EVERY person has at some point been disingenuous and less than accurate in some ways, sometimes unknowingly and once in a while knowingly. All of us. Me, Chris, Scott, John, Bell, MacArthur, and yes Ken and Ingrid (that must hurt). And these attacks about church numbers, music styles, and the long list of cultural and non-essentials only serve to obscure real and substantive debate on eternal issues.

And although I have been guilty in the past of some unfortunate hyperbole, I have come to realize that nothing edible comes from overheating Spiritual dialogue. In the end everything gets burned beyond recognition and ultimately poisons us all. And if I do see the truth in some issues as the Spirit intended, it is by His grace and I can boast in nothing but Christ. I have personally refrained from filling my eyes and ears with electronic blogbeams, and much on the blogasphere has ceased to edify. And I hope to continue to speak the TRUTH…oh yeah, in love.

No doubt Ken plays this minor story for all it’s worth. Still, you have to appreciate how much better this post is than stuff he was writing just 3 months ago. This post is coherent, written in colloquial English and if I’m not mistaken, free of terms like “the Emergent Church of Deceit”, etc. And in my opinion, Ken made a real attempt to be fair. He noted that his sources were unconfirmed, etc. I honestly didn’t get the sense that he was suggesting there was some sort of cover up going on with the unreturned e-mails, only that he couldn’t get a confirmation prior to publishing his post.

Seriously, this is the most responsible thing I’ve read by Ken. I still think he’s wrong to be attacking Bell, but if he would write sensibly like this more often, without all the wild accusations, it would be a big improvement.

For the record, I don’t think Rob was trying to hide anything the way Ken suggests. As someone who does event promotion at my church, I know that no matter how much you promote or other people promote, you can’t tell until the butts hit the seats. So sure, Rob knew that his old church was encouraging people to leave if they felt like it, he’d still be crazy to expect 1000 people (20% of his old church) to show up. I think his description in VE was just emphasizing the roller coaster ride he was on, not knowing if his little dream would work and then being shocked that so many people came. Either way, it says a lot for his talents as a teacher that so many people went with him.

Absolutely amazing. You seriously need to consider becoming a spin doctor. Brilliant a-logic.