Man Gathering!

Less than a week to go my fellow councilmen.

Dave and I spoke yesterday and tried to figure out some plans for this gathering. We figured that the more proactive we can be beforehand, the more productive our time will be and the less time we'll spend sitting around saying "It doesn't matter to me; what do y'all want to do?" over and over again in Dave's house. Here's the basic idea we had; everything is provisional so if anyone else has ideas just say so:

--Everyone get down to Dave's place around 2:30 or 3 on Friday. He's going to email us directions and his address.
--Dave lives really close to a park complex where we could go hang out and through a frisbee/football and just hang out for an hour or two and be outside in the (hopefully) warm sunny South Carolina winter weather.
--Grill burgers and hotdogs at Dave's place for dinner. That way we can go out to a bar afterward and be able to afford more than one beer.
--Return to the house and video games?
--Saturday morning we can lounge and maybe play a few more video games. We could maybe pick up some breakfast food on Friday and have breakfast at Dave's place that morning.
--Go out for lunch somewhere to hang out and watch the International Bowl (Buffalo v UConn) which actually might be a good game.
--From there we can head out or do whatever.

So, that's a loose plan. You guys think about it and add anything that you think would be fun/productive.

As far as my topics for discussion.......let's see...... One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately, kind of going off of one of my points in my comment on the review link that Joel posted about Velvet Elvis: everyone seems to be very okay (and rightfully so) with God's grace being over our moral failures. In fact, even in the most Reformed churches that believe the most in what I would consider a right view of sin (that our problem is in our hearts and our actions are just the symptoms of the inner problem) the preaching on sin is usually focused (especially if the message is to unbelievers) on how we've fallen short of the glory of God by doing wrong things and things that are outside of the will of God. My question is, how much does God's grace extend over our wrong beliefs? I know that's a big question, but it's one that I've been trying to figure out lately. It's been an issue because since I've come back from l'Abri I've found myself more and more comfortable with vastly divergent stances on issues within Christianity. I don't want to end up watering down the confrontational aspect of the gospel, but it seems to me that God extends some amount of grace over people's wrong beliefs so how far does it go? That might be an impossible question to answer. It's kind of in the same vein of "How much do you have to believe to be a Christian?" But there it is.

I like the idea of calling and spiritual growth too. Also, with Jeremy, I'd love to hear y'all's ideas about living out your spirituality without running off to join a commune, which is what I find myself thinking about constantly.

See you guys on Friday.

Topics for Discussion?

Yesssssssssssssss. Not only is tomorrow Christmas, but also there's only 9 days until the man gathering. Randy and I had a preview a couple days ago over breakfast. We thought it might be helpful if we all submitted some ideas for topics of conversation before getting down there.

So, if anyone has any articles, blogs, videos, books, etc, you want the rest of us to check out before we get down there, post them on the blog. In fact, it might be cool if everyone just posts something that they've been thinking about and we can all take a look at them and either read them all or just pick one or two to focus on.

Does that sounds good to y'all?

Man Gathering?

Okay guys. We seriously need to start talking about this, so please post in the comments section whether or not this would work for you.

The date that works for me is the weekend of Friday, January 2, 2009. I could also do the weekend right after Christmas (Dec 26-28) but I wouldn't be able to come down until Saturday the 27th.

Are we thinking this will be a one day/one night thing or what? That's up to Dave (ie Lisa) since we're crashing at his place so really only his opinion counts for that.

Who's in?