Terry Pruitt's Blog

During the Vietnam era, the U.S. Army started something call a Civil Affairs unit. The unit's job was build or develop infrastructure for the villages in Vietnam. While doing these projects, like drilling wells, health clinics, and schools, the Civil Affairs unit would look to win the hearts and minds of the local population. I'm convinced the church likewise needs a conscious effort to win hearts and minds but not only providing some sort of social service but also employee other deliberate methods of engaging the culture. My hypothesis is that each church needs to incorporate the five different elements in order for the congregation as a whole to engage the local community; Mercy Ministry, Apologetics, Evangelism Training, Media Ministry and Arts Ministry. Not each of these needs to have a separate committee or organizational structure. For instance, a man named Smith in my church functions as the resident apologist, (besides my fine pastor of course). A church choir...

I took another Myers Briggs test in the early 90's. I got the same profile. Visionary is something that is pretty overt in my leanings without a test telling me so. Hat tip to Rebecca Writes for the test. ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population. Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test personality tests by similarminds.com

My DSL line is back up. For those of you who visit, that means I can blog at will. Turns out an old wire broke when it was moved slightly. The cost of repair was one hand crafted garden stone with butterflys on it. That's a long story but my advise is to keep lots of garden stones around for such repairs. Butterflys are particularly interesting.

Futurology is a study of current trends in technology or society and how those trends will play out. Writer's like Alvin Toffler in Future Shock and Power Shift take an academic look at the possibilities of the what is the logical conclusions to certain trend that can be observed. The trend is usually predicted to continue when it comes to technology and social change. Some futurologists would predict that technology like the bar code and scanner system in grocery stores will expand to be included in you future kitchen so that the grocery list can be automated . You could keep an accurate inventory of your refrigerator and cupboard contents in a object-oriented database which would tie into you budget software, create a grocery list, perhaps order the groceries for pick or delivery and finally create a health index report based on the diet you have eaten the past week, month or year. Or talking about a social trend, the success of Internet dating services has inspired attemp...

I've been reading Beowulf . I read the Michael Crichton's version of Beowulf, Eater's Of the Dead a few years ago. While I can see the correlations between Crichton's book and Beowulf, they really quite different and I really like the original better. I am impressed by the character development, who Beowulf is. A lot is left unsaid. Not like a modern novel. The flow of the story is not exactly clear or linear. The themes though are noble and inspiring. We don't write poetry like Beowulf today. Perhaps we can not, but I would say we need to do so. One of my daughters said that Beowulf is the first Christian fantasy. I would not disagree. It does have fantasy themes, dragon's and warriors. However, I don't get the same feel from the story as from other fantasy.

Comments on the Jollyblogger made think about the gender roles in church. He was talking about the marginalization men in the church. I think there is a tendency to marginalize either men or women. In the church that I grew up in, men were marginalized, women were the real power center of the church. In my current church, I see a problem that women are sometimes marginalized, not by design, but by insecurity. Since we do not allow women to teach men or serve as officers, women know that there are limits what they can do. Instead of recognizing that they can serve in almost any other fashion, they tend to be hesitant in doing many other things. I'm not sure how to solve the problem. Neither gender should feel marginalized, or should I say, be marginalized. If a church allows for women officers, men are often marginalized. The usual way that I see to keep women from being marginalized in an all male leadership church is to have a women's ministry which has a separate b...

For those of you who check my blog, I'm having DSL problems. I might not be able to do as much blogging as a I would like.

I just got through taking the class called Introduction to Reformed Theology. There we discussed the nature of God, that he was independent which is in contrast to man. God does not need creation to exist. Growing up I was always taught the theology of choice. That is, we are being called by God to choose him and if we will only make the choice, we will be saved. I believed this up until I found the logical limits of determinism. Determinism comes in many forms: biological determinism (we make our choices based on our biological programming), chemical determinism (we make our choices based on the chemical process in our body), and psychological determinism (our choices are determined based on the psychological motivations). In a sense this type of thinking started breaking down my idea of a theology of choice. I did not adopt determinism but I starting thinking about the logical conclusions of choice. I started thinking about the limits of choice in each person's life. Te...

You're a Cappicinno! What Kind of Coffee are You? brought to you by Quizilla

Several years ago I was wondering around the library in Munich, Germany. Frankly, I was looking for free Internet access so I could e-mail my wife back in The States more cheaply than the Internet Cafe that I had been using. Of course most of the books were in German and clearly out of my league. But as I got to the Religion section, I found a book of Martin Luther's tracts that he had written and printed. The printing jobs were beautiful by the way. While most of the book was Luther's German tracts, the introduction was in English. The printing press was a new invention and the tract was the new media for religious expression. I had not thought of the tract as important to the history Reformation as a movement but the book made the case for just that. Notice how many times in the following article on Luther the word tract is used. This week I took a class with Dr. Powell on Introduction to Reformed Theology. I forget the context, but during the ...

