An Admin Day

This post is serving a joint purpose. In the second place, it is an experiment with MS Word 2007’s blog post feature. I’m trying to use category tags. I’m impressed. When I went to select a tag, all of my WordPress tags were visible, and I had the option of adding others were I to desire to do so. Fantastic. It just scored above Deepest Sender in that respect.

In the first place, it is to shout to the world that I have just completed worship planning this year up to Advent. That’s not to say that nothing will be added or altered between now and then. It is to say that the services are largely planned, the musicians all have their music, and our secretary can go at her own pace in generating the bulletins all the way through the end of November 2007. Everyone likes to be ahead of the game, and at the moment we’re well ahead of the game. The farthest ahead I’d been before was about 3-4 months. Now I can still work up a service every week, but there’s a significant cushion in place.

I am also rather impressed with the LSB
Hymn Selection Guide. It offers a nice list of hymns and gives their relationships to the appointed pericopes for the day. It’s a phenomenal resource. But it brings with it something of a gripe. It includes in its suggestions some selections that are only available in the Lutheran Service Builder software. The example that is bothersome at the moment is that “I Trust, O Christ, In You Alone” (LW 357) is LSB 972. The bound edition of the LSB tops out at 966. Alas, it’s such a phenomenal hymn. Do we bite the bullet and buy the Lutheran Service Builder for the sake of a hymn? As beautiful as it is, I simply can’t justify it.

Answers no one wants to hear

Christopher Hitchens slices through some basic assumptions about Iraq here. Give it a look. What say you?

Compassion?

Go read this bit from Dennis Prager today.

I don’t think he’s latched on to the appropriate word with compassion, but the gist of the argument is spot on.

Islamicization of Antwerp

An enlightening article from The Washington Times addresses a significant issue facing the Western world that many are unwilling to address. You may check out the article here, or simply continue reading below the break.

Office 2007

This is a test post from within Word 2007.

Civility

Upon some much needed reflection, it appears that a good deal of my frustrations over the last many months might be reduced to a word: civility. Or rather, they are due to a serious lack thereof. A couple examples:

97th Percentile

Ok, not really. This was only twelve questions, but it did come up exactly as I have before on more exhaustive MBTI evaluations I’ve taken.

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTJ)

Your personality type is logical, uncompromising, independent, and nonconformist. Only about 3% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 4% of all men. You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

There’s a light…

No, no, not over at the Frankenstein place. (Pardon the obscure RHPS reference.)

Amid the maelstrom of post-modern worldviews and the blathering emptiness of contemporary praise choruses, blown hither and yon by the winds of whatever is catchy, whatever is “now,” whatever extols the wonder that is You, there came a voice.

After the service last night a young woman approached me. “Can I talk to you about Communion? I’d like to take it here, if I may. I’m LCMS, but I wanted to make sure it was ok.”

It gave me hope. There was no assumption that it would simply be ok. In fact, as the congregation celebrated the Supper last night, she did not. She got it. She got that it’s more than just me-n-Jesus and a warm fuzzy. She confessed the bodily presence of Jesus in the Sacrament, and she took seriously the fellowship issues. That was, in a word, cool. It was seriously old school.

Do you remember those days? I recall visiting a congregation a little while back. I introduced myself to the pastor before the service and asked if I might commune that Sunday. He looked at me like I was a Hungarian tourist with a bad phrase book (a la Python: “My hovercraft is full of eels.”). I figured he’d want the conversation as much as I did. Apparently I was wrong.

It really is a blessing to have the conversation. Oftentimes it doesn’t take long, but it takes seriously what God through St. Paul gives to us in 1 Cor. 11. It’s important. There’s a lot going on in the Lord’s Supper. It’s bigger than you and me. This visitor got it, and it seriously brightened my evening.