Book: The Journal of Modern Ministry

For Christmas last year I received a subscription to the Journal of Modern Ministry, edited by Jay Adams. I just finished the Fall 07 issue, and I really like it. At 178 pages, it's a fairly substantial read. And it covers a variety of subjects, including general ministry, counseling, preaching, medicine, apologetics, and book reviews. The articles varied from 2 to 12 pages; none were so long as to bore me or lose me. I highly recommend this journal for everyone who is in ministry in the local church, including pastors, deacons, and teachers.

Book: John Myers' "Doc Holiday"

John Myer's biography of "Doc Holiday," written in 1955, is an interesting read. The style is dry and witty at the same time. For example, in listing the things Doc was not good at, Myers wrote, "Among divers other things, these said that he was not good at distinguishing between his own and another's property." Heh. Doc was a thief. Overall the book is pro-Doc, making him out to be not as bad as other's have claimed. There are a number of holes in the story where information about Doc is scarce, but Myers did a good job of keeping the story going. It's definitely a good read if you're interested old western gamblers and gun-slingers.

Commentary on James: Chapter 1

I'm continuing my work in the book of James. Chapter 1 is now finished and available for downloading.

Photos: Laurel Mill

After we went hiking at Medoc, we stopped by two geocache locations on the way home. One was the very pretty Laurel Mill. Ann found the cache while I took pictures.

Photos: Medoc Mountain State Park

Yesterday we went hiking and geocaching at Medoc Mountain State Park, about an hour NE of Wake Forest. This park wasn't nearly as picturesque as some of the ones we hiked in the Piedmont, like Stone Mountain, Pilot Mountain, or Hanging Rock, but it was cool because we went geocaching. Ann found 4 geocaches for us to try, two in the park and two on the way home. We actually found all four of them, which is much better than the first time we went geocaching and came home 0 for 2. I've posted the pictures of us hiking and exploring the geocaches in Medoc.

Book: Bruce Ray's "Withhold Not Correction"

"Withhold Not Correction" is a good book on biblical correction in the home. The first part provides a solid theological foundation for biblical correction, and the second part details several principles on implemention. I recommend this book in conjunction with Michael Pearl's "To Train Up A Child" for children from birth to around age 8.

Videos: Preaching Isaiah 38:1-8

On Dec 30, 2007, I got an opportunity to preach at Enterprise Baptist Church near Lake Gaston NC. I preached on Hezekiah's healing from Is 38, and you can find the videos in the "My Sermons" section on my preaching page. The videos are hosted on YouTube.

iMac Software

The new iMac came with a bunch of great software, notably the iLife suite of tools. I really like iLife, but there's still lots of other things I'd like to do, and my goal is get everything I can for free. In other words: open source. Here's a list of what I'm using now:

Audio - SlimServer (for my SqueezeBox)
Bible - MacSword (simple but gives me the ESV, ISV, and NET)
Compression - Stuffit, YemuZip
Games - Argonaut, Goban, FreeCiv
FTP - CyberDuck
Office - NeoOffice (OpenOffice ported to the Mac, works surprisingly well; hopefully I never have to buy MS Office)
Pictures - Image Tricks
Programming - TextWrangler
Video - Flip4Mac, Handbrake (great tool for ripping videos), Miro (let's you watch TV on your computer), VLC (plays every kind of video, esp. those that QuickTime won't play)
Web - Firefox, Flickr Uploadr

Photos: The new iMac

I've uploaded three new pictures of the iMac to Flickr.

More Memory for the iMac

The iMac I bought a couple weeks back came standard with 1 GB of RAM.  I could get Apple to upgrade it, but they want $150 for an additional 2 GB.  I bought the same memory from Crucial, and it cost less than half of that.  And it took only 5 minutes or so to put in.

Commentary on James: Chapter 5

I'm continuing my work on converting my studies in the book of James into a mini-commenary.  Chapter 5 is now complete, and you can find the PDF file in the NT section.