This Blog is moving!

Check out the new Wordpress blog at: billycalderwood.com Still moving in and rearranging so excuse the dead links for a couple of weeks.

This Blog is moving!

Check out the new Wordpress blog at: billycalderwood.com Still moving in and rearranging so excuse the dead links for a couple of weeks.

Quote of the day...

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.

-Sir Barnett Cocks

test...

Here is the beginning of my post.
And here is the rest of it.

Revelation in One Sitting...

So. I am a little behind on my reading. Decided to catch up from last year before I get started with the reading this year. Anyhow, I read the entire book of Revelation in one amped up Starbucks sitting. The great thing about taking Revelation this way is that you see larger overarching themes more easily and don't get so locked up in trying to figure out what to make of some of the more vague elements of the book that are subject to a wide variety of interpretations. The greatest moment in this story today came at the very end of the book. Rev. 22:17 records:

"The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." let anyone who hears this say, "Come." Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life."

At the center of the events of this book is the cry of God's Spirit calling anyone who is thirsty to come and drink the water of life that is flowing from Him. Anyone who desires. As the meanings of this book are debated and speculation abounds, above the din rises the voice of the Spirit and the voice of the bride, the true people of God, who are echoing his invitation to drink freely and deeply of the essence of the Life the flows from God himself. The corruption and death and decay that are ultimatly brought to judgement in this book, are transcended by this offer extended to anyone who desires to drink deeply of the God kind of life. This is the end. This is the beginning. This gives the whole story its promise, hope and meaning. I am thirsty. Keep me that way God. Thirsty and drinking deeply.

Connection... A Prayer for 06

"I am the true grapevine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father." (John 15:1-8, NLT 04)

Gracious God, my deepest cry and prayer for the year ahead is for a rich and true connection to Jesus. Do whatever pruning you require to bring about the type of fruitfulness that will bring glory to you. I am aware that pruning must come. Help me to always welcome it. I know that connection is paramount. I have lived in a severed state before. I know what it feels like to to whither. Teach me continually how much you can accomplish--how much quality fruit is brought to bear--through connection with you. Be my source, be my life in this year ahead. Nothing good will come about in the sphere of my life and influence that is not being drawn out of you, borne of connection with you, and reflective of the life you alone can release within me. Help me to remain daily "in you." Help me to allow your words to remain deeply within me. Cause my mind and my mouth to give place to the Words of life that you've breathed... May fruitfulness be the result. Be glorified in what flows forth from this connection. Answer the prayers prayed in this place of connection! Let this year be a year of answered prayer; a measure of the fruitfulness that comes from the lives of those who remain in you, filled with your Words!

Pitch Your Tents

Every once in a while those of us who preach or publicly communicate slip up a little. This one is classic!

Narnia Mania...

This film has sparked a lot of great discussion the blogworld. Following are a few blogs I regularly read that take up the issue, from its apparent prostitition as "evangelstic tool" to it value as a discusion starter, to the fact that, bottom line, it is a fabulous story from a beautiful series of books that has been made into a rather decent movie. Check outRyan,Roy,and Dan. (Dan has some valuable thoughts as well about the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie.) I'll post again (or comment here) once I actually see it. As of now I will just express my excitment about viewing this film and a few of my childhood memories about Narnia in general.