Recently a lady at church asked me about the Da Vinci Code. One of her relatives had criticised her Christian faith by referencing The Da Vinci Code. In one since he was using a fictional account to attack the Christian faith. Christian History magazine did a good write up on the Da Vinci Code from the point of view of history. I highly recommend their article. The organzization Answers In Genisis gives a good answer on the formation of the Bible in relation to the Da Vinci Code. The Tekton site has a review of the Da Vinci Code but is a little involved. So that is three different approaches to answering the novel.

Let me start out by saying, I offer the following musings in a friendly tone. Discussion of the nature of the Bible (translation authority and text preservation) should be encouraged. Those who are not willing to discuss it perhaps don't know exactly what they are defending. I see the recent posting on Parablmania as a health examination of the topic. There is a phrase used when someone is recommending a theological related work that is technical and difficult. The person will say something along the lines of, "This is not something you are going to use in your devotions ". The message is that the rightful audience and use of the textbook or theological treatise is NOT the common Christian in private worship. The larger context, the person is saying that the heavy book should not be used to intimidate Christians who will not or can not appreciate the more detail nuanced expression of theology. Also, the speaker might be indicating that those who do have a gra...

Just read about the Alexander the Great. He struggled greatly to maintain the loyalty and motivation of his men. He ultimately could not gain their motivation when they saw no end to his appetite for conquest but he could use his own personal example to drive the group. He took enormous risks in order to achieve. His risk taking ultimately set the stage for his demise. The thing that distinguishes the excellent athlete or warrior from the average is a determination which causes them to take themselves to the very limits of their abilities. In the movie miracle which chronicles the U.S. hockey teams efforts to beat the Russian team, the coach pushes the team to be the best conditioned. "Legs feed the wolf", is his motto and so the athletes skate until they are all skated out. Injury and trouble does not mean quit. There is a time to count the costs, but if the cause is righteous and blessed from heaven then there is no stopping. I know working in the kingdom of ...

I took the Blogging Personality Quiz at About Web logs and I am... The Pundit I like to blog about a specific topic of interest that I am passionate about - be it business, politics, technology, law, education, entertainment, or literature. I blog regularly and I welcome relevant discussions about my topic. I have a constant thirst for knowledge. Thanks Jollyblogger and Rebecca Write

The Jollyblogger tipped me off to Parablemania's review of Bible Translations . A while back one of my family member's wanted to know if the New King James Version was a good version. I see several criteria for selecting a Bible translation. These are similar to, but not identical to, Parablemania's criteria. 1. Faithfulness to the original text - In a sense I would guide people away from using paraphrases. There is a part of me that says, let's just quit the whole attempt at paraphrasing. However I have to think about my own walk with the Lord. He used The Living Bible, a paraphrase, to draw me nigh to him. While I really liked Parablemania's article, I really don't understand using a paraphrase during a devotional reading. I think there is a sense that people want to connect more on an emotional level with the scriptures during devotions. I hold that there should be whole person engagement in devotional readings, engage all faculties; mind...

I have decided to change this to a more positive title. I have been posting my goals a few at a time and calling it 100 thing to do before I die. Our death will happen, but perhaps it sounds a little dark to put it in the goals. 7 Connect GIS and Ministry I would like to connect ministries with the tools of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) like ArcView . The idea is that Christian ministries could identify community needs and plan strategies for expansion of the kingdom of God through GIS. 8 Create a project for open source pastor software Pastors in the developing world could use high quality software for their ministry. I would like to see an open source or a free software project to help pastors of small congregations in the third world. 9 Publish a Bible gazetteer Rather than publish a book, I would like to publish a whole database. I've started on this one a little more than the other two. Check out my webpage on the place names in the fo...

Which Historical Lunatic Are You? From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Relationships are fundamental to godliness in my understanding of true piety. The New Testament has a lot to say about relationships in families, the work place and the church. Relationships are important to my understanding of practical theology. In order to pass down ministry skills, I believe the New Testament teaches doing it through relationships. While these ideas are very important to me, I find myself a relationship klutz. (I'm really not sure I'm worse than the next guy or gal, but in relationship to the ideal expressed in the Bible, I'm a KLUTZ.) So when I notice something about people, it may be common sense for others but a revelation for myself. Recently I have been noticing people making decisions based on their relationships and others who make decisions based on goals. I'm not sure that the two categories are really universal, but seeing this has helped me to understand people who are not goal oriented. I would put myself as much more goal or...

Pat Tillman was killed by "friendly fire". As I understand it, it was an accident. By the way, it makes him no less of a hero in my humble opinion. Friendly fire incidents are also known as fratricide. The Army teaches soldiers how to fight side by side. When one digs a foxhole, one of the considerations is who and where are the soldiers to the left and to the right. The idea is that you don't want inadvertently shoot the soldier to the left or right of your position. Likewise, you don't want them to shoot you either. This is not only true of individuals, but also true of each unit. The platoon needs to know which platoons to the left and right of its own position. The same is true of each larger unit too; company, battalion, brigade, division, etc... The idea is to reduce fratricide and work as a team. Even when people are doing all the right things fratricide still occurs. Reading "Stories of Emergence " I noticed that a lot of the issues ar...