If you are a fan of J.S. Bach, as I am, and haven’t heard about The Bach Project, you owe it to yourself to keep reading.

For several years, Baltimore filmmaker Michael Lawrence has been working on a documentary film centered on the perspectives of contemporary musicians, scientists, and writers on the music of Bach and its place in their musical lives.  The film, now titled Bach and Friends, is scheduled for a DVD release in January.  The film contains interviews and performances from a veritable Who’s Who of today’s music world:  Bobby McFerrin, violinist Joshua Bell, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, the Emerson String Quartet, mandolinist Chris Thile, Béla Fleck, Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter, Peter Schickele, bassist Edgar Meyer, violinist Hillary Hahn, music critic Tim Page … and many more.

The Bach Project was originally launched at the EG’07 (Entertainment Gathering) and Bach and Friends returns to the January 2010 event to celebrate its completion.  That EG will be held in Monterey, January 21-23, 2010.

My own excitement is building for the January release of the DVD of the documentary.   Lawrence has indicated that the set will include a second “Bonus DVD” with music-only, complete performances which will run about an hour and a half.

Numerous video clips from the film have been posted on YouTube.  The latest is violinist Hillary Hahn speaking about Bach and performing the Grave from the Violin Sonata No. 2, BWV 1003.  Click here to view this clip. All of the clips are really intriguing, but check out Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, or Philip Glass/Wendy Sutter.

When the Bach and Friends DVD actually releases in January, I’ll post information here on how to obtain it.

Hilda plays on From the Top's radio show.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s biggest fan is quite possibly a thirteen-year-old girl from Palo Alto, CA. But pianist Hilda Huang is way beyond most thirteen-year-olds. For starters, she wowed a national audience with her music, (and her Bach obsession), two years ago on the PBS series From the Top at Carnegie Hall, and did it all over again on From the Top’s radio show three months later.

She turned her devotion to Bach into the “I Love Bach”  project, aimed at helping connect audiences with the works of the beloved composer. Her project earned her a prestigious Davidson Fellowship, a chance to speak in the Library of Congress, and captured the attention of the Glenn Gould Foundation. (Incidentally Glenn Gould, her favorite pianist, first inspired her to play Bach).

When she sent filmmaker Michael Lawrence a video she made about Bach, he gave her a role in his documentary, The Bach Project, now in post-production. And on August 25, you’ll be able to hear her play the work of her favorite composer on the new CD, From the Top at the Pops.

She’s got the talent of a professional and the vision of a mastermind, and for all her accomplishments, she still has the spunk of a normal kid. So I called Hilda to talk about life, and her love – for Bach.

- Lily Kaiser, From the Top intern

From the Top: So, you’re still obsessed with Bach, right?

Hilda: I’m still very obsessed with Bach. There’s a lot of complexity in his music, and even though it’s so complicated, when you listen to it, it sounds so simple and elegant that it’s amazing that he could have composed that.

From the Top: What’s your favorite piece of Bach’s?

Hilda: I have to say The Art of Fugue, which was the last set of fugues that he wrote. He starts off the entire series with one theme and the rest of the six fugues he relates to that theme. It is absolutely spectacular that he could take four measures of music and do so much with it. He inverts it and plays with it.

From the Top: What was it like to be a part of Michael Lawrence’s documentary, The Bach Project? How did you get the chance to be in it?

Hilda: I just sent a tape to him the year before and about six months later, he sent an email back and said I could have a little part in the film. We did a one-day taping where I played The Art of Fugue and did a short interview. Michael Lawrence is the sweetest guy ever. It was so nice just to be able to interview with him for a day, and it was a big honor to work with a big artist that I know.

From the Top: We saw a piece of the video you made when you were on From the Top at Carnegie Hall. How did you feel about being on TV and radio with us?

Hilda: I’d never been on From the Top before and to immediately be on TV was a bit stressful. But, it was really fun to get to know Christopher O’Riley and Tim [Banker, Producer], and Tom [Vignieri, Music Producer]. Radio was a bit easier, they darkened the hall a bit so you were not too aware of all the people. I felt a lot more relaxed and so much more free and able to have fun.

