From the Departure Lounge at Tampa International. . .

by Phil Johnson

'm headed back home from Tampa this morning. Tomorrow is the fiftieth anniversary celebration at Grace Community Church, so this is a busy end to a busy week, and this will be an abbreviated BlogSpotting post. But here are a few things I've seen in the blogosphere lately that tie back to PyroManiacs:

• Sean Higgins is already praying about the '07 Snow Retreat.
  
• Brad Huston is unconvinced that I have "rightly separated the proverbial wheat from the chaff when it comes to the entire Emergent landscape." Understandable, since I have attempted no such winnowing. There's enough chaff in the pile that I'm not inclined to spend a lot of time picking out a few stray grains of wheat here and there. In case anyone else has missed the point, I think every idea that makes the "Emerging Conversation" distinctive is a bad idea, and the things I like about a few guys like Mark Driscoll and some others who have identified themselves as "Emerging" are the very things that run counter to the basic thinking of the bulk of the movement.
  
• JD Hatfield (whom I got to meet this week) tries his hand at live-by-taped-delay-blogging a conference.
  
• Candyinsierras posts a great Spurgeon excerpt relevant to the discussion about "lordship salvation."
  
• Tim Suffield experiments in a quest to discover how ridiculously easy it is to get BlogSpotted.
  
• Neil Shay, on the other hand, ponders how difficult it is to get blogrolled at TeamPyro. He begs and cajoles and whines to no avail. Actually, he noticed that Bob Bixby had been promoted to "Interesting," leaving our "Bland" category empty. So he made a shameless push for inclusion in "Bland." Problem is, the post was too funny to qualify as "bland." We read the comments under his post and briefly considered a new category called "People with Chia-pet Hair," but ruled that out pretty quickly, too. But we're open to suggestions for a new blogroll category in which "Chez Kneel" might fit. Your ideas?
  
• Chris L. at "Fishing the Abyss" categorizes us as "sensible folk," contrasted to the "wingnut" category. His post on the difference between "traditional" and "emerging" is an intriguing study in how people perceive things. From where Chris sits, most "traditionalist" folk "seem to be overwhelmingly Calvinist, and tend to get caught up in lots of discussions around 'faith' and 'works'" and "seem to have problems engaging in any sort of conversation without succumbing to the need to either set terms ('you have to agree that Catholics are going to hell/free will is a crock/etc., or I'm outta here. . .') or call the salvation of the 'emergents' into question."
  
• William Dicks stops here first thing each day. He is surprised (do we detect a note of disappointment?) that he didn't score closer to PyroManiacs in the latest quiz-meme. No worries, William. I took the test and it told me I'm not very Pyro, either. So I took it again and exaggerated my answers to make myself sound like the meanest, most condescending smart aleck possible, and I achieved a perfect Pyro-score. So I think whoever made up the quiz fudged a bit. I'm guessing it's not someone who really appreciates everything we do here.
  
• Jonah at "Sign of Jonah" is a charismatic willing to examine critically the charismatic fringe. A recent post from Dan Phillips provoked this observation from Jonah: "God is big enough to do whatever He wants, but demanding signs from God is most definitely not profitable to the Christian walk. In fact, I'd say that it puts you at odds with God."

There may be more to BlogSpot, and if time permits this afternoon, I'll add to this post and fix whatever typos I might have committed in my haste. But at the moment, I need to get ready to board my flight from Tampa to Los Angeles. See you there.

---