Rotundus.com

I don't get only books in the mail - I also get other things there. (Amongst these other things might be found bills unfortunately :) Anyways, over the past while I've started up a couple of magazine subscriptions.

I've been listening to the White Horse Inn for a while, so a short while ago I subscribed to the corresponding magazine - Modern Reformation.

As well, I'd heard of the magazine Touchstone before, but with the prodding of one Peter Torenvliet I am now a subscriber to that as well.

So, what magazines do the rest of you subscribe to or at least read regularly?

When in BC, Ryan and I began to discuss the possibility of doing something suitably silly for the 5th anniversary of Rotundus (coming up in less than a month). There are a lot of sufficiently ridiculous possibilities out there, but I'm think that coffee mugs may be the way to go:

The above mugs can be had relatively cheaply (I'd probably cover the entire cost for a batch of these). On the other hand, much cooler-looking mugs can be found, but they cost around double the price for a minimum order of 12 and it's also more expensive to include multiple colours. What do you think of these different styles of mugs and would you be interesting in chipping in a few bucks? (incidentally, the same site also sells travel mugs if you'd prefer)

One other advantage of these later mugs is size. The first mug which you see an image of is probably 10 - 12 oz, but the later mugs are in the 16 - 18 oz range (although the same place also sells "normal"-sized things and travel mugs). I've been observing that my coffee mugs are generally utilized in order of diminishing size.

First of all, prior to yet another post on the organ, I wanted to take a moment to apologize to Musica_Ecclesia and any others who may have taken offense to some of my prior comments on this subject. Not all that I said was edifying and at times I was overly antagonistic. This is not to say that I've suddenly fallen in love with the organ, but that we should keep things in the proper perspective. Criticism may at times be necessary, but the spirit of conversation should be one of love.

It seems that I've posted many a time on something sparked by Mike Horton's A Better Way, but I'd like to do so once again. One of the topics that the book touched upon was the architecture of church buildings (pages 173 - 177), and this led me to reflect how we construct church buildings. Michael Horton took this argument as far as the slope of the roof, which seems to be a bit extreme to me, but do you attach any significance to this? I think that by and large we can agree that an organ is acceptable for accompanying worship, but that some give this instrument a significance which it is not due. Following along the lines of Michael Horton's comments, the question which came to mind is whether or not this can be counteracted through architectural changes.

Thought 1: Should the organ console be migrated to the rear of the church building? In this way it becomes less visible, and therefore hopefully less distracting.

Thought 2: Musicia Ecclasia has published on his site an article which complained about a "worship pit" containing musicians which was located above and behind the sanctuary. Although organ pipes are stationary, they seem to me to be the dominant architectural element inside most CanRC churches. Can or should organ pipes be migrated to the rear of the church? Could organ pipes be relocated to a lower level than they are currently generally found? Would either suggestion negative impact acoustics or space utilization?

While reading some blogs today I came across a post mentioning that Covenant Theological Seminary was making a number of its courses available online for download.

Why I found this interesting was that this was not the first time that I had heard of this particular seminary. The first time was probably when another blogger that I read mentioned that he had applied to this particular seminary. He's a member of the Evanglical Free Churches, but Covenant is actually the denominational seminary of the PCA (which I've written about in recent days).

Covenant definitely has a different "economy of scale" than some other theological seminaries. As a denomination with over 400,000 members is behind it, its not stuck with a graduating class of perhaps 2 or 3. Rather, the most recent graduating class was awarded 160 degrees.