Hilda plays The Art of Fugue.

From the Top: What was it like to record with From the Top and the Cincinnati Pops on From the Top at the Pops?

Hilda: Oh my gosh, it was so fun. I got to meet a bunch of new people:
Chad Hoopes, Caroline Goulding, Matt Allen. It was so fun to just interact with Christopher O’Riley again and all the staff. To be able to play with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops was a great honor as well. I’d never actually recorded or played with an orchestra before, so it’s fun to say I played with my first orchestra and it’s the Cincinnati Pops! And we did three concerts, not just one. And recording, that’s even better!

From the Top: I hear you are participating in the International Bach Competition this coming spring. Are you excited? How are you preparing?

Hilda: Yes, I’m going to Germany next spring! I’m very excited. I just have to learn a lot of music!

From the Top: You had a little disaster before your performance at Music@Menlo a few weeks ago. What was it, and how did you cope?

Hilda: I broke my wrist. During Music@Menlo festival, after rehearsal, I was walking to play soccer and I tripped on the grass and fell backwards! I don’t know what happened. For my concert,  my friends and I played a four-hand piece with three people instead of two. One played the bottom part and one played my left hand part. It was very crowded, but so fun. Having three people means there’s one other person to look at and follow.

From the Top: How cool was it to be a Davidson Fellow?

Hilda gives a speech at the Library of Congress.

Hilda: So cool! I went to the Library of Congress and made a speech there. The Library of Congress is so beautiful, there are paintings all over the walls – it’s the most gorgeous building I’ve ever been to. [In my speech], I talked about my project and how I want more people to experience Bach. I made a little ending joke about asking people to download more Bach onto their iPods, and I shared my vision.

From the Top: What’s your vision?

Hilda: I think that people should learn so much more of Bach’s music because there’s so much character and logic in his music that if you break it down and take out all the sounds, it looks like a math equation, but when you put it together, it looks like a beautiful piece of art.

Editor’s Note: The interview is based on a phone call with Ms. Huang and attempts to stay as true to her own words as possible.

This is a post that needs writing.  So here we go: a primer on the best pastoral ministry internships that I am aware of.  Please note that I don’t know every detail of these programs; I may get something wrong.  Check the websites below for definitive information (and see a great resource by 9Marks on how churches can train pastors).

My personal suggestion for seminarians and pastors-in-training would be to couple your academic learning with an internship.  These are some of the best you’ll find. 

Without further ado, ministry internships for future pastors and leaders that I highly recommend:

The Capitol Hill Baptist Church internship.  Washington, DC.  In my eyes, with TBI (see below), this is the top of the line (full disclosure: I did it).  The program is nothing less than rigorous, the curriculum is expertly plotted, and the staff with which you work is incredible, including Mark Dever, Michael Lawrence, and Matt Schmucker.  This is a semester-long internship.  They offer a generous stipend, housing, and lots of time with supervisors and church members.  Ideal for single men.  If you do the CHBC internship, you’ll come away exhausted, enlived, and educated.  You will learn a ton about polity, ecclesiology, and preaching.  If those things don’t sound important to you now, rest assured that after the internship, you’ll think rather differently.

The Bethelehem Institute.  Minneapolis, MN.  Bethlehem Baptist Church has been shaking this up of late, and truth be told, I’m not exactly sure what form TBI is now taking in light of the MDiv being offered at Bethlehem College & Seminary.  TBI as it now stands is one year long and unaccredited.  At any rate, I have gotten to know many TBI grads through Southern Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and they are without fail godly, smart, and well trained.  How can you not be, when you’re training under John Piper and other highly faithful and gifted men at a great church?

