Anyway, you can catch the show live starting at 1:00 PM EST (until 5:00) or wait a week and catch the segments from the week before which are always posted on Fridays.    Meanwhile, he’s a sneak peek at something from the Rachel’s blog:

A Short Play by Rachel: Great Expectations

Scene opens on RACHEL and FRIEND riding in RACHEL’S car. They are discussing raising RACHEL’S future daughter.

RACHEL:    I think that while they’re growing up, I’ll have my son open my daughter’s car door for her when we get in the car. 

FRIEND:     Why?

RACHEL:     Well, I want my son to know how to treat a woman, and I want my daughter to know how a gentleman should treat her.

FRIEND:     Don’t you think that’s setting up unrealistic expectations for her?

RACHEL:     In what way?

FRIEND:     Well, not all men open car doors for women. That’s not something she should expect.

RACHEL:     And why not? My husband opens the car door for me. If we teach our son to do it, there are probably other moms out there teaching their sons to do it. It’s those little niceties that make all the difference sometimes.

FRIEND:     But maybe she won’t meet one of those guys. Or date one. You’re setting her up with unrealistic expectations.

RACHEL:     I don’t think it’s an unrealistic expectation. It’s a high expectation. 

FRIEND:     Well, maybe it’s too high.

RACHEL:     And why wouldn’t I want my daughter to have high expectations? I want her to end up with a man who treats her the way my husband treats me—the way a man should treat a woman. I don’t want her to settle for some schmuck who doesn’t know how to treat her well. I wouldn’t raise her to think she should only marry a rich man or someone who falls at her feet. But opening a car door for her? That’s something small that says, “I care about you,” every time she gets in the car. 

FRIEND:     Well. My husband doesn’t do it for me.

RACHEL:     So you think I’m giving my daughter unrealistic expectations just because your husband doesn’t open the car door for you?

FRIEND:     I—I guess.

RACHEL:     Well, he should open the door for you. It’s not that hard. You tell him I said that.

END SCENE.

I have no hesitation in importing large amounts of text from other blogs if I think it means that people will actually read the subject matter in question, but in this case, you are indeed going to have to click, because the narrative is lengthy; but also because you need to reward all the work that went into making this story available.

In a two-part blog post,  Mark Driscoll’s Church Discipline Contract: Looking For True Repentance at Mars Hill Church? Sign on the Dotted Line and Mark Driscoll’s ‘Gospel Shame’: The Truth About Discipline, Excommunication, and Cult-like Control at Mars Hill author Matthew Paul Turner introduces us to a young man named Andrew.

Shortly after graduating from high school (he was homeschooled), Andrew wanted a change in scenery. The then Tennessee resident says he needed a change in scenery. He needed to get away. He needed to grow up. He needed to figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

So when he turned 20, Andrew moved away from his quaint life in America’s Bible belt, and he moved to Seattle, and yes, in hopes of finding himself.

Once he was settled into life in the great Northwest, Andrew took the advice of an older sibling and visited Mars Hill Church, the congregational home of Mark Driscoll.

Andrew was born and raised Independent Fundamental Baptist, so not only was Andrew accustomed to Mark’s anger-laced fiery style of sermon, he had a deep appreciation for it. In the beginning, some of Mars Hill’s reformed theologies rubbed against Andrew’s Baptist roots, but Mark’s enthrallment for preaching “Jesus Christ crucified” eventually was what relieved Andrew’s doctrinal concerns, and it wasn’t long before he became a member. Soon thereafter, he was wading heart deep amid the friendly, committed Mars Hill community, becoming more and more comfortable in his born again reformed skin, guzzling the Driscollized water.

According to Andrew, joining Mars Hill was a good move for him. While he didn’t agree with every theological declaration that came out Mark Driscoll’s mouth, he loved his community, a devoted group of believers who seemed to love, support, and value him the way Jesus commanded. Over the next couple of years, Andrew became well connected. He volunteered. He became active in a community group. He even volunteered on Sundays as church security.

Toward the beginning of 2011, Andrew met and eventually began dating the daughter of a church elder at Mars Hill. The two fell in love quickly. Last fall, they were engaged to be married.

But shortly after becoming engaged, Andrew made a costly choice…

Again, here are the links:

• Mark Driscoll’s Church Discipline Contract: Looking For True Repentance at Mars Hill Church? Sign on the Dotted Line (Part One) – 450 comments
  
• Mark Driscoll’s ‘Gospel Shame’: The Truth About Discipline, Excommunication, and Cult-like Control at Mars Hill (Part Two) – 700 comments

I was going to devote this space today to a collection of blogger reactions to The Elephant Room 2 satellite conference presented by James MacDonald.  However, the reactions among bloggers at the two Alltop aggregators (church and Christianity) were much more sparse than I expected, and the whole thing has been somewhat overshadowed by MacDonald’s resignation from The Gospel Coalition, an organization we choose not to track here. A greater degree of research is obviously required, and some attendees are still making their way back to their home computers.

So, rather than do a superficial job of this — like what you’re reading now — we’re going to put coverage of Elephant 2 off for a day or two, or longer.  If you can’t wait, Trevin Wax has expended massive amounts of verbiage on all seven sessions, and possibly used up all of the internet’s available electrons for this topic. 

Of course, if you want the closest thing to a full transcription of the whole event as a .pdf file, there’s always Tim Schraeder’s notes.

After she passed away, he says — and friends confirm — he cried ‘buckets and buckets of tears.’

“I don’t know where she is right now;” he told friends, referring his lack of insight into her eternal destiny.

