new book

Kudos to Tom Vail (long time Canyon River Guide) for graciously sending me a copy of his book Grand Canyon: A Different View (Masterbooks, 2003)!! This is a really nice little book. Little meaning it isn't quite as big as what one thinks of a Coffee Table style book - it's dimensions are 10.1 x 8.1 x 0.4 inches and 103 pages. It is obvious this is a book that promotes a conservative young earth creationist view of the Canyon and creation in general. This is not bad, after all they do say it is an alternative view - and I think a fair and valid and much needed one to counter balance more naturalistic approaches. One may not agree with everything in the contributing articles but that if fine it is still a great book and beautiful one at that (the pictures are awesome!). Not a few of the contributors are PhD's in Geology, Paleontology, Physics, Geophysics, Space Physics, Biology, Biochemistry, Atmospheric Science, Mechanical Engineering, and the like - Ken Ham and John McArthur also offer some pastoral perspectives as well. Just thumbing through the book and glancing at some of the photos, I realize one has not "seen" the canyon until one has gone down into it and either gone on a rafting trip (with stops along the way) or spent some time hiking through it). It is truly one of the seven natural wonders of the world! and no wonder some 3-5 million people come through the gates every year!

blessings to you all.

Who (or what) made the Grand Canyon?

Doug Chaplin over at MetaCatholic has a post about creationists. I have to be honest, until my wife and I came to the Grand Canyon to pastor a church (Doug may not be too keen about me since we pastor a pentecostal church) that I had not really thought too much about the issue of creationism or evolution. I think I had somewhat ambiguously settled on a sort of theistic evolution thinking while there was one major creation event (possibly the big bang) there are de nuevo (sp?) acts of creation taking place. I am not sure yet where I stand on issues of creation ex nilio(sp?) either. At present I I am thinking God created the Heavens and the Earth, there was the fall of Satan who then messed up the creation leading to a place of darkness that was formless and void, and then God's first act of redemption was "Let there be light" (see Allan Ross's Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Exposition of Genesis for more).

Anywho, the question around here is often "What made the canyon?" The typical Park Guide will say, "I can give you the answer to that in four words, 'the river made it.'" My wife and I want to correct the fellow and say instead, "The Lord made it." However, as Doug's post and others out there might suggest, is this necessarily true? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the river did make it. Maybe (like what happened at Mt St. Helens in Washington can show) it happened as a result of a catastrophic event such as the flood or something else and the Colorado (Red in Spanish) River has maintained it?

There is a man who runs a ministry here in the Canyon area called Canyon Ministries. He is an ardent creationist and young earth advocate (I suppose he is more about the young earth verse old earth debate than anything). A few years ago put out a coffee table type book on the Grand Canyon that has been (or was) quite controversial.

Grand Canyon, a Different View has awesome photos with pro-creationist articles spread throughout. It faced severe opposition from many an evolutionist and such that a group of scientist put out a letter asking the National Park Service to remove the book from its stores because it is misleading and does not discuss science but rather pushes religious views. I guess the NPS opted instead to put it over in the so-called "inspirational" section.

Moving on, there is a section on the Canyon Ministries website that offers "8 Grand Canyon Evidences" that "prove" the canyon did not form over thousands of years by erosion from the river but instead came about through a severe catastrophic event of biblical proportions such as the Noahic Flood (which obviously he argues for a global flood over a local flood). Each is listed as a factual statement when really they are in his words "very plausible explanations" of how the canyon came to be - again using the situation at Mt. St. Helens as an example. Incidently, there is a ministry similar to the Canyon Ministry located up near Mt St. Helens called Mt. St Helens Creation Information Center. Looking through some of these "statements of fact" I find myself not knowing enough about the issues to resist the seemingly compelling evidence. I realize all my quotation makrs probably show me being skeptical or wanting to appear so.

I think I will be needing to look into these issues more as I am sure I will be dealing with questions about such as a pastor of a church in the Grand Canyon National Park.

What suggested reading might y'all have that I consider as I ponder these matters?

