Here are some pics for Mother's birthday celebration this past weekend.  The flowers came from Hawaii courtesy of Alan Tamashiro and Puna Baptist Church.  We (my wife Grace, Mother, and I) ate lunch on Saturday at the Raintree Cafe at the Grapevine Mills Mall.

Wedding

My older son got married last Saturday in the SWBTS rotunda to a wonderful Korean young lady.

New Developments ................................................................................................................. My chapel message on March 24, 2011: http://www.swbts.edu/chapel/chapel_archive.cfm My new journal article: "The Receptivity Principle: A Tried-and-True Guide for Missionaries," Evangelical Missions Quarterly 47, no. 2 (April 2011): 178-184.

A Good Idea for Future State and National Annual Meetings?

First of all, Merry Christmas! Second, I represented SWBTS at the recent annual meeting of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, and it was a lot of fun seeing some old friends and making some new friends in my home state. I had an interesting conversation with a new friend who shared my concern about small church pastors not being able to afford attending both state and national annual meetings. He suggested that arrangements could be made so that a pastor could attend both at the same time and thus save a lot of money. How could this be accomplished? Well, all the state conventions and the national convention would have to cooperate and schedule their annual meetings during the same week. The pastor's conferences for the state and national conventions would occur at their normal times. All state business would be conducted at the various state venues on Tuesday. On Wednesday, state messengers would remain in the same venues, but their credentials would need to be verified so that they could vote in the national convention. All national business would be conducted on Wednesday. The state venues would be electronically connected to the primary national venue, and the moderator at the national venue would be able to recognize speakers at microphones in the various state venues. Votes could be conducted at all the venues, and the voting results could be simultaneously announced at all the venues. I talked to a communications specialist about this idea, and he said that current technology could make this idea a reality, but the technology would be expensive. The attendance at the primary national venue would be greatly reduced, but many more messengers would be involved than in past years in the national meeting via the state venues. Would connectionalism be inevitable in such an arrangement? Would the state and national entities be able to maintain complete autonomy apart from each other in such an arrangement? What do you think about this idea?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Grace, Andy, and I toured the museum at Barksdale Air Force Base last Wednesday as we were visiting her twin sister, Ginger, and Ginger's husband Ken, who live near Shreveport. Barksdale Air Force Base is the home of the 8th Air Force, which has a very distinguished history. In this photo, I am standing in front of a B-29. I thought it would be a bigger plane than it was.

Good Chapel Speaker

Two days ago (Sept. 30) at Southwestern Baptist Seminary we heard a marvelous critique of the "health and wealth" gospel by Justin Peters, who has cerebral palsy. You can see the presentation that he did at the seminary in 2006 at his website:

http://www.justinpeters.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=7

I was impressed.

Supper with My Church Growth Class

We invited our Introduction to Church Growth class over to our house this past Saturday night. All sixteen of our guests were Korean. I was able to break in my big, new charcoal grill. We had burgers, brats, slaw, baked beans, chips, congealed salad, macaroni and cheese, etc. My grill can handle 24 burgers on the bottom rack and many brats and hotdogs on the top rack. I can lower or raise the charcoal in the grill. It's a wonderful addition to our patio.