The First Baptist Church of Durham internship.  Durham, NC.  At the church led by Andy Davis, a pastor worth attention and emulation, you can do a semester-long internship based on the CHBC program.  This would be ideal for Southeastern Seminary students, though if you want great training, you could consider moving to Durham, working part-time at Starbucks, and doing this excellent program.  Davis and Andy Winn, a great guy and faithful shepherd, have just started this internship up, and the opportunity is ripe for students/future pastors to go and get top-notch ministry training at a church I love.

The New England Center for Expository Preaching internship.  Hampstead, NH.  Led by Dave Ricard, a choice guy and a personal friend, this internship is ideal for men who want to commit to the hard labor of gospel work in New England.  Semester-long, with lots of preaching opportunities (unlike many of the other internships listed).  Dave has placed a number of his interns in New England churches, one of the most exciting developments in New England Christian circles that I know of.  Small stipend, and again, tremendous opportunity to listen to and preach sermons in the region that started it all in America.

The NETS Center for Church Planting residency.  Williston, VT.  Another excellent ministry training program, this one more intensive.  A two-year residency followed by training.  NETS sends out its planters with funding for church planting, which is terrific.  Grounded in great theology, an aggressive, Christ-centered approach, and led by Wes Pastor, one of the more dynamic guys you’ll meet.  For those who have a few years to train and want to do an intensive program, this is a great option, one that is yielding rich fruit from the hard soil of New England.

Lakeview Baptist Church internship.  Auburn, AL.  Led by Al Jackson, a renowned pastor, this program has turned out a number of really solid guys I know.  I can’t find a webpage on it (feel free to share it), but here’s a 9Marks profile of the program.  Contact the church for more info.  Great for SBC guys who want a staunchly biblical approach to pastoring.  Holistic, involves a serious commitment, and allows you to do seminary while you intern, which is unique and much-needed.

Here are some other programs that you should know about that also offer excellent ministry training (I think most are unaccredited):

RE:Train through Mars Hill Church.  Seattle, WA.  Just started, with a great faculty (Piper, Ware, and Driscoll, among others). 

Cornhill Training Course.  London, UK.  I know little about the specifics, but I have met a few grads and they are some of the sharpest minds I know when it comes to exegesis and preaching.

Simeon Trust.  Chicago, IL.  I don’t know a great deal about the rudiments of the course, but this is run by great leaders with international connections.  Seems very nicely plotted out, and it’s in Chicago.  Led in America by David Helm.

Sovereign Grace Pastor’s College.  Gaithersburg, MD.  I almost applied to the Pastor’s College some years ago because it seemed to combine an emphasis on head and heart so well.  With instruction by CJ Mahaney, Josh Harris, and Jeff Purswell, this is a great program to consider.  Nine months, I think.

*************************

As I said earlier, I’m sure I’ve missed some great internships–please share any you know of in the comments.  Here’s info on a few more from 9Marks, particularly some international opportunities.  You can go all over the world to train for pastoral ministry–maybe you should (particularly if you’re young and single).

And if you want to be a pastor, I think it is absolutely essential that you couple your formal training with a ministry internship in a program of the kind suggested here.  Oftentimes, you’ll learn as much from a great internship as you will from seminary.

Netflix: a blessing and a curse.

It gives you near unlimited access to films you’ve heard about, heard about hearing about or even just thought had interesting looking titles.

But buyer beware.

The 70s were a treacherous time.

That’s not fair. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m pretty sure Shampoo sucked and I’m not sure why.

On paper, everything was so perfect. Harold and Maude is one of my favoirte movies, an inspiration to me stylistically, and Ashby is an unquestionably talented director. Warren Beatty is an actor I was introduced to late in his career/early in my life with Bulworth, but that movie was fucking awesome, so I didn’t really mind. But still the guy’s a pretty charismatic movie star (as well as a pretty funny dude) and I guessed that since he had some say in the script it might contain some good jokes. Speaking of which the other guy who wrote the script was fucking Robert Towne.

Yeah. The guy who wrote Chinatown around that time.

Now, listen, I know Polanski’s a great director, but I don’t know if I can blame thisone on Ashby. I feel he’s great too if maybe one-or-a-half-of-a-rung below Polanski.

