The Monday Brief Inaugural Edition

It's my intention to do this post style every Monday. The idea comes from Jake Bouma, who in kind stole it from someone else. It's a brilliant idea, in my opinion, so I stole it without warrant. Hopefully you enjoy it. Consider it my weekly "Christmas newsletter" that happens to be ecofriendly.

Highlight of the week: This past Saturday (December 27) Giles and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary. Rather than do something elegant or super-romantic, we stayed home in our pajamas for most of the day, except for an evening funded entirely by gift cards (dinner at Applebees, shopping trips to Barnes and Noble and Borders). It was fantastic.

Book(s) I’m reading: Finishing up Timothy Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism as well as working through two John Yoder classics, The Politics of Jesus and The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism. Keller's book is a fantastic response to the Dawkins/Hitchens types who have tried to make reason away a belief in God. Yoder, one of the most prominent Mennonite theologians of the 20th century, was a strong influence on Stanley Hauerwas, one of my favorite Christian writers.

Music I’m digging: Giles and I have both been listening to the Love Actually soundtrack (a lot). I have also been listening to John Rutter's Gloria
(thanks to the Christ Church Cranbrook choir singing the first movement at the Christmas eve services) as well as Akon's latest album. Yeah, I know. Shut up.

Ministry update: Working on the preparation for the January 17th concert outreach night at the church. I also have three more confirmation classes to teach, as well as planning and hosting the deanery confirmation service in June.

Seminary update: Enrolled at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry for one class this semester. The class is Pastoral Theology 500: Spiritual Formation:

A serious look at the Christian spiritual life and the practice of Christian spirituality from a New Testament and also Reformational perspective.  The class focuses on personal spiritual growth and provides opportunities and exercises to enhance one’s development and growth as a follower of Jesus Christ.  The course will also study various approaches to ascetical disciplines.

Looking forward to: The previously mentioned seminary course. It is my first graded academic endeavor since the second week of May, 2006. While I had the opportunity to enroll for more a full slate of classes this semester, I decided to start with one class to work my way back into the process.

*Links to all books, movies, and music go to the Amazon store. For reasons that I will describe somewhere else, I don't use the iTunes store and will likewise not link to products in their store. Sorry, you'll have to manually look them up if you want to buy them from Apple.*