The Bulletin Board

The Wall Street Journal in an article titled, "Dollar's Rally is No Cause for Comfort," on August 12, 2008, confirmed what those of us in the field already know.

WSJ: "...Despite its recent strength, the dollar remains in a deep trench, down 37% against major trading partners in the past six years or so. Climbing out of that dip could take years."

That stat, along with inflation at the local level in Europe, means that it is twice as expensive to now live in Europe as compared to just 6 years ago when we moved to Budapest. Imagine living in an economy where your money is worth only 1/2 of what it was 6 years ago! Most of our close American friends with Campus Crusade in Europe have had to make emergency support raising trips back to the States. In addition, Campus Crusade will loose many of our most valuable national staff because of the dollar's drop.

The good news: Our Hungarian staff, although they still have financial needs, have the healthiest financial support collectively as a country team, among all of our countries across Eastern Europe. Also, of the 20 Polish staff EB and I have worked with, 19 of them are much better off financially than before I began working with them. Our model for helping Eastern European national laborers works, it is just needs to be implemented on a much bigger scale than we are able across our part of the world.

A GREAT book! "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller. This apologetics book is written from a pastor/philosopher's perspective and is the best I have read since Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ" series. Many of the postmodern philosophers I studied in my seminary class are quoted by Timothy Keller in this book. Also Timothy Keller draws from popular movies and music to defend his points. He has some great chapters on forgiveness, how the doctrine of forgiveness is unique and how it gives evidence for the truth claims of Christianity. When this book comes out in paperback, I will buy a bunch to give away evangelistically. Here is a website for the book...

http://www.thereasonforgod.com/

The Saddleback Debate: I think the real story to come out of the Obama/McCain debate (is dialogue a better word?) with Rick Warren isn't who won or which candidate said what. (Although I thought Obama did a great job of articulating the gospel and McCain was refreshingly honest about the failure of his first marriage.) I think the real story is that this was a great example of the evangelical church leading the way and being a change agent, salt and light, in the political arena. The format was new, creative and done with excellence. And it wasn't the atheists or a fringe group that put on this debate; it was the evangelical church! I think Rick Warren was respectful to both candidates while asking pointed questions without compromising the Christian worldview.

Whereas in so many areas Christians lag behind the non-Christian world in quality and creativity, this debate allowed us to have an impact on the national stage without providing fodder that reinforces negative Christian stereotypes. I loved what Rick Warren said to begin the dialogue: (something like), "We believe in the separation of church and state but not the separation of faith from politics." Whereas the American Christian church has its problems and short-sightedness, what took place at Saddleback would not happen anywhere else in the world in terms of the evangelical church exerting a relevant and respectful influence on a country's political process.

Below are some pictures from a recent family reunion in Colorado we attended on my side (the Jackson side). One day Ben and I hiked up Colorado’s 2^nd highest mountain, Mt. Massive, just outside of Leadville.

This picture is of my mom (seated middle on the couch) and all of her granddaughters.