They never had that conversation.

They simply never discussed faith-related subjects.

And here’s the surprise ending: They went to church almost every Sunday.

The rug and lamp cozy living room theme from Grace Community Church in Fremont, Ohio as seen at the blog, Church Stage Design Ideas

Why are opening remarks called an introduction, but concluding remarks are never called an extroduction?

• Emotionally stirring:  Caiden Hooks, eight-years-old, lost his eyes to cancer.  He shares his faith in a baptism video produced at LifePoint Church in Columbus, Ohio: “We live by faith and not by sight.”
• Frank Viola attempts a classification of Evangelicals into four distinct streams.  It’s actually part two of an article he posted in May.
• Last week I found myself in the middle of a discussion concerning a Catholic parent whose eight-year-old daughter is being invited to Bible study run by Evangelicals.  It’s good to see both sides of this scenario.
  
• Or how about this one which goes all the way back to December 30th — that’s so last year — where he’s Baptist and her parents are Church of Christ and insist he convert before marrying her.  They say that otherwise, he is “leading her to hell.”  Yikes.
  
• When a faith healer like Todd Bentley reports of crusade miracles taking place, it would be helpful if there were sufficient information to verify the claims. Update: Bentley has just been refused admittance into Australia.
  
• Here’s a fun idea; the world’s most popular provider of cosmetic beauty — Photoshop — marketed as if it’s a consumer product that actually changes people in the real world.
  
• Haiti for Christ was in line for much needed financial support from Mark Driscoll’s network of churches, but when they found out the organization had a female pastor, they pulled the plug on that support.
  
• Comment of the week: At an article at Reformed Arminian about KJV Onlylism, this response: “I am KJVJSB — KJV Just Sounds Better. I can’t bear the ugly English in the NIV in particular. So I swap between the NKJV and the KJV…”
  
• An excellent piece from across the pond about the ongoing value and need for the ministry of Christian bookstores.
  
• Speaking of Driscoll, Todd Rhodes thinks we’ve gone from speaking too little about sex, to talking too much; especially Pastor Patrick Wooden. (Note: Audio clip content is unnecessarily and uncomfortably graphic.)
  
• One of the worst things about being newly — or not so newly — married is hearing the same question over and over and over and over again: So when are you having kids?
  
• Meanwhile, over at Mandy Thompson’s house, the topic of contention is FDT or Family Devotion Time; somewhat complicated by the fact that he’s the preacher and she’s the worship leader.
  
• Often by promoting a moral high ground, the church unknowingly is pushing sexually active young people toward having abortions.
  
• Polish pop star Doda this week was fined the equivalent of $14.95 — no, make that $1,495 — by a Polish court for comments she made in 2009 suggesting the Bible’s writers were drunk and on drugs.  Doda disagreed: “If someone is a deep believer, I would not think such words could offend someone.”
  
• How about a blog that mixes video games and theology?  That’s what David is trying to do at Reclaimer 105.  Or maybe you’re in youth ministry and just need a good game analogy to get a message across.
• Still lots of heat over a July piece here concerning Perry Noble’s charge to his congregation, ‘Show up on time for church, or else.’
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day last week, turned up a rare 30-second clip of King’s humorous side when he guested on The Tonight Show.
  
• So why is the Pajama Diaries comic here today? It was the words “Sunday School Tuition” that got me. We use the phrase in one context and forget that it means something entirely different in a Jewish context. Besides, most church children’s programs don’t charge fees, while the various synagogues I checked online were charging between $200 and $550 per child.
  

Imagine with me: The apostle Paul, John the Baptist, the prophet Isaiah, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and Hudson Taylor all sitting in a room together.  The year is 2012, and they’re listening to a mainstream Christian radio station.  After listening for an hour, someone finally speaks up:

Isaiah:  um….

Paul:  Wow.

Luther:  THIS IS CHRISTIAN?!?!

Augustine:  Did that song just say ‘God you are super neat’?!?

Taylor:  Haven’t heard a song about the cross yet.

John:  This is embarrassing. [Bites into a bug]

Musician Matt Papa has just begun a multi-part series about Christian radio.  Talk about biting the hand that could be feeding you. Link here to get in on part one of the series, Jesus Isn’t Safe, and also a free download of Matt’s newest song.

Yes. Someone actually did that. Decidedly not the normal routine at that church.

Video annotation:

In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called “gendercide”.

This documentary film tells the stories of abandoned and trafficked girls, of women who suffer extreme dowry-related violence, of brave mothers fighting to save their daughters’ lives, and of other mothers who would kill for a son. Global experts and grassroots activists put the stories in context and advocate different paths towards change, while collectively lamenting the lack of any truly effective action against this injustice.

Learn more about the film and sign up for email updates at www.itsagirlmovie.com

But before North Americans get too smug, consider these words from Baptist icon Albert Mohler, Jr.:

Abortion is now America’s most common surgical procedure performed on adults. As many as one out of three women will have at least one abortion. In some American neighborhoods, the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births.

Most Americans will pay little attention to the 38th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to arrange the killing of the unborn life within her. Since that decision was handed down, more than 50 million babies have been aborted, at a rate of over 3,000 each day.

One of the most chilling aspects of all this is the sense of normalcy in American life. Abortion statistics pile up from year to year, and each report gets filed. Moral sentiment on the issue of abortion has shifted discernibly in recent years, as ultrasound images and other technologies deliver unquestionable proof that the unborn child is just that — a child. Nevertheless, the larger picture of abortion in America is basically unchanged.

…continue reading here…