I read the entire series of books at least four times as a kid. When I was very young, before I could even read them on my own, my family, who didn't own a television until I was about fifteen, would have a story time a few nights a week. My father, a rather talented-thespien-turned-state-employee-to-pay-the-bills used to read these stories to my siblings and I. Dad really put that college drama experience to work and created voices for every character. His take on Reepacheap the mouse (Prince Caspian) and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle (the Silver Chair) where especially brilliant. (Now that I think of it, Dad represented the entire clan of Dufflepuds fairly well also.) I really must give props to my parents for instilling a love for story and for reading. I guess it is only fitting that I will be seeing this film with my father this weekend, although Dad, who couldn't wait took my mom and saw it once already. My favorite book in the series is the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Perhaps I relate to Eustace. (Each book is really a special part of the story and has such vibrant characters and compelling stories that it is hard to chose a favorite.) In terms of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, I remember being captivated by the character of Peter. Peter, the eldest sibling of four (as am I) felt an extraordinary responsibility to care for and protect his siblings and others, even at a reletively young age. I so resonated as a child with this character and found myself in the story at times. I always found it so interesting that Lewis wrote of an Alsan who didn't shelter Peter from the realities of evil in the world and who required Peter to take his place of responsibility in a time of war and great crisis and act as a warrior and a protector of those he could serve. God bless Lewis for inspiring young boys to be more than wizards, but true heroes in an epic battle. I think perhaps, in some way, this story called me out at a young age and captured my imagination in a way that would become translated into an understanding of a place in the Kingdom. I have often wondered if Lewis wrote himself as a child into the story. Was he Peter, or Edmund, or Lucy or Susan? Perhaps there is a peice of himself in each character. I would love to be able to tell C.S. Lewis of the impact these simple children's books had on me if I could. Then again, if the Chronicles of Narnia has any parallel to the Kingdom and The Story, perhaps I will.

"...but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

(-C.S. Lewis, from the final paragraph of "the last battle," seventh and final book in the Chronicles of Narnia)

Guder et. al, on post enlightenment notions of truth

It has become increasingly evident that no one stand outside a particular point of view when it comes to discovering truth. Claims of objectivity and appeal to factuality are now qualified by context, whether in regard to the chemist working in a laboratory or the biblical scholar working in a library of ancient texts. We now acknowledge that everyone works with basic assumptions about reality. This has shifted the focus from epistemology, the question of how we discover truth, to hermeneutics, the question of what assuptions one brings to the pursuit of truth. This move recognizes that all persons live within particular contexts. Therefore they possess specific cultural perspectives that are historically conditioned and shape the way they understand, see and experience life. This tends to reletivize every point of view.

The relative character of our knowing does not necesarily mean that we cannot know God or truth. It does mean, however, that we need to accept that our understanding of truth is always an interpretation relative to our context and cultural understanding. Therefore we need always to be open to other perspectives of interpretation and recognize that our understandings of truth are developmental in character. This recognition of a relativity of perspective is not the same thing as a thoroughgoing relativism that denies that any truth can be known.

Another dynamic of the postmodern condition that touches on the way we discover or interpret truth originates in the critique of the limits of intstrumental reason. The emerging postmodern approach to understanding truth is more holistic by pointing to a variety of ways of knowing through rational intelligence, emotional intelligence, and intuitive intelligence. This variety dethrones modernity's privileging of intrumental reason as the source of objective facts. In its place we find the more balanced perspective of using reason tempered by emotive and intuitive sources of understanding.


The Bible leads the church to experience in a similar way a more holistic understanding of truth than is emphasized in postmodernity's approach to knowing. For the church to live out an intimate engagement with the narrative of God's action in Jesus Christ that shapes its life and thought, it must use personal and communal ways of knowing the reach beyond the merely rational. Falling into an ultimate relativism and subjectivity are always dangers within the emerging postmodern condition, but the postmodern worldview can nevertheless be conducive to establishing critical point of contact with a more holistic approach to knowing.

Missional Church - A vision for the sending of the Church in North America

There will be a few posts in the next week or so on this blog that will be spurred by ideas in this book which I am about halfway through. There a severall thing I really like about this book, not the least of which is the fact that it was loaned to me by a new friend, Mike Robinson, who has graciously agreed to get together with me to help me "upack" some these ideas from the standpoint of a practioner. This book actually has six authors, all members of the academy, who undertook to critique each others work and to do various rewrites to create the most excellent resource possible. I am intrigued by this method of writting and can attest to the added value it brings to the table. In Missional Church Darrell Guder and company, as a result of a three year process "...issue a firm challenge for the church to recover its missional call right here in North America. The authors examine taday's secular culture and the church's loss of dominance in contemporary society. They then present a biblically based theology that takes seriously the church's missional vocation and draw out the consequences of this theology for the structure and institutions fo the church."

One of the better books I have come accross in a while.