So what is to blame?

Firstly, Shampoo as far as I can tell just isn’t funny. It’s about some oversexed faux-gay hairdresser (Beatty) who schtups all his clients, bored middle-aged wives-and-mistresses and is trying to get money to open up his own barber shop. That’s pretty much it. Somewhere along there, Nixon’s getting elected and people are wearing like blouses and stuff and big hair, but I’m not sure the point.

From what I could intuit from watching, the movie is a criticism of the cynicism of the 70s as a degredation of the 60s, trying to show how the 70s kept the sex, drugs and loose morals of the 60s, without actually maintaining any of its ideals. Warren Beatty looks like a kind of charismatic hippie-ish guy, riding around on a motorcycle with a poof of hair, but he doesn’t really have much more than that. No one in the movie knows what they wants, really, even a rich investor who after he discovers Beatty screwing his wife, tells him he’ll talk about investments the next day. The movie ends with a scene that falls flat, Beatty chasing after one of the girls he’s been screwing as if suddenly she’s important to him, with no actual purpsoe or motivation to denote that, followed by a cut to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys. Obviously this is some sort of parodic reference a la The Long Goodbye but one that’s missed on me.

So, I ask help.

Friends, film students, Jason Lees:

If anyone can explain this movie to me, either where it went wrong or where I did, it would greatly ease my sanity.

Right now, I just feel like someone made a really awkward joke, while I just sort of stand there wondering whether the joke sucked or I just wasn’t smart enough to get it.

An awkward situation.

***

It’s a small (lower-Manhattan downtown-theater writer-performer) world.

Last night, I saw Nocturne by Adam Rapp, as part of the Summer Solo Series going on at the Soho Playhouse.

It’s a good series of one-man/one-women shows with some high profile names, all of which are inexpensive (20 bucks for students) and one night only.

The ones I got tickets to were this, No Child…, a very well-reviewed solo-piece I missed when it played at the esteemed Greenwich House theater and Sakina’s Restaurant, which stars Aasif Mandivi of The Daily Show who happens to be one of the better correspondents (and apparently this was the show that got him on that one).

The one I wanted to go to (but it was more expensive) was Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, apparently a benefit-performance for his organization.

Gray was an artist I never knew, but have always been interested. He seemed like one of those weird, meta-artists like fellow actor Crispin Glover, who seems to juxtapose a professional career with an experimental one balancing ignominy in one with unexpected results in the other. After his suicide, resultant of depression and all the other reasons why artists kill themselves, his friends put together this show, a product of his unpublished monologues and writings for which he was famous as a performance artist. I’m not sure why I want to see it, other than that he was a figure of some merit I understood in a field I am looking to go into and one I feel strangely to have so closely missed.

To anybody who is interested in seeing plays in New York City this summer, I recommend the series. It’s a small envirnonment and simply in hanging around the outside of the theatre last night, I got to meet both Adam Rapp, who was busy with what appeared to be a 19 year-old girlfriend (understandable; he’s writing and directing a feature for Scott Rudin) and Michael Lawrence, writer and performer of one of my favorite shows from this past summer: Krapp, 39.

For anyone who feels like they might have similar aesthetic tastes to me, I’d highly recommend Krapp, 39, still playing at the Soho Playhouse, which I saw first at the Fringe Festival last summer. It’s an introspective, humorous disconnected piece of the crossed wires of an actor/writer/pseudo-intellectual who, being a decently smart fellow, loves Samuel Beckett and decides, for posterity, to record a tape of himself reading the lines from Krapp’s Last Tape, so he can make work for himself in 30 years.

When I heard the description of Krapp, 39 and decided to see it, it performed a much needed service for me: It made me read a play. I read Krapp’s Last Tape by Beckett, sitting outside J+R Computer Store down on Park Row by City Hall as I waited for the show to begin. It was very rewarding not only to have read the play and seen Lawrence’s work separately, but to understand how another artist processes a play, as well as his own life.

