The current issue of Westmont magazine features an article of mine called "Pop Goes the Bubble: Adventures in Christian Culture Crossing." Part of it explores lessons I have learned blogging and websurfing in the last several years. Here is an excerpt:

We evangelical Christians are not the only ones who stay within our comfort zones. Everybody bubbles: social classes, genders, ideologies, tribes, tongues, and nations; journalists, experts, professors, and professions; churches, webloggers, and even San Francisco’s subcultures. Humanity is not so much a global village, one big family, or a sea as a lather – a thick layer of bubbles jostling, colliding, seeing others only through the distorting curvature of their own dividing walls, interacting with strangers only at their common surfaces, and generally minding their own business.

All of these children of the Father belong to the Son (John 17:10). So the good news of his Kingdom has to be bubble-crossing and bubble-bursting. Following the Son demands that we take on the discomforts of his apostleship, whether that means reading unfamiliar sources and taking them seriously, going on missions and cross-cultural off-campus programs with eyes and ears as open as our mouths, living with roommates we didn’t choose, or just crossing the road to help strangers.

Shabbat shalom!

17:37 (file under /topics/publishing)

The current issue of Pro Ecclesia features my review essay on the posthumous set of Lessie Newbigin essays, Signs amid the Rubble: The Purposes of God in Human History.

Executive summary: thumbs up!

Full version: here.

School is back in session. I'm enjoying classes and colleagues after the summer break, and having a wonderful time leading students through some tremendous books. More on that to come, I hope.

09:51 (file under /topics/publishing)

Two months ago Camassia brought Michael Spencer (a.k.a. The Internet Monk) to my attention when she e-mailed me a link to this article on how Christians can not ruin their children. I e-mailed Spencer with my thanks for the article. (Please don't take that as either an admission or a denial that I'm ruining my children.)

Some time later I was delighted to get an invitation from Spencer to answer an interview of twenty terrific questions about evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, and other good things. I accepted it, and the results are now here on his site in "Telford Work: The Internet Monk Interview."

Many thanks to Spencer, and also to Camassia for getting us in touch. And now, like every good Pentecostal, I'm off to synagogue!

18:05 (file under /topics/publishing)

An article that emerged out of my blogging has just been published in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Theology. It is called Rock of Aged. Here is a taste:

As youth ministry increasingly surrenders to youth culture, we need to make something clear to all, especially our young people. Christianity is a religion for old people.

Yes, I really believe that. (I also really believe that God is black. But that's a topic for a different day.)

Anyway, here is the article. It is also published on the journal's own website here. Shabbat shalom!

14:24 (file under /topics/publishing)