{chris wes conley}

12.23.2007

The Invasion: Merry Christmas

from my pals at Matthias Lot Church in St. Charles (matthiaslot.com)

12.18.2007

Fact or Fiction: Winter Break Reading List

Any seminarian will likely relate to losing that feeling of "enjoyment reading". Remember when you did that once upon a time? Think hard...

Seminary begins and although it's a lot of reading, at first it's great because of such (usually) rich content and info you've not had on that little hard drive in your head up to this point. Then... life happens. Your kids get the stomach flu, you lose all your electricity.... you name it... the normal stuff..... happens....

Over the past.... mmm... year I've missed reading books to enjoy them and without a research project in mind.

During this brief winter break, I'm choosing to read these books just because. I'm going to pull them off my shelf, start them, maybe not even from the beginning... and enjoy 'em. I might not even finish them completely, although that's not usually my style.
I'm choosing a couple fiction titles, which incidentally I many times find more theology & spirituality than many of today's "christian" books. I will also say... I'm a sucker for the big POP writers... esp. King/Crichton/ and even the daft Palahniuk.... I'm also choosing a few classics... Through my most recent church history class, I've got a new reinvigorated passion for the church fathers... I'm wanting to tackle most of the works by Augustine & Tertullian by New Year's Day 2009.

Here are the books I'm looking forward to enjoying from now until Jan 15:

Foundations of the Christian Religion (Blaise Pascal):
My wife gave me a set of these small classics. I'm starting with Pascal because I've not yet read him... and after my church history seminary class I'm somewhat invigorated for reading those old dead guys.

Next (Michael Crichton):
Reading Jurassic Park when I was in high school (before the movie) was huge. I've read all of Crichton's since (once they hit paperback, of course). Love the sci-fi aspect.

The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins):
Reading Dawkins always helps me talk through (with me, in my head) what and why I believe the Gospel and what it means for people around me. He also reminds me that since we all want to explain what is out there, why it's out there, and what the hell is going on, that everyone I know and talk to is searching... just like me.

Rant (Chuck Palahniuk):
Chuck is one I TRY to read in public but he just makes me laugh so much, I usually only take it out of the house if I'm wanting to talk to people when they ask what I'm reading because I'm crying so loudly. I heart Chuck. (Not Norris... sheesh)

unchristian (Kinnaman/Lyons):
I reserve the right to not read this one this break. This is the cool hip book right now, and I'm so tired of cool AND hip at the moment... I might just pull out Lord of the Flies or The Catcher in the Rye...

12.10.2007

unChristian: CNN interview with Gabe Lyons

I thought this was a great interview with Gabe. He's so cool. How much time does a guy like that spend on his hair each morning. Honestly though, I love Gabe's stuff... See: The Fermi Project.

11.02.2007

Waiters Who are Nauseated by food

Oh wow. This is from the mid-90's. Hilarious

2.19.2007

Cancel or Allow

ALLOW!

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Pretty frickin' awesome... concerning the power of digital communication.

1.16.2007

Vegas Baby

Yes.... We arrived in Vegas late yesterday and had a late night already, with Cold Stone AFM stuff. FYI: The yearly, Annual Franchisee Meeting occurs each January at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fun stuff. Busy stuff.

I've decided each day I'm hear in Vegas, I'm going to blog about some organization and how they are making a completely opposite impact on our world.... compared with the Vegas mentality.