Anyway, I recommend the series, if for nothing else, because it is a small world and it was nice to be able to meet people you admire in a casual setting; something that oddly makes you feel like they’re on your level or that you can reach theirs; something reassuring while unemployed.

***

Finally, a thank you to the people who came to my writing group the other day.

It was actually pretty fun.

We sat around. We read stuff. We acted. We drank beer.

Et cetera.

Maybe stuff might happen, or something.

You know.

It’s odd to think that a mere eight years ago the Giants were the laughing stock of Super League. Finishing bottom of Super League for four straight seasons (saved from relegation only by bureaucracy) with a side with journeymen players overlooked by small crowds engulfed within their large stadium. What made it sadder was that this was a club with great history, not to mention the club located in the birthplace of the game. It says a lot about how far the club have come since those earlier follies in the Super League era  that last season was probably their most disappointing since their return to the top flight.

After the increased levels of success they had in the years prior to last season (reaching the Challenge Cup final, reaching the playoffs for the first time) finishing in tenth place and sacking Jon Sharp didn’t really cut it in the achievement stakes. Therefore it’s understandable that this year the Giants seem to have pressed the reset button. With a new coach and an influx of new players, they will be looking for a return to the upward curve they were on prior to last year.

Huddersfield enter this season with a fairly solid squad with quite a few under-appreciated players. Their pack is a pretty mobile one, with Eorl Crabtree and Stephen Wild on the peripheries of international consideration. They also have a decent line up in the backs as well, with the incoming Brett Hodgson looking to add a touch of class to a usually dependable back-line featuring the likes of Kevin Brown, Martin Aspinwall and the emerging Michael Lawrence.

Huddersfield will almost certainly be targeting a playoff place and it’s definitely within their grasp. Their success will largely depend on how quickly they are able to gel as a unit. It’s also not entirely certain who will be partnering Luke Robinson in the halves, with their ludicrous plan to sign Todd Carney now aborted. Partly due to their early Super League disasters the Giants never seem to get the respect that they deserve, and they seem like a team that could get some success flying under the radar. The Giants’ main hope will be that Nathan Brown can put them back on the right track this season.

Pros: A fairly talented squad with a decent number of British prospects gets a talented new coach this season. Things seem to be be going well off the field at the Galpharm now, with community work paying off. They’re also bringing in a really exciting full-back with Origin experience in Brett Hodgson.

Cons: Last year was a regression of sorts after their run to the playoffs the year before. They’re also going through a high player turnover this year, which could prove a blessing but will probably disrupt their cohesion to start with. There’s also a feeling that these players didn’t live up to their potential last season, and they have to this season.

Coach: Apart from Brian Smith, no coach has come so near, yet-so-far in the NRL like Nathan Brown. Having been blessed with talent during his time at the St George-Illawarra Dragons, he now finds himself in the lower regions of Super League with a side that didn’t live up to its potential last year. He tends to favour an attacking style of football which might suit this Giants outfit.

Captain: It’s just been announced today that Brett Hodgson has walked straight into the captaincy.

Key Man: Quit possibly Hodgson, who will need to display leadership from the off. If he’s able to establish himself as an attacking threat straight away then it will add another weapon to the quietly building Giants Armoury. He’s also likely to be the Giants’ 1st-choice kicker as well, which is a lot of responsibility to be heaped onto someone who’s only just joined the club. I suspect he’ll take it in his stride.

Young ‘un: Michael Lawrence impressed on his fleeting visits to the 1st team last season. An England Academy player, he has all the physical tools necessary to be an outstanding player. With a regular run of games at first-team level (and a curbing of some of his more erratic tendencies) he could develop into something special.

Wild Card: It’s probably a bit harsh to put Luke Robinson in this category, and on his day he’s a really effective halfback, but he’s also capable of bad days. If he’s able to play at a consistency that has hitherto avoided him so far in his career then it will be extremely beneficial to the Giants. I think he’ll enjoy David Faiumu taking some of the pressure off him and being able to use weapons like Brett Hodgson and Paul Whatuira.

