Arguably, Darrell Guder’s book (Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)) is the most significant book on the church in the last two or three decades. But, as one of the contributors, Alan Roxburgh, observed, the book was good but it was too impractical for pastors and churches. So Alan, along with M. Scott Boren, have done something about it: they have now written an accessible missional church book called... Read more
Amazing Grace Techno – Computer Controlled Christmas Lights from Richard Holdman on Vimeo. HT: MT Read more
Jesus is, Matthew 1:1 tells us, the son of Abraham and the son of David. David is another Christmas word. An important one. The promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 was that someone in the line of David would always sit on the throne, and it is here that Christmas gets connected to David. Christmas is about the incarnation and the birth of the Son of David who is Messiah and the one who both reigns and will reign.... Read more
We began a couple of weeks ago to look at Kevin Corcoran’s book Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul where he develops a constitution view of human persons. The fourth chapter of the book deals with moral, ethical, and theological ramifications of metaphysical views of persons. There is much worth discussion – but I will concentrate on only one or two points – related to stem cell research. This is not central to Corcoran’s book or... Read more
After reading the long post and many responses over at Parchment and Pen and after yesterday’s post, I have this response: Much of what Dan Wallace says is true and many “liberal” institutions are not all that “liberal” in that they make sure to admit students with a variety of beliefs, and it is also true that many want only their kind (of liberalism), but I tend to see this issue differently. Please understand that this response is not really... Read more
A new study from George Barna on Mainline churches…. Since the 1950s, however, mainline churches have fallen on hard times, declining from more than 80,000 churches to about 72,000 today. The growth among evangelical and Pentecostal churches since the 1950s, combined with the shrinking of the mainline sector, has diminished mainline churches to just one-fifth of all Protestant congregations today. In the past fifty years, mainline church membership dropped by more than one-quarter to roughly 20 million people. Adult church... Read more
Matthew opens up his Gospel with these words: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:Abraham was the father of Isaac,Isaac the father of Jacob,Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers … and then we get more generations of name that begin with Abraham. A significant Christmas word, and perhaps the most neglected one, is Abraham. Abraham means covenant — and we think here of Genesis 12 and 15 and 17... Read more
A post by Dan Wallace, over at Parchment and Pen, has more than 400 comments and I’ve been asked to weigh in via this letter below. The gist is that Professor Wallace (at Dallas) has suggested there’s enough bias against Dallas and evangelicals to call into question the so-called tolerance and liberalism of the liberals. Dan’s got some exaggerated rhetoric, but what he describes is not an uncommon experience. Sometimes liberalism is a biased form of reverse fundamentalism. Anyway, I... Read more
Sin has a history, and the history of the use of words for sin sheds light on the current debate about the new perspective on Paul. Gary Anderson, in his superbly written Sin: A History , demonstrates that the oldest and most predominant Old Testament idea about sin was that it was a load to carry and a load to remove. By the time of the New Testament, however, sin had shifted in its primary meaning to sin as a debt for... Read more
What were the best books you read this year? I’d be interested in hearing your choices. Whatever yours are, the following post lists mine. There are some books that have come across my desk this year that deserve special honor, so I want to award some books and authors for the singular contribution. This is not a widespread scan of all books nor even of books on the topics of the books I award. No, this is simply a recognition... Read more
Jesus Creed
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In