Family Camp and Other Things
Next Monday, I’m flying down to Portland, Oregon, for Reformation Covenant Church’s family camp, where Jim Jordan and I will be speaking.
So this week, I’m scrambling to get my talks together. My three lectures are entitled “The Covenant, Families, and Children,” “The Covenant and Evangelism,” and “The Covenant: What’s All the Fuss?” I’ve prepared outlines for all of them, though I’m not entirely satisfied with them yet.
Unfortunately, I’m going to miss Jim’s lectures on the minor prophets. After the Wednesday evening panel discussion, I’m heading for Salem to take part in Classis Western Canada 2003. Yes, the region whose delegates assemble as Classis Western Canada includes churches in the States (Lynden and Tacoma in Washington, and Salem, Oregon). For that matter, it also includes Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Ontario is hardly western Canada.
In other news, I’ve read a few books lately, including Klaas Schilder’s Extra-Scriptural Binding (helpful in places, but rather jumbled and disorganized and sometimes frustrating) and Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete, both of which I enjoyed greatly. I hear that Wolfe is working (or thinking of working) on the third in the series (Soldier of Sidon), though it won’t be out for quite a while, since Wolfe has three other books (two novels and a short story collection) due out first. I hope he lives long enough to finish the Soldier series.
Yesterday, I started Charles Williams’s War in Heaven. After our monthly council meeting (a good time was had by all) and a bit of a birthday party at Alex‘s place (happy birthday, Alex), I stood outside on my deck at 11:45 and read a line or so of the book by the light of the setting sun. Granted, it wasn’t easy to read outside, but I wasn’t in the best location for light and we still have a few weeks left before the longest day of the year. Yessir, I live in the land of the midnight sun.
And this morning the guys (technically known as The Concrete Specialist) showed up to pour and stamp my driveway. This may be the most theologically literate concrete crew in the history of the world. Four of them are members of Covenant Reformed: Leo, the owner, is our deacon, George has two years of seminary under his belt, Tim is Tim, of course, and has a seminary degree, Jamie is our chief musician. And then there are the Lutherans, Nathan and Josh. Makes for all kinds of interesting discussions on the jobsite!