N.T. Wright on Reading the Bible

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Church Under Water

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I spoke to Pastor Linda Bibb this evening. She’s the outgoing pastor at Salem Church where I have been appointed effective July 1. Salem is just a couple of blocks from the Cedar River in downtown Cedar Rapids. She told me they were evacuated from the church building at 4:00 pm yesterday. The wonderful people of this congregation worked together sandbagging and moving as much as they could to the second and third floors. But the river was too much. Linda said the water is at least 8-10 feet deep at the church building. There is a car port over one of the entrances and the water is above that car port. So the water could be to the second floor now. This picture from the Cedar Rapids Gazette shows how high the water was earlier today at the Dairy Queen which is right across the street from Salem United Methodist Church. Unfortunately, the river hasn’t even crested yet so the flooding will probably get worse. We will attempt to get to Cedar Rapids tomorrow. In the midst of all this we ar
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Tearing Down the Old Church Building

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The week of September 4, 2012, the old Salem United Methodist Church building was torn down. It had been destroyed in the flood of 2008 and sold to the city in the "voluntary buyout" in early 2011. Much of the building was torn down when work began on the morning of Tuesday, September 4. At one point, most of the building was down except for the sanctuary and bell tower. The workers removed their equipment and took a break. In the stillness of the morning, the roof over the sanctuary collapsed on its own and brought the rest of the building down except for the bell tower and front facing. The bell tower finally came down on Friday, September 7. It was an emotional week for many of the Salem people and for many who were connected in other ways, such as through the Walk to Emmaus. We showed this video of the church building being torn down during worship on Sunday, September 9.
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I'm Back, But What Have I Been Doing?

I returned to work today after my four-week leave of absence. For the last month I have been reading, thinking, and writing. I had fun with my family, read more books, watched some movies, set up this blog, went to the Van Halen concert, hung out with friends, visited the first church I served (and three others), got organized, and slept in a lot. Oh, I celebrated a birthday too. Did I get done with my dissertation? No. My hope was to write the first three chapters of the dissertation. I did not meet that goal but I did accomplish much. As I said, I have done quite a lot of reading and taking notes and writing out thoughts. I have the three chapters outlined and formatted appropriately. (That might sound silly, but the dissertation layout has to be in a very specific format). The writing now is somewhat like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. I take what I know and have learned and put it into the specific format. So I’m a little sad to be done with the four-week leave. It was gr
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