Well, I *think* the project is finally finished! I'm finally done sanding, staining and varnishing all spars, the sail is ready to be reefed and--after some sketchy sailing on vacation in August--I decided to add outriggers and benches to better counter balance wind pressure. But it's getting late in the season, we're getting busy readying for the move to St. Louis, and the nearest decent body of water is an hour south in SC! Here's some pics of the *completed* project (I hope to eventually put together a page detailing construction as I know you're all dying to know how to build one of these baby's for the Old Town in your crawl-space...):
The outriggers and frame (all collapsible so it can be thrown on the top of the truck and "quickly" assembled at the lake [as well as stored under the house in-between sails]).
A closer pic of the cockpit and benches (I'm still curious how maneuvering the lee board will work when I'm sitting on the Port bench...).
Check out Denis Haack's article in this month's byFaith on Living a Magnetic Faith in a Post-Christian World.
It Rocks! He asks the question, “If you converted to Christianity today, do you think your life would be larger, fuller, richer, more attractive and creative, more involved with the people, circumstances, art, and culture around you? Or do you think your life would be smaller, narrower, more withdrawn, judgmental, and negative, less winsome and creative, less involved with the people, art, circumstances, and culture around you?” You can guess what most answers are...
The thing is, in a "post-Christian" world that has exhausted the empty promises of Modernism, Christians are really the only people with a message to be hopeful about! Yet, for the most part, we tend to just get offended at the lack of grace evidenced in the world around us and go off to play by ourselves.
Haack challenges us to see the culture around us as Babylon--a city that does not know God--and therefore as a city we must seek to win with the gospel, not legislate into submission or give up on. Amen!
Charlie Jones of Peculiar People has a good article in his Charlie's Chat this month on the new face of American Evangelicalism and how it is reshaping its understanding of what it means to minister the gospel. He is basically micro-reviewing Brian McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian and Robert Webber's book, The Younger Evangelical, both of which present a positive look at the shifts that are happening in the evangelical movement across the US: young believers becoming more concerned about theology and the beliefs of Christians throughout history; mercy ministry being seen as being the "hands of feet" of Christ, not just a slick way of throwing a track at someone; evangelicals beginning to venture outside the "church fortress" [read: "cultural ghetto"] we've created to actually engage culture, not just throw a Bible at people and retreat back to our defenses. It's exciting!
I also want to plug byFaith, the new PCA denominational magazine:
I read several articles last night in the Sept./Oct. issue (Tim Keyes, "The Earth is the Lord's" and William Edgar, "Good Company, Good Art, and a Good Laugh" - neither of which happen to be available online) and am very encouraged by the approach the magazine is taking. They are really underscoring the fact that Christ is redeeming all of creation and that He hasn't slowed down any recently. Their articles (in fact, all the articles I've read thus far) challenge us to think through our beliefs and to question some of our practices to see if the way we live/think is really Biblical and reconciliational. (This month there's also an article that focuses on Covenant College's own Dr. Brian Fikkert and his work.) Check it out.
I recently discovered that, by combining good free and open Bible software with excellent Internet Bible search tools it's possible to get all the functionality of an expensive Bible program without having to break the bank or resort to pirated copies!
It's always bothered me that Bible software is so expensive that most people have to use pirated copies. I'm not saying it's wrong for Bible software companies to charge for their work; it's just difficult to justify shelling out half a K to get good software on a student's or minister's budget: now you don't have to!
Here are some great options:
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Free/Open Bible software:
e-Sword (www.e-sword.net/index.html) - very good free Bible software--has lots of translations, multiple languages, commentaries, dictionaries, add-ons, etc. Allows Strong's Numbers searches (a method of doing original-language searches--see explanation bellow).
The SWORD Project (www.crosswire.org/index.jsp) - similar to the above (I think I like e-Sword's "look" a bit more) but open-source. (Works on Linux or Windows - not sure about Mac.)
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Bible sites:
Crosswalk.com (bible.crosswalk.com) - allows searches of multiple versions at once. Great when you can only remember a snippet of the verse you need and can't remember what version you're remembering it from!
Olive Tree Bible Software (olivetree.com/bible) - good English translation search site.
Blue Letter Bible (blueletterbible.org) - allows Strong's Numbers searches (a way of getting at an original language search: use the online JKV translation to find out the Strong's Number for a specific word [didasko^--"I am teaching"--is 1321], then see everywhere that specific Strong's Number occurs in Scripture [1321 occurs 99 times]).
The Online Greek Bible (www.greekbible.com) - allows stream searches - any time a particular stream of letters occurs it shows up in the results (downside: "dida" offers more than a hundred results; didasko^ [in any form] only occurs between 97-99 times in NT).
The Unbound Bible (unbound.biola.edu/) - good English translation search site: offers passage-specific access to Matt. Henry's Commentaries and passage-specific (not search) access to GNT with Strong's Numbers.
Greek New Testament (www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~fisher/gnt/) - allows Greek searches from Latin transliterations: didasko^ (how their Greek-Latin alphabet chart said to render it) produced 97 results.
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Enjoy!