Gains: Brett Hodgson, Scott Moore, Simon Finnigan, Josh Griffin, Michael Korkidas, Greg McNally, Larne Patrick, Shaun Lunt, Joe Walsh, Keale Carlile

Hodgson’s obviously the big name here, but there’s also a few players who have snuck in under the radar. Scott Moore has never quite lived up to the hype that made him the youngest player in Super League history, but he’s effective. Look out for Lunt, the Young Player of the Year in National League One last season.

Losses: Rod Jensen, Ryan Hudson, Stuart Jones, Chris Thorman, Steve Snitch, Shane Elford. John Skandalis, Gregg McNally

The Giants are losing quite a few of their trusted servants this season, even if many of them seemed to be pretty inconsistent. Perhaps the most notable departure is that of Chris Thorman, who had been both the Giants’ attacking lynchpin and also the brunt of much criticism.

The Young Adults Division (YAD) provides an excellent opportunity for young Jewish professionals throughout the Bay Area to network and make friends. It’s all about community coming together, one of YAD’s three main goals.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed one of our many well-known, community building programs, including Blue Monday, Latke Ball and Summer Sizzle. These programs, which are organized by the Community Building team of the YAD Board, serve as the gateway to the Jewish community. For a number of people, their first contact with the young adult Jewish community happens at our events.

While Community Building programs are intended to be social in nature (and they are certainly lots of fun), they allow YAD to realize an even greater mission — philanthropy. In Judaism, we have an obligation to “heal the world” (tikkun olam). We can do this by performing good works, promoting peace and understanding and helping those less fortunate than us. By attending one of the Community Building events, you are helping us to raise money to pay for many of the important charitable causes that the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation sponsors. (In case you didn’t know, SFJCF uses its financial resources to help meet short- and long-term community needs in the Bay Area and globally. The list of sponsored causes is long and impressive.)

For instance, when you buy a ticket to attend the Latke Ball, the proceeds from your ticket provide funding for programs that care for those in need. That means you are helping to heal the world – one step at a time.

Michael Lawrence

If you’ve ever attended one of our events, you will have seen first-hand what a robust, thriving Jewish community we enjoy in the Bay Area. If you haven’t attended one of our events, I encourage you to check out the YAD calendar to find upcoming programs.

Michael Lawrence
Co-Vice President for Community Building
Young Adults Division Board

The second seminar at the Building Healthy Churches seminar in Chattanooga, Tn was given by Michael Lawrence, who is the associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC. His topic was: Preaching & Biblical Theology.

“Our preaching would do well to  be expositional preaching. To preach expositionally means to expose the text. Preaching topically is not preferred because there is the danger of making the scriptures fit your topic you are dealing with.What happens in most cases is that Scripture is pulled out of context in order to “work” with the sermon.”

He went on to explain what Expositional preaching is not:

Expositional preaching is not

1. A running commentary – such as you would hear in a seminary class

2. A “style” of preaching

3. verse by verse only

God grows people through His word. When we preach God’s word, we become what we listen to and by preaching the Word we can be like Him.

He went on to include what an Expositional sermon should include:

1.. Preaching through books of the Bible

2. Preaching through the whole Bible, even the minor prophets.

3. Preach the Bible storyline – showing how it is Christ-centered

4. Preach the Gospel

5. Systematic theology

6. Preparing your people

He then gave us a pop quiz to show us how to look at scripture from the Old Testament as gospel centered.

Michael Lawrence is indeed a gifted man of God. While his view on topical preaching may seem biased or critical, you can tell from his teaching/preaching that his passion is the Word of God and relaying it to God’s people. There were some there who disagreed with his view on topical preaching, and I agree with the statement that God uses topical messages. But I have seen the topical message warp scripture in order to fit the message of the preacher instead of the message of God.

