Abraham Piper wrote a nice post on the importance of being a kind Calvinist. Personally, I've met about as many unkind non-Calvinists as Calvinists, but for whatever reason, the stereotype against Calvinism holds far more weight. (HT: Coram Deo)

Apologist Rob Bowman has entered the blogosphere through Parchment and Pen and his first post is a brief review of Claiming Christ: A Mormon Evangelical Debate. Look to the comments for an interesting exchange between him and Craig Blomberg.

I haven't had a chance to take a serious look at Mike Huckabee, but if anything warrants taking such a look, it's the endorsement of Chuck Norris. This is one of the most brilliant political ads I've seen.

For those who are tired of all the theological debating going on, you might want to look into Theolax. Just be weary of that "heresy" side-affect at the end of the small print!

Some of you were puzzled by a post a did a few weeks ago about Web 2.0 and what it means for Christians. The point was to note that we have an exciting announcement coming up. That announcement will be posted this week, so be sure to tune-in. We will!

Here are some audio selections from the conferences I've attended over the past month.

C.S. Lewis: The Man & His Work, October 26-27, 2007 at SEBTS. (courtesy SEBTS)

Walter Hooper: "Walter Hooper's Work as Editor of C.S. Lewis Works"

Bruce Edwards: "C.S. Lewis: America's Bonny Fighter"

Walter Hooper: "C.S. Lewis: Reflections about the Man"

James Como: "Culture and Public Philosophy: The Other C.S. Lewis"

GodBlogCon 2007, November 8-9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center (courtesy Scriptorium Daily)

Al Mohler: "Pioneering the New Media for Christ"

John Mark Reynolds: "Focus and Motivation"

Mark D. Roberts: "Taking Your Ministry to the New Media"

Rhett Smith: "New Media Ministry to the Myspace-Facebook Generation"

Bonnie Lindblom: "Communicating Biblical Womanhood"

Joe Carter: "Identifying Impact in Culture for Christians in New Media"

Paul Spears: "Trafficking in Substance a Blogging Dilemma"

Dustin Steeve: "Basics of Blogging"

La Shawn Barber: "Writing Well in the New Media"

Kevin Wang: "Design Desiderata for the Godblogger"

Jeff VanderGiessen: "Developing a Pod & Vidcast Ministry"

Evangelical Theological Society, November 14-16, 2007 in San Diego, CA.

John Piper: "Justification and the Diminishing Work of Christ" Manuscript | Audio | Video (HT: JT, courtesy: DG)

The writers' strike is nothing.  Just think about how things used to be for Jack Bauer.

Seriously, how did we live like this? 

The scary part is that the actual 24 started only seven years after 1994.  That's almost the same amount of time between now and the first episode of the series in 2001.  Where on earth will we be seven years from now?

(HT:  Derek White)

This week is ETS- a fun academic conference where hundreds of papers are read each year by top evangelical scholars. What makes the conference even more exciting is that most Christian publishers are there offering at least 50% off their books. Last year I came prepared with an extra suitcase and came home with 52 books (See my library on LibraryThing). This year the gloves are off- I'm driving to the conference so I can buy more than a suitcase full (and it helps that I'm doing far better financially). Think I'm crazy? Justin Taylor linked to a helpful list of responses defending the pro-bibliophile position. If you're a Facebookphile and bibliophile, you might be interested in this group I created awhile back: "I Judge People By the Books They Read"

As I've done the past 2 years, I'll be blogging about select papers I find interesting during the conference.

John Mark Reynolds had some good advice about how to not burn out as a blogger.  He particularly emphasized the need for us to write less about ourselves and more about external ideas.  Begin with an outer focus and then reflect on the inner implications.  If we do the opposite, the likely result will be that we'll become boring as we end up saying nearly the same thing every day (whatever our pet ideas happen to be), twisting every topic into a way to get our own agenda across.

Secondly, we ought to blog for the permanent side of the blogosphere rather than for our immediate readers.  In other words, even as we're commenting on timely topics, there ought to be a certain timelessness to our commentary so our work will continue to be of value.  Posts that offer this will be stumbled upon and accessed by people for years to come, and in this way our impact will possibly be greater in the long term than we would expect from our number of usual readers. 

As an aid to both of the above goals, Dr. Reynolds reminded us that the best new media relies on old media (books, film, etc.) and not on other new media.  If we're taking in great ideas and reflecting on them and their goodness, beauty, and truth, and if we make our goal to see the face of God rather than to exalt ourselves, we'll persevere in creating valuable, lasting work.

I'm now in Las Vegas at the GodBlogCon.  If any of you are here, as well, be sure to find me and say hello!

I'm not particularly fond of Vegas...or rather, not at all fond.  This place is like a Disneyland without a soul.  And seriously, what is that smell of sulfur out there?  I'm not kidding about this.  It really does smell like sulfur.  But despite all this, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody here, and hopefully I'll have some interesting tidbits to pass on to you in the next few days.