I’ve been writing a series of posts critically engaging Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s new book on the mission of the church: What is the Mission of the Church?. I too am very concerned that we get this right. I have the unique privilege of being both a professor of New Testament at North Park and pastor of college students at Christ Community Church. So the question of the church’s mission is squarely at the center of my vocation. Furthermore,... Read more

Can you help me? I’m a low-church Baptist turned non-demoninational evangelical who grew in a fundamentalist environment. So I never learned about the Christian year or how to follow the it. One of my 2012 resolutions is to orient time around the Christian year. That year as you might know begins in just a few weeks with Advent. Here’s where I could use your help. I’d like to find a good Advent devotional for my young family. Does anyone have... Read more

The pomo obsession with “spirituality” over “religion” and “churchless” Christianity over “institutional” Christianity is a ridiculous cop out. This semester I’ve had students some read Kevin de Young and Ted Kluck’s book Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion. There is a cool quote in this book: “Churchless Christianity makes about as much sense as a Christless church, and has just as much biblical warrant”. That itself is based on a quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:... Read more

Big thanks to Rob Bradshaw over at biblicalstudies.org, that two of my earlier Evangelical Quarterly articles are now available on-line. They are: “Mission as an Apocalyptic Event: Reflections on Luke 10:18 and Mark 13:20,” EQ 76.2 (2004): 117-34. “The Peril of Modernizing Jesus and the Crisis of Not Contemporizing the Christ,” EQ 78.4 (2006): 291-312. Read more

You HAVE to check out this link about a dining experience in San Francisco that has recently been declared illegal. I won’t spoil the surprise for you. I probably won’t try it myself, but I promise to take photos of any friends that I see eating there, esp. anyone from IVP Publishers and Southern Seminary! Though I’m rather concerned that Joel Willitts offered to take me here for my birthday lunch because he wants to try the sausage. Read more

John Dickson has a great article on  How Christian Humility Upended the World, which is about how Christians contributed the virtue of humilitas to the virtues of western culture. It is based on his book Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership. Watch a video about the book here (ironically being promoted and heralding the author’s greatness). Read more

I have always taught, for I was always taught, that that the hypothetical source “Q” for material common to Matthew and Luke, took it’s name from the German word Quelle for “source”. However, this might not be the case. Over at Sheffield Biblical Studies I read this quote from R.H. Lightfoot: It seems now to be assumed that the symbol Q originated in Germany, as being the first letter of the German Quelle, source. Dr Armitage Robinson, however, in conversation... Read more

Martin Hengel Saint Peter: The Undestimated Apostle Trans. Thomas H. Trapp Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Available at Amazon.com This book, I believe to be Martin Hengel’s last volume before his death (at least in English), is divided into two parts. (1) Peter the Rock, Paul, and the Gospel Tradition; and (2) The Family of Peter and Other Apostolic Families. The end of part 1 includes ten theses about Peter: 1. In Matthean tradition, Peter is the “authoritative, unique person... Read more

Reformed Theological Seminary has some good guys who know their collection and canon of the New Testament. First, Charles Hill has the book Who Wrote the Gospels? Probing the Great Conspiracy which argues that the canonization of the four Gospels to the exclusion of the “other” Gospels was not a power play by an ecclesial oligarchy imposed on a diverse church to create a narrow uniformity, but part of an emerging consensus in the early church. This is on my desk and... Read more

The Rev. Dr. Michael Jensen of Moore Theological College has 20 Theses on why the Reformation is not over! Whereas: – 1. Continued division between Christians who hold to the orthodox faith is deplorable and regrettable and we should work to heal it; 2. Insisting on division based on mere prejudice against Roman Catholics, or cultural snobbery, or ethnicity, or sectarianism  is deplorable and should be repented of; 3. Hyped-up and largely loveless Protestant rhetoric and sabre-rattling for the love... Read more