First up, let me wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR, and may 2008 bring rich blessings to you and your family! Beginning tomorrow, and for the next month or so—during my extended blog leave—I have arranged to highlight the thirty most read posts of all time from this blog. These posts were selected on the basis of the number of visits to the individual post pages during the second half of 2007. Much of this, of course, reflects the... Read more
There are only a few more things I’d like to do before I shut down the blog for Christmas. Posting will resume on the 1st of January, but I’ve got something a bit different planned for that month. I’ll tell you more about that when the post I’ve written for that day is published by my editor and research assistant, Annette Harrison. One thing I do want to do besides saying “Happy Christmas” to all of you is to say... Read more
During the months of September and October, I spent a lot of time quoting from a book Justin Taylor produced—a lightly edited John Owen. These can all be read on the category page for posts labeled “John Owen.” In November, I gave John Piper on N. T. Wright the same treatment. I also wrote a post titled Blogging, Discernment, and a Book by Tim Challies which managed to provoke the Pyromaniacs, review Tim’s book, and muse about the best approach... Read more
Before going on a summer break, I ended with a post which expresses clearly the driving passion behind my life—I DON’T WANT BALANCE, I WANT IT ALL! Other than that, and the posts on the atonement I listed in yesterday’s review, July was totally dominated (and rightly so) by Together On a Mission. This conference is a phenomena that you really ought to experience at least once in your life. The fact that next year we will have Mark Driscoll... Read more
May was not as controversial a month as I reported yesterday that April had been. I continued with the following posts on the atonement and the resurrection throughout May and also into June. In fact, there were a few posts on the atonement which spilled into July, and I have listed them here also. If that’s not enough for you on this vital subject, remember to look at my April review which lists a lot more! John Stott on the... Read more
UPDATE – Steve Chalke has expressed his views more fully in a chapter in The Atonement Debate, and I have posted a response to this. Today I will continue my review of the last year’s blogging which we began yesterday. April was a very interesting month for me on this blog. So much so that it deserves an entire post. It was a month which single-handedly seemed to dramatically raise my UK readership, and that rise persisted after the month... Read more
It’s time once again to review another year’s worth of blogging here at my place. I have made it something of a tradition to look back and reflect on the year that has passed. I have done this previously in December 2006, 2005, and 2004. The format is simple: I highlight some of the posts that I remember most, or enjoyed writing the most over the year. This time I will break it down into a series of posts. This... Read more
For me, once I have prioritized my own personal inner life and relationship with God, then my dear family, a clear third place in my affections is given without a moment’s doubt to my local church. Family does come before the church, but of course our church is like an extension of my family and we all love being a part of it. It is hard to believe that it was as long ago as 1995 that we first joined... Read more
The past twelve months have been relatively stable for us as a family. It is the first year for awhile that none of us have started a new job, or a new school (although Joel did move up from the school’s nursery class to reception). We have not moved, and we certainly haven’t moved church. We intend for this stability to continue, God willing, for years to come. Certainly we hope that our children will see out their schooling from... Read more
It’s that time of year again—the time when I reflect on the year that has been. I’m going to follow a structure in my reminiscing which will be as follows: In this post I will think about my own personal life, and in particular my relationship with God. In the next post I will consider my family. Then I will consider my church. Finally, I will spend some time reviewing the blog. This order truly does reflect the relative priority... Read more
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