At present I have Three Views on Creation and Evolution authored by J.P. Moreland, et.al (Zondervan, 1999) and Hugh Ross' The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (NavPress, 2001).

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

update

Hey all,

I haven't blogged much in a while though I do read others. I wanted to update y'all on what we've been up to. Debbie and I now live in the Grand Canyon National Park and we are pastoring an A/G church here. We were installed Oct 7th so we just past one month as pastors - yes, we are co-pastors and if we get technical Debbie is the head pastor since she has full ordination and I am working on lisencing stuff. But since ae egalitarian in our ministry approach I am fine with what we are doing. we pretty much share our responsibilties so it is not a big deal to me.

So, we like it here in the canyon but I wonder if others do. Since we've been here we've seen much discouragement and frustration among the folks who live here. I am still trying to find out why. I t may have to do with the fact that there is not much to to here and it is and hour and a half to the nearest major city (Flagstaff) so it can be hard for some folks to be so far from a city.

If you are the praying type when you think of the Grand Canyon Assembly of God, pray against discouragement. pray that hearts will be lifted and that people will not be in denial of the God who created the canyon as so many seem to do. We are praying too for a revival as we know that there are Christians here who come to hide or as they put it, to get away for a while, but we know that without Christ people will not be able to move forward in their lives or be able to ovecome life's struggles.

It all started earlier this year when the church was open and pastoring was the last thing on our minds. Debbie's dad, who is a retired chaplain, wanted to take the church so he could do chaplaincy in the park - he had a vision beyond just establishing a church there but rather a park wide ministry. Well, things never worked out and someone else was put in as an interim. I think this turned out to be good though because we are now friends with the interim pastor and his wife - they are really great people. They have another ministry they do with native americans so they have needed to move on so as to not get burned out.

Well, the church opened up again and Debbie's dad started poking at us to think about taking it - we weren't sure. We had other plans and were just desperate to survive financially. However, we decided to pray about and the Lord started to form a vision in us to consider the idea of pastoring (I for one will be the first to tell you I am the last person who should be a pastor, and I know others who would agree...but seminary does weird things to people...and as the saying goes, the Lord works in mysterious ways...). Well we sat on it and continued to pray and struggle to survive.

Early in September we decided to go up to the canyon and sort of spy out the land and see if he Lord would put anything in our hearts. Well, we went there and the vision started coming together - we had all sorts of ideas come to mind and so we decided to meet with the district superintendent - we have a fairly solid relationship with him since he used to be the Pastor of Debbie's home church and he also performed our wedding ceremony. We talked and decided to explore the possibilities - however his biggest concern, and the are presbyter's as well, was the financial side of things because the church is very small (10-15 people + tourists) hardly enough to support a pastor(s). Since our pursuing this, people have come out of the wood work who want to support us. But there are jobs in the park we could get part-time. We appreciated his concern but it was becoming obvious the Lord was in this and things were coming together.

Basically the situation with the church is that the previous pastor left but had not sufficiently set up any leadership. So when he left, the church nearly collapsed. The interim has spent the last 8 months working to re-establish the church and going again. He needs to move on. This is where we come in. We are in a perfect position to be able to move up there and carry on the work but also begin to expand it - beyond just having church. The possibilities are limitless, really. Outreach to the some 3-5 million tourists who come through the park, many of whom are not Americans. Ministry to the seasonal workers, again, many of who, are not Americans, ministry to the locals and permanent folks, many of whom are native americans, ministry to children and youth, english classes for the internationals, the list goes on. It is a mission field in more ways than one. In addition, we are excited to be able to be co-pastors - it is what we wanted and fortunately the presbyter brought it up, so that really helped! We want to do ministry together and so the Lord has opened the door for that to happen!

This is exciting for us because we want to do missions work - to work cross-culturally. We would love to go overseas, but since we can't right now for financial reasons, we really believe the Lord is making a way for us to fulfill his purposes for us in ways we had not even dreamed of! This will be a very non-traditional setting for a pastoral ministry and for us - because we are not really your typical AG ministers so it is really a perfect fit. God is amazing is he not? And faithful!