I've been holding back from posting because I didn't want to interrupt my series on the Evangelical Covenant Church's six essential Affirmations—which will require one more preliminary post on Evangelicalism and Pietism (coming soon!)—but alas there has just been too much happening. 

For starters, there was the whole end-of-the-world, rapture thing. I'm not going to do the usual "No one knows the day or hour…" shpeel 'cause I'm sure you've already heard it. In fact, after the date passed, I just started feeling sorry for all the people who were deceived out of their life savings, sold homes, etc. I also mourn for all the people for whom this will be yet another reason to ignore and/or reject the way of Jesus. It's far too easy for me to get mad at Harold Camping and blame folks like him. But I'm not convinced that hanging old Harold out to dry solves anything. In the end, I simply have to focus on my witness, not his.

Aside from that, a couple other noteworthy things happened recently. I received my Amazon order of books.

• The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton
• The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark
• What Saint Paul Really Said by N. T. Wright
• Inhabiting the Cruciform God by Michael Gorman

I'm planning to read them in that order. I'm so excited I'm already halfway into Lost World. 

The other thing that happened was I began following the blog of Efrem Smith. Pastor Efrem is a minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church. He founded and pastored Sanctuary Church in Minneapolis before being asked to be the Superintendent of the Pacific Southwest Conference. I quickly stumbled upon a recent post on Calvinism and Christian Hip Hop. Apart from me (Part I, Part II), no one else that I've read has had the guts to confront this phenomenon. I'm very thankful to report that Pastor Efrem does. I was so happy to read how closely his thoughts mirrored my own, I shared it on Facebook and it generated a little bit of push back from a few of my Calvinist friends.

For the sake of blog continuity, I think I will post it as its own story following this post.

Stay tuned for the return of the Covenant Affirmations series.