Speaking of the Christian vs. secular college debate, a valid alternative to choosing a Christian college is choosing a secular school based on the churches/campus ministries resident on or around that secular campus. For instance, my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, has a campus ministry called Reformed University Ministries. RUM's work is called Reformed University Fellowship on each campus. Of course, this work is better on some campuses than others. It's excellent at Vanderbilt.
This was a prominent factor in our encouraging our second child, Joseph, to consider Vanderbilt.
RUF is self-consciously church-based and biblical exposition forms the centerpiece of their on-campus weekly meetings. Much different than every other evangelical parachurch campus ministry (trust me), RUF doesn't just pay lip-service to the local church but it pushes its students to be committed to a church--and not as secondary priority after their involvement in the RUF campus ministry, but as foundational to Christian discipleship.
On to a story. Joseph narrowed his choice down to Covenant College or Vanderbilt. He and I visited both of them and Joseph still couldn't choose. When we visited Vanderbilt, Marvin and Susan Olasky's son (Joseph, I think) hosted Joseph overnight and gave high marks to his experience there. Eventually, Joseph chose Vanderbilt.
So with some fear (but always faith), in the Fall of 2000 our family piled in the car and took Joseph to Nashville. We stayed at our son-in-law and daughter, Doug and Heather's, on Friday night and Saturday morning got in the minivan to move Joseph into his dorm room about half an hour away.
The building had only singles and was a pit. It's never easy to let a child go so I was feeling some gloom as we finished carrying boxes and clothes up to the room. The time came to leave and, after praying and giving him a kiss and a hug, we walked out of the room and headed to the staircase. Turning left out of his room and starting down the hall (with tears in my eyes, I admit), I was startled to look in the next door and see, exactly at the same place in the bookshelf over the desk, the same two-volume set we had just placed in the same position in Joseph's room: the Banner of Truth two-volume set of the Works of Jonathan Edwards.
I did a doubletake and looked again, thinking I'd likely been doing the moonwalk and not actually moving down the hall at all as I walked. I must still be looking through Joseph's doorway. So I looked more closely and saw through the door a stranger and his mother. I walked straight into the room and asked the young man, "What in the WORLD are you doing with a two-volume set of Jonathan Edwards on our bookshelf!? Come here, I've got to show you something."
We walked out the door and, turning right, I had him look in Joseph's room and see what he had on his shelf. Then it was time for our new-found friend to do a doubletake. Joseph's next door neighbor then told me how he had an older brother who had gone off to college--a non-Christian school by the way--and been led to faith in Jesus, there. His brother came home and told him about Jesus, at which point he too placed his faith in Jesus Christ.
His brother also turned him on to John Piper, so this younger brother began reading Piper. And he noticed in the footnotes that Piper drank waters from Edwards' well, so he went out and bought this set of Edwards and brought it to school so he could read it. Cinching the matter, he told me his name was Joseph--my son's name, also.
Praise God for His loving provision for His children, even down to determining among thousands of students that two students matriculating at Vandy who love Him would have adjoining rooms and doctrine.
Both Josephs attended RUF which was absolutely critical in their spiritual lives while at Vandy; both grew stronger in their friendship and faith while at Vandy; and our family's faith was strengthened as we saw how much God protects those who belong to Him, including their children.
Incidentally, it turned out that their dorm was sort of a self-selective group of sold-out Christians because all the men living there had asked not to be placed in a co-ed dorm.
for about twelve months now and I can't make myself finish it. Throughout I've felt like I was being hectored by a self-righteous schoolmarm who was incapable of leaving anything for the reader to discover. Maybe other works by Trollope are different but I'm sceptical. Seems the things I object to in Barchester Towers would be the product of Trollope's own nature. So who thinks I'm out to lunch on this one?
. And although it did become tedious every now and then, I thought reading this work would be an excellent preparation for marriage for any man who sees a need to grow in his understanding of the weaker and fairer sex. What an excellent display of feminine character at both its best and worst, and how sympathetically Eliot presents both ends of the continuum. 
and it's one of the best reads I've ever had. So when a new McPhee piece appears, I'm licking my chops.
(about the huge wilderness that consumes the southern third of New Jersey), 
, 
(about the reinvention of blimps), 
(a McPhee reader), and possibly the book McPhee's best known for, 
.
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:
, commending it to me as the quarter-stick addict's equivalent of a Nicorette patch.
(2004). We started the book during our family vacation, reading it aloud in the car as we drove. But we didn't get to the end so now we all have to finish it on our own.
is) the finest of the Vietnam novels."
and 
); its music (
and 
); it's 
, 
); its sports (Nascar); its denominations (Presbyterian Church in America and the Southern Baptist Convention); its movies (
and Deliverance [yeah, I'm joking--it's just a joke, chill out, wouldya?]...
published by London's James Clarke is available on Amazon for the unbelievably good price of $16.50. This version has double the pages of the version Crossway sells as one of its Classic Commentaries series, but is only a few dollars more. So trust us: forget the Crossway edition and buy it on Amazon.
to read to him, do it now. You'll both love it.
with our first year Pastors College men. If you haven't read this book, you simply must. Nothing has helped me understand our present pressures and how best to prepare our children for the coming persecution as well as this little treasure.
.
. If you’re a Titus 2 woman, a pastor, or an elder and you haven’t read Clark, you should know that this book written by a Roman Catholic layman is indispensable. Traditional complementarian literature such as Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood can never be more than a stopgap measure. Although helpful, such works are only a hodgepodge of viewpoints and perspectives, never approaching a theology of sexuality. Why?
which I've been relishing this past week.
and read the essays comparing the work of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. You'll never again think big thoughts about business and small thoughts about motherhood. Chesterton will have given you a lifelong innoculation against such stupidity.
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. Here's a description:
which made me want to go back to my roots there in that denomination--that is, until I remembered what the OPC actually was like. As in somnolent by way of its distinctives, one of which is variously referred to here and other places as R2K (radical two kingdom), 2K (two kingdom), or "the spirituality of the Church."
earlier today, I came across this excerpt. Augustine knew something about preaching the Gospel in the city and contextualizing the Lordship of Jesus Christ to urbane men and women world-weary in a decadent
