Posts By: William Johnston

Misplacing Theology: Why style matters

Gene Veith points out an interesting article by Matthew Sigler, a “ThD candidate in liturgical studies at Boston University where his work has focused on the history of Methodist worship as well as lyrical theology. In addition to being a student, he has served for the past twelve years as a music minister in the church.”… Read more »

Some thoughts from a day of procedural coding

More for my personal future reference, but perhaps this may be useful to someone. I’ve been trying to improve my programming, striving for clean, elegant, maintainable, readable code. Over the last couple days, I tried to understand how a one-off PHP page might be coded in an object oriented manner. Each possible architecture resulted in… Read more »

New WELS Hymnal — Why?

The WELS has begun a project to create a new hymnal. But in all of the information about it, I’m stumped to find any reason for it. Has anyone catalogued the deficiencies in Christian Worship which we would hope to correct? Or are we just trying to put out a new hymnal for the sake… Read more »

Shoretel phones and HP V1910 switches DHCP

A random note because this was so hard to find. If you are installing a Shoretel phone system with rebranded 3com switches such as the HP V1910, make sure that your DHCP server is set to only be on its main VLAN. I still don’t understand why, but somehow if the server is available on… Read more »

Repetition

Stay with us, for it is evening; the day is almost over. (Luke 24:29) Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:26) Your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The LORD will guide you always. (Isaiah 58:10,11) Your sun will… Read more »

NIV as temporary

Interesting thoughts from Steadfast Lutherans today: The practice at Biblica has been to make the old versions disappear. That means one can no longer purchase a 1978 or 1984 version, nor can one access these versions online. …  This means that the intended maximum lifetime use of the 1984 edition was 15 years. If a congregation or synod… Read more »

By faith alone.

Bah. It is all too hard. Why must I attempt to wrap my head around God’s gifts? Why can I not simply ignore the doubts which Satan implants and the sinful flesh relishes? Why must even my faith be imperfect? We are caught in a paradox where we understand and comprehend all things through reason…. Read more »

VBS and Worship

Can we stop this VBS thing? Someone make up their mind. Is VBS supposed to be teaching the young, evangelizing the lost, giving parents mornings off during the summer, or what? I think our true colors often come out with what we teach our kids. We have liturgy on Sunday morning, but in VBS we… Read more »