It is too easy to be tempted to construct church unity on the basis of our personal, missional, or theological unity instead of the spiritual unity that we have only in and through Jesus Christ. After a considerable time of actually living out the challenges of life together, Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together to record a theology of community. How do these words speak to you today? Do you find the temptation to construct your own unity? What breaks unity for... Read more
Is Fantasy Football the root of all evil? Do you play? Why? I don’t get why folks do this, I have to admit. I believe in watching real football, like the Bears themselves, and rooting for that team. I will admit that FF is one step above the American League, but I’m not sure that is good news. See Randy Youngman’s article in The Orange County Register (HT: OY): I hate fantasy football. Fantasy football is out of control. Fantasy... Read more
Is Fantasy Football the root of all evil? Do you play? Why? I don’t get why folks do this, I have to admit. I believe in watching real football, like the Bears themselves, and rooting for that team. I will admit that FF is one step above the American League, but I’m not sure that is good news. See Randy Youngman’s article in The Orange County Register (HT: OY): I hate fantasy football. Fantasy football is out of control. Fantasy... Read more
Acts 4 is a witness to the missional beliefs of Peter and the earliest Christians, and to helps u in this reading, we are reading The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries). Peter (and John) heal a man; the authorities are overwhelmed by the response; they tell them to knock it off; Peter won’t stop telling the story of God’s saving power. The community is reshaped by the witness to the resurrection, by the opposition they are experiencing,... Read more
If you have not heard, here’s the basic scoop: Yesterday Christianity Today wrote a piece, a bit on the sensational side, to say the TNIV was being put to rest because of mistakes. Well, as the story developed yesterday, it became a bit clearer that something else was going on. The TNIV, in fact, is being revised and it will be the NIV 2011. For those of you who are TNIV and NIV readers and users, please speak up now... Read more
We’ve got a problem in the Church today with Christian branding as a form of triumphalism, and it’s a charge made often enough about others and almost never about ourselves. I want to contend that it is an unhealthy influence of consumerism. (See the excellent book by Skye Jethani: The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity .) So, I’d like to have a conversation about branding as a form of Christian triumphalism to see if my suggestion can... Read more
In John Walton’s (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, we have yet another proposition to discuss: God’s roles as creator and sustainer are less different than we have thought. Big point here. Practical deism sees creation as something God did, its laws now established to run the cosmos, and God is now done with creating. One form of his is theistic evolution and another is that God sometimes intervenes... Read more
From Christianity Today .… [Added: I’m confident, as I look over the CT piece now that it has been expanded, that the NIV Committee for Bible Translation will not squash the TNIV into history but will improve the NIV in light of gains from the TNIV. I have every reason to think the new NIV will be the Bible I carry to class for years. Added Two: Did CT perhaps sensationalize this story a bit? See comments below.]In announcing a... Read more
A post rapture pet sitting service… (Warning: satire, about which I’ve said more than enough, but every now and then this kind of stuff can shed light…) What follows is a clip from a post, and you can follow the link at the beginning to the site itself:You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind. We are... Read more
Acts 4 is a witness to the missional beliefs of Peter and the earliest Christians, and to helps u in this reading, we are reading The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries). After Peter witnesses to the resurrection-shaped gospel, we read this in Acts 4:13-22: When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since... Read more
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