Flotsam and jetsam (3/9)

• Bob Hyatt discusses his journey toward women in leadership.

My original vision for our community included a male “elder” board that handled the “shepherding” and a co-ed “leadership team” that handled the details of administration and ministry.
But a funny thing happened: I changed. I went back to Scripture, prayerfully re-examined what it said and what that meant against the backdrop of the culture at the time, and I came to different conclusions.

• iMonk offers an Ash Wednesday reflection on how all our crusades turn to ashes, starting with the medieval Children’s Crusade.

This heartbreaking mythical Medieval tale captures the imagination and rebukes human folly. How high our dreams and visions of changing the world! How disappointed we are when the sea fails to part before us. We who invoke the name of Christ and carry the banner of his cross are no less subject to the vicissitudes, disappointments, and failures of life. We bear the ashes on this holy day to remind us of our oneness with all humanity and to confess our inability to change the fundamentals. Our strategies will fail and we will die.

• Fred Sanders discusses Augustine’s worst sin.

But as it stands, the Confessions presents a terrible irony that may underline its basic message in spite of itself. Augustine’s worst sin might be one that he himself remained unaware of, one that his saintly mother aided and abetted him in carrying out, and one that remained imperfectly confessed because imperfectly understood.

• The Evangelical Philosophical Society blog has an interesting interview with Fred Sanders and Jason Sexton on their Theological Engagement with California Culture Project (TECC). As Sanders says,

The shortest description I’ve come up with for the overall intellectual task is that it’s somewhere between “A Theology of California” and “Theology from California.”

• Denny Burk comments on Zondervan’s decision not to publish Rob Bell’s Love Wins. Rachel Held Evans interviews “Rob Bell” about the controversy. And Tim Challies offers his own review of the book.

• Political Jesus has been reflecting on the Chalcedonian Creed and its significance for today (see here, here, and here).

• Several people have commented recently on Miroslav Volf’s article regarding whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God (see Brian LePort, Bobby Grow, and Will Molenaar).

• Crossway is giving away free digital copies of Steven Monsma’s Healing for a Broken World: Perspectives on Public Policy.

• If you’re tired of hearing about Tiger Blood, here’s a way to block Charlie Sheen from your browser.

• And, I’m sure you have nothing better to do than watch Star Trek episodes all day. So, to help with that, here’s a website where you can apparently watch all the episodes from all the Star Trek series online for free.