davidould.net

non angelus, sed anglus!

Friday, September 05, 2008

another boy…

...is, apparently, what we are having.

We just got back from the ultrasound department at the local hospital with the following shots of Noah Ould

Here is the face of Ouldlet #3…

and some excellent feet…

and definitive proof that he has a Y chromosome…

HUZZAH!

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Posted by David Ould on 09/05 at 03:15 PM
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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Got back yesterday from a fairly intense 3 day conference for clergy (and other ministers) here in Sydney in their first 4 years after ordination. The speakers were Mark Driscoll, Don Carson and Kent Hughes (impressive, right?)

Mark Driscoll was sensational - in so many ways. If you’ve never come across the name before then, I have to ask, what planet have you been on? Driscoll is lead pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. His wiki article has this to say:

Mark A. Driscoll (born October 11, 1970) is an American minister and author. The co-founder and preaching pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, he co-founded the Acts 29 Network, and has contributed to the “Faith and Values” section of the Seattle Times. He helped start The Resurgence, a repository of missional theology resources.

What it doesn’t tell you is that the man is a living, breathing, walking freak. He has been extraordinarily gifted by God as a communicator and his talks are pod and vodcast all over the world and listened to and watched by millions.

He has quite an assertive style and some would call him prophetic, in the sense that he is a tremendously sharp social commentator. For instance, check this out on the current culture of cohabitation:

One of his well-known themes is the issue of male/female relationships, both in marriage and the in the church. A strong complementarian, he is (no surprise here) not afraid to speak boldly about the issue. On a positive note, this includes a call to men to treat women well. Very well:

The following got him into a lot of trouble:

can’t think why....

Driscoll is also well known for his strong Reformed views. Here’s an excellent example:

So let me be clear. I like Driscoll. I really do. So when I heard that he was going to be speaking at our conference I was very excited.

And he didn’t disappoint. He challenged us, he encouraged us. And he told us where he thought we in Sydney were seriously wrong.

His main criticism was that our diocesan structures stifle ministry. We make it so hard for young men to go into ministry. He planted Mars Hill at the age of 25. In Sydney that would never happen, at least not amongst the Anglicans. He observed:

By 34, I had a church of 5,000. Before that age Jesus had saved the World! And you won’t let men older than that do more than be 2IC in small parish churches.

Lots for us to think about. More to come.

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Monday, August 25, 2008

scraping the barrel?

since the Obama campaign would have know ads like this would have been run:

what made them think that Joe Biden was a better candidate for VP than the other choices? How bad were they?!

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Posted by David Ould on 08/25 at 07:12 AM
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down they come

we told you it was coming…

the backing track is Pulp’s ”Catcliffe Shakedown”:

Lives that never left first base, stunted by vapours from the cooling towers And I will do everything, everything in my power to get way from you.

I almost posted another YouTube clip (there’s hundreds of them) for the sheer joy of someone saying “is that it? that was a bang”, to which their companion replies, “no, love, look - they’re still up”.

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Posted by David Ould on 08/25 at 06:10 AM
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Sunday, August 24, 2008

far too good not to post

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Posted by David Ould on 08/24 at 07:20 PM
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Saturday, August 23, 2008

sermon preparation music

battling against a cold and a sermon that refuses to be completed.

Just listened to this.

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Posted by David Ould on 08/23 at 02:37 PM
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Friday, August 22, 2008

the end of a cultural era

The BBC are reporting that 2 giant cooling towers in Sheffield, where I grew up, are going to be demolished on Sunday.
intrinsically beautiful?

For many visitors to Sheffield, their first glimpse of the city involves two disused cooling towers that overshadow the M1 motorway.

Known locally as “the salt and pepper pots”, the famous Tinsley towers were originally part of a power station that closed down in the 1970s.

They have been described as “intrinsically beautiful” and a “massive icon” for the city.

But despite campaigns to save them, the towers will be demolished on Sunday.

Energy giant E.ON, which owns the towers, says they need to be knocked down as they are unsafe.

The company has been granted permission for a £60m biomass power station on the site.

hmmmm… “massive icon” maybe, but “intrinsically beautiful”? It gets better:

Thousands of people signed petitions as part of a campaign to save the towers, and world-famous sculptor Antony Gormley stepped into the controversy.

