I don't know who's in charge of advertising at Taco Bell, but they need a raise.

Why you ask? Check out their new promotion: EAT TACO BELL, WIN GAS FOR A YEAR.

Now, I've eaten at Taco Bell and I wouldn't exactly call it winning gas. But it's all semantics I guess.

(Yes, I know that joke was too easy. No, I do not feel in the least bit ashamed)

Evangelical Bob Visits the Anglicans

Last Sunday, Karlene and I visited St. Luke's Reformed Episcopalian church in Santa Ana. It was a total last minute decision as we had stayed up so late the night before. But since we were up and we had no duties to fulfill at our church, we decided to see what an actual liturgical service was like. No sense in swimming in your own pond all the time, we figured, so we decided to go check it out.

When we arrived at 10:50, we wandered around until we found the Sunday School room. St. Luke shares the facilities with a Lutheran church, so there were a few "Oops...pardon me." moments. Once we found the Sunday School room though, we sat down and enjoyed a lesson about the Seventh Ecumenical Council from Fr. Paul Howden. A vigorous discussion about icons between the Father and several men ensued. Fr. Paul (who, to my delight, had lots of notes from The Liturgy Trap by James Jordan in his outline) seemed to be more of an iconoclast, whereas the others defended the iconophile position. I, being a huge iconoclast, of course, kept my big trap shut. The environment was friendly enough I suppose. Being a smaller group (about 20 people or so) you could tell they were tight-knit and while they were unfailingly polite, you could tell that it would take some time for new members to infiltrate the "circle of trust".

We moved to the Eucharist and loaded ourselves up with a BCP and a hymnal. The greeters in the narthex loaded us up with a couple of handouts about liturgical worship and with a smile wished us the best of luck. We felt like quite the newbies walking in with a library of resources, but were quite grateful for the church's helpful spirit in making the literature available. Yes, it was difficult to follow at first, lots of page turning, book fumbling and the sort, but nothing that we couldn't figure out by the end of the service. The liturgy was wonderful, and I was grateful that I was able to experience such a display of reverence, awe and beauty. Being the Feast of Tranfiguration we were treated to a message by Fr. Dominic Tarantino about the glory of God and how His glory must be acted out in our lives. Good sermon, but a bit hard to follow, as he had basically read it off his notes.

Then came the time to celebrate the Eucharist. I received a friendly tap on the back from a concerned parishoner who wanted to let me know that they used real wine to celebrate the feast. I responded with an enthusiastic thumbs up and he laughed. I was a bit uneasy at first to learn that we would have to go up to the altar and kneel to receive the sacrament. The presby blood in me was starting to get nervous. I imagined my former pastor having an embolism if he saw me doing this. Nonetheless, I had made up my mind before hand that I was going to be a good sport about this and no way was I going to miss communion. So up I went, wife in tow.

Now my wife, being a Lutheran for the first twelve years of her life, had this liturgy thing down pretty good. So she didn't have a problem kneeling for the body and blood. She knelt, and cupped her hands. I did the same. The father came by, placed the bread in our hands and blessed it. I down at the row of kneeling communicants to see what was next. Nobody was eating the bread. "OK" I thought, "they must all eat it together, I'll just wait for the cue". Next the priest came by with the cup of wine. I looked over at the guy next to me to see if he was eating yet and sure enough he was chewing his bread. I turned to my wife to see if she was doing the same just in time to see the priest take the bread out of my wife's hand and dip it in the cup. I froze with fear as I came to the sober realization:

"Oh dude...Papa's going to feed me the bread"

Yep, sure enough the priest put the wine-dipped bread in her mouth. I, silently and with as much grace as I could muster, freaked out. "No way am I going to let a grown man feed me" I thought. "For crying out loud, I'm a Presbyterian". But before I could cram the torn pita in my mouth, it was my turn. The priest took the bread, dipped it in the cup and held it up to my mouth. I'm not sure where my head was at, but all I could do was look at him quizzically. Fr. Paul could tell I was a-freakin'. He laughed and offered to hand it back to me, when all of a sudden my jaws snapped open. He put the bread in my mouth and gave me a pat on the head as I began to chew.

After service, I spoke a bit with Fr. Paul. Wow, what a guy! We spoke about Van Til, the PCA, liturgy, icons, James Jordan as well as theonomy and it's branches. He was delighted to hear about Jeff Meyers' forthcoming book and said that it would be a must-read for him. I also recommended Peter Leithart's "House for My Name" and he said that he was going to read it on his vacation. Neat guy, very knowledgable.

All in all, I was very pleased with our visit to St. Luke's. I was glad for the opportunity to experience the liturgy and sacrament and I pray it will not be the last time.

SCCCS is hosting their summer conference this Friday and Saturday at CSU Fullerton. The theme for this year is about Covenant Theology and Justification. If you have any doubts as to where they will come out on the issue, they should be quashed when you see that the venerable Norman Shepherd will be giving a couple of addresses during the conference. I'm really looking forward to this one and anticipating hooking up with many friends from my old church and former bookstore who were actively involved in SCCCS' ministry as well as BTS. If you want a preview of the what the speakers will be lecturing on then check this out.

It's interesting to see the subtle shift that CMF/SCCCS/BTS has undergone in moving from an emphasis on theonomic practice and teaching to issues related to church doctrine and polity. It seems to me (and let me preface this by saying that this is nothing more than my own observation and deserves more qualifications than I have time to write) that this shift can best be crudely explained as a move from Bahnsen to Jordan. This can be seen in CMF distributing Tim Gallant's fine book, Feed My Lambs, a move I'm not sure would have Ken Gentry's, nor even Dr. Bahnsen's seal of approval.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. IMO Jordan's version of theocracy can fit in well with the traditional focus of "T"heonomy and to put it simply, if there is to be renewal politically, it must first start in the house of God with the church, the corporate body of individuals who confess Christ.

Nonetheless there are some theonomists who hold to a more"Old School Presbyterian" tradition who view Jordan's take on the issue with some suspicion, the aforementioned Rev. Gentry being one of them. One of the things which destroyed my old church was the accusation that some elders (who were theonomists) held to a paedocommunion view and were trying to force the issue with a child in the church. During this time someone had circulated Jordan's Theses on P-comm from the Geneva Papers and boy did the "guilt by association" fingers start to point. This in spite of the fact that the elders all swore up and down that they did not hold to p-comm. I wonder if those elders still involved in SCCCS/BTS see the same shift that I do and what they might think about that.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling post. Just thinking out loud I suppose, not saying anything that hasn't already been said. If anyone reading is going to the conference I would love to meet up with you for some coffee during break time.

My new class is titled Human Nutrition, distinct from Livestock Nutrition I suppose. The class could also be titled "Hey, Let's Talk About Healthy Stuff While the Fat Guy Squirms in his Chair".

Seriously though, there were a great many helpful things to talk about last night and I decided that my old habits of eating twice a day are doomed. It's not that I'm going to start eating a healthy breakfast or anything of the like, but I will start to make a conscious attempt to eat at least 5-6 times a day which boils down to eating something (possibly healthy) every two hours or so. Some of my classmates have already adopted this diet as their own and they said that they have had more energy all through the day and they don't overeat at meals (as I am wont to do only eating two times a day).

I went home and announced my new plan to my wife to which she responded "Oh yeah, the pregnant ladies' diet". I had no idea I would be joining such prestigious company.

My assignments this week include calorie counting, investigating my fiber intake, investigating food labels for fat and counting fat grams, looking for vitamins in food and basically getting real self-conscious about every time I shove something in my pie hole.

Oh and I learned last night what a healthy bowel movement should look and smell like. Yep, money well spent.