This review comes from Jeff Borden, who has a fine blog called iCrucified. It is reviews like this that make our Saturday Afternoon spot a witness to the need of a blog to have regular, intelligent contributors (like Jeff) to make it work for all of us. Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church By: John H. Armstrong; ISBN – 978-0-310-32114-9   Zondervan Publishing I became aware of Your Church Is Too... Read more

Matthew Elliott is the author of two fine books on emotions and the Christian faith, and he has agreed to offer this post today for our conversation. I’m grateful for his work and I hope we can have a good discussion of his ideas today. For his books, see his more accessible study Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart and his more intense study called Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament . Feeling Your Faith  Matthew Elliott  ... Read more

I’m happy to announce a conference at North Park Seminary on justice. Read more

As Texas goes, so goes public school textbooks in the USA. The debate is about “balance” and about “fair description” of history and about conservatives wanting their point of view in the textbooks, and a Dr. Don McLeroy is a leader in the conservative faction. The issue gets down to specifics. Here’s a clip from the NY Times: What are your thoughts? Dr. McLeroy still has 10 months to serve and he, along with rest of the religious conservatives on... Read more

From the NY Times by Eric Taub… What are your suggestions for lengthening the battery during the day? If you’re a recent convert to smartphones, you’re probably still discovering all the amazing things that your new BlackBerry, Android phone oriPhone can do. But one thing you most likely found out right away: the more you do, the shorter your phone’s battery lasts. While a standard cellphone’s charge can easily go three days or more, many smartphone owners are dismayed to learn... Read more

Once again, we have been set free in Christ and the Spirit is adequate to guide us into all God wants of us. Again… Legalism is any practice or belief that is added to the gospel that compromises the sufficiency of Christ as Savior and jeopardizes the adequacy of the Spirit in moral guidance. Legalism then is the charge against you or me, often sensed at the deepest level, that we are not accepted by God in Christ and indwellt... Read more

The question, what do you do after you believe, is the subject of Tom Wright’s new book: After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters . Today I want to examine what Tom sees as the three ways Christians have framed what we are to do “after we believe”.  Questions: Are these the big three for you? Or are there others? How has your church framed what you are to do “after you believe”? How do you see the differences between... Read more

I may be biased toward Southern writers, and I may be biased because I’m a fan of Karen Spears Zacharias, but the truth of the story is this: her next book, Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?: (‘Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV) , needs to be read by twentysomethings and by pastors and by anyone who is struggling with thinking “blessing” means “material things.” Or as she puts it: “there’s a built-in audience for golden-calf theology.”... Read more