Direction for Wanderings

I've been doing a lot of thinking about why I have a blog, why I would want one, and what kinds of things I should blog about. There seem to be a couple different types of blogs out there: One is a personal journal, where authors talk about their personal life, thoughts, events, and people. These can be interesting if you know the author--kind of like reading an online letter--but tend to be painfully boring otherwise. The next type of blog centers around ideas and events: Politics and Religion tend to be the main themes of these blogs. If well written, these blogs can be very insightful, and serve either to give you an idea of what people are thinking about, or to spark ideas in your own mind. The last type of blog is the specialty knowledge blog. This site serves as a repository of information about something the blogger knows a great deal about. This could be a hobby, a profession, or a field of study, but it's a good place to learn about specific aspects of the topic at hand.

So, what kind of blog will mine be? Obviously, given the nature of the blogging medium, any blog will be a combination of all 3, but I think I've finally hit upon a "raison d'etre" for "WorldWide Wanderings," and that will be to discuss issues of poverty, relief & development, and social justice, with a (hopefully) distinctively Biblical view. I'll probably also try to highlight some of the more insightful blogs that I see on the web, and post from time to time about other matters of life, faith, marriage, and culture, but right now I want to focus on "R&D" in my postings.

As many of you know, I'm quite interested in the field of Relief & Development. Particularly because of my faith in Jesus, I believe helping the poor & oppressed is an incredibly important undertaking. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a lot: I come from a reasonably priviledged background, and I don't have a lot of contact with the truly poor in my day-to-day life. But I do belong to a strong community of Faith that is trying to be obedient to Jesus, and I believe God is calling me to be more involved in His work among the Least-reached and Least-advantaged in the world.

To that end, Corrie and I are taking a class through our church called "A Biblical Theology of Relief & Development." It's proving to be an extremely challenging class, but also a very interesting class. We're working hard to explore what the Bible teaches us about God's view of poverty and riches, what He is doing among people, and what models the Church has been given for doing holistic ministry among the poor. It's a fascinating class, and I plan in the future to post articles on this blog about specific things we're learning. My hope is that by doing so, I will be better able to think through the issues we're studying and discussing, gain insight from other's studies of and experiences with serving the poor, and assist others in exploring what God has to say about the way we treat the disadvantaged, the widow, and the orphan. You'll no doubt hear my thoughts about other topics and my life experiences that may or may not be totally applicable, but I hope this blog will serve as a good resource for me and for others to pursue obedience in this area of our lives.

Watch this space for more articles, and please respond with lots of comments, good or bad--I welcome your input!

Thoughts on modern Worship music

I just ran across a rather insightful posting that mirrors some of my developing thoughts on "praise and worship" songs in the church. I hate to sound like the people who complain about how rock music is of the devil and has no place in Church, but I do have concerns about the lyrical content of many of the songs we sing at our church. It seems like too often we sacrifice theological depth and truth for emotional worship euphoria. Please read the article, then come back and let me know what you think!

http://homepage.mac.com/bdebow/iblog/C395363060/E1490202620/index.html

First Post

Okay, so I finally set up a blog at a "Real" blogsite. I've been using the www.xanga.com/ngirdner blog since December, but I'm not very impressed by Xanga. On the other hand, most of the blogs I find myself reading seem to be hosted by Blogspot, so maybe I can join the "elite." :-) I'll think about migrating my old posts over to this site when I get some spare time.....

In the meantime, hang tight--I'll have some more interesting articles here before long.....