“The Bible teaches us that marriage is a covenant that establishes a relationship between a man and a woman who have no natural obligation to each other, as a parent and child have, but who voluntarily take on the permanent obligations and commitments of a family relationship. Before two individuals marry, they are not related; they are not one flesh. But in marriage, those two individuals voluntarily become related in a union so close, intimate, and permanent, that the only language for it is the language of the family, the langugage of flesh and blood. Our ability to form this kind of covenant relationship is part of what it means to be created in the image of God. Just as Christ is united to his people in such a way that he is the head and the church is the body (Ephesians 5:23, 30), so God created us to reflect his image as we relate to another person in a covenantal one-flesh union. To be one flesh does not mean to become one person. A husband and wife remain distinct people. But it does mean that as a result of the covenant of marriage, a husband now relates to his wife as if she were a part of his own body, caring for her and protecting her just as he cares for and protects himself.” – Michael Lawrence in Sex & the Supremacy of Christ

This morning, upon the recommendation of a friend, I read Michael Lawrence’s review of Voddie Baucham’s book, Family Driven Faith. I have favorably cited Baucham’s book several times on this blog and I remain convinced that his book addresses a huge inconsistency in many evangelical churches today (i.e. the devaluing of families in the church through age-segregated ministry).

Lawrence, an elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, agrees with Baucham that Christian parents should be the primary disciplers of their children. Though on the whole appreciative of Baucham’s book, Lawrence makes the important point that,

The family isn’t God’s evangelism plan for the world. The local church is (John 13:34-35; 2 Cor. 5:16-21). The family isn’t God’s discipleship program. The local church is (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4:11-13). Families have a role to play, and it’s an incredibly important one. But the Scriptures will not allow us to reduce the church and its mission to a family driven program.

I urge you to read this review, especially if you are thinking through issues of student and family ministry in your local church. I am with Baucham in almost every way. However, I found this review helpful in providing some balance to Baucham’s approach to ministry. We must champion the family, but in the process we must not neglect to champion the local church for whom Christ died!

Read the review and let me know what you think. I am curious to hear your thoughts about how we might transform the current age-segregated student ministry model to more faithfully match the Bible. How can we champion the family without devaluing the family that all believers are grafted into (i.e. the church)?

“A man, a woman, and 117 cows.”

I rented this one because I love Karl Urban and was looking around to see what else he’d been in. I honestly rented this one based on the title. Sometimes, that’s all it takes…

The Price Of Milk is about a dairy farmer named Rob [Urban], and his girlfriend Lucinda [Danielle Cormack]. They were perfectly happy, plenty of fire in their relationship until Rob proposed and Lucinda freaked out. Afraid that the spark would die if they got married, Lucinda decides to follow the bad advice of her best girlfriend, Drosophila [the name itself should have tipped her off... fruit flies are a nuisance!... tangent over... played by Willa O'Neil]. In an attempt to make Rob angry, to keep the spark alive a whole slew of things go wrong including a hit and run accident with a strange voodoo woman, a stolen quilt, cow sales and weird wedding dresses. 

Both my husband and I loved this movie and I believe my hubs actually bought it because he knew we’d watch it more than once. This story is quick and dirty at 87 minutes long – it’s low-budget, set in New Zealand and very quirky and funny… if you like quirky. It almost has a haphazard fairy tale-like quality to it. Don’t watch it and hope for it to make sense, just go along for the ride and laugh at the weirdness. Take it for what it is – cute, different, funny. No more, no less.  ;)

3 out of 5.  

Add’l Info: Released: Sep 13, 2001, Toronto Film Festival, Feb 14 USA limited release • Runtime: 87 minutes • Rated PG-13 for drug use and sensuality/nudity

A preview of Michael Lawrence’s Bach Project was screened at EG2007 to much regard.

In another EG2007 story of kismet, John Abele, who spoke about his family’s submarine search, has decided to provide substantial funding to the film so it can finish production.

Read all about it in the Baltimore Sun.

I wonder what connections will be made next year?

Michael showed a short and incomplete film about Johann Sebastian Bach. He’s currently taking donations to finish the film.

His website is mlfilms.com.