Mr Gormley, creator of the Angel of the North, said it would be an “act of cultural vandalism” to knock them down.

He said: “They are to the industrial revolution what cathedrals were to the medieval world.”

He said the towers were “absolutely unique” in their shape and acoustic capabilities and could be used as a concert hall or recording studio.

“I could see a choir singing specially-composed music in the centre, with the audience sitting in a circle round them.”

Sheffield Attercliffe MP Clive Betts agreed that the move was “an act of historical vandalism”.

Now look they’re something else, there’s not doubt about that, and have an intrinsic charm. But “cultural vandalism”?

He said the towers were the oldest surviving parabolic cooling towers in the UK and had huge historic industrial value.

“In fact, for millions of people, arriving at the Tinsley cooling towers has meant ‘thank goodness, we’re back in the north’,” he said.

“Southerners have always had ridiculous arguments about whether the north began at Watford or Watford Gap.

“To those in the know, the north has always started at Tinsley. With the towers gone, these will be an urgent need to find a replacement for their massive symbolism”.

Yes, that’s always what coursed through my mind as I drove past - “thank goodness, we’re back in the north”. I think, if locals are more honest, it would be “thank goodness that Meadowhall Shopping Centre is nearby”.

BBC South Yorkshire have a page devoted to the dispute.

You can also check it out on google maps here (Meadowhall is that big complex to the SouthWest):

View Larger Map

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Bill Muehlenberg - more abortion myths

some powerful stuff:

One oft-heard myth is that abortion is needed since women should not be forced to have unwanted babies. Pro-death advocates argue that it is cruel to force a woman to have a child she does not want. As one letter writer to the Melbourne Age put it today, “It would be a cruel society to force women to become mothers when they clearly don’t want to, or are not prepared for the huge task ahead of them.”

Consider the logic of this way of thinking. The truth is, children of all ages can be a “huge task”. At times any child will be unwanted, or deemed burdensome. Consider toddlers for example. They can be very demanding, a real handful, and often not wanted. By the reasoning of the pro-abortionists we should just bump off little two-year-old Johnny or Sally. After all, it’s a mother’s right to choose, and we don’t want society to be cruel and force poor mums into looking after children which are unwanted.

If a woman becomes pregnant and considers having a child too burdensome for economic, career or other reasons, the answer is surely not to kill the baby. Adoption is always an option. Indeed, there are far more families wanting to adopt babies than there are babies available. So just because the mother does not want the baby does not mean it is unwanted by everyone else. Many would desperately love to be able to raise, nurture and care for the baby.

...

Research reveals that a “planned” child is as much at risk of abuse as an “unplanned’ child. “There is no assurance that the child that was planned for will continue to be well treated by its parent or parents. Indeed, over 90 per cent of the children in the United States who are abused by their parents were originally wanted babies. At all events and notwithstanding the annual one and a half million abortions, there is no indication that family life in America is becoming happier. On the contrary, since abortion on demand was made legal in 1973, the number of abused children is estimated to have risen by over 300 per cent.”

The most obvious response to this myth however is the simple fact that killing an unborn child is the ultimate form of child abuse.

And there’s more...

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Thursday, August 21, 2008

an excellent question…

...from the Pyromaniacs:

How is it that God inspired the Scriptures in such a way that every word—indeed, every jot and tittle—was what He determined?

[What does verbal inspiration teach us about ‘free will’?] Every standard evangelical definition of inspiration would emphatically insist that God used the personalities, vocabularies, intellects, and learning of the individual authors—and we completely agree. Let’s also stipulate that He did not employ dictation (except in a few cases where this is expressly stated).

Yet the product was still determined sovereignly by God. The words are avowedly His words (2 Peter 1:21; 1 Corinthians 2:13).

So how did this miracle occur?

I say you cannot answer that question without embracing the very essence of the Calvinist position regarding God’s sovereignty and human free will.

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Posted by David Ould on 08/21 at 08:29 PM
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The Empire at San Francisco

too good not to share…

h/t: current.com

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Posted by David Ould on 08/21 at 08:26 AM
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