
  • A troubling approach to holiness
  • A potentially dangerous ecumenism
  • A genuine tension with regard to spiritual gifts
  • A degree of arrogance and triumphalism

This is what he deals with in chapter four but I think you can add a couple more than come to us from chapter 2. He notes there that this is a movement that is driven by personality. With that he mentions three dangers:

  • A slavish capitulation which causes ordinary pastors and Christians to not think for themselves because our top men have it covered
  • A mere imitation which not only follows the good but also exaggerates the not so good
  • A unintended disconnection where “the apple is falling a fair distance from the tree and then rolling some way too.”

The critiques are legit. I have some of the same ones myself. Which leads to my only critique of the book itself.

Suggestion for Improvement

The book is helpful and needs to be read, especially by those of us that are probably within this thing called New Calvinism. There is one way, though, that I believe Walker’s book could have been improved.

Walker is very specific and not afraid to name names in the beginning sections. He even names certain figureheads in sections of his critique. I find that very helpful. But I wish he would have used the same specificity to note the differences within the movement.

In the first section and in the appendix in the back he puts someone like Mark Dever within this New Calvinism. And I think that is probably fair to do such a thing. But I also note that Dever (along with myself) would nod in agreement with everyone of the critiques. None of them really seem to describe him.

In my opinion there are different tribes that fall under the umbrella of New Calvinism. While Walker does mention that the reader should be careful not to assume that everyone in New Calvinism fits the critique, it might have been good to have actually mentioned names. Perhaps a chapter on the different segments within New Calvinism would have been helpful.

Nevertheless, this is a great book that would do us well to consider. You can get your copy here.