We sat in Saturday night to hear Gene Appel, lead pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, explain to the 20-something ministry called Axis what the leadership sees as the next “evolution in Axis.” The Saturday night Axis service will be no more. Axis ministries have been morphed into the larger Willow minstries and weekend services. Ministry to that age-group will continue, though we’re not quite sure what that will look like. |inline Read more
Starting July 7th, Friday, I’ll begin a series on my favorite, one-of-a-kind, drop-all-your-other-books-to-read, author, Joseph Epstein, and his new book called Friendship: An Expose. We’ll do maybe two chapters each Friday, and the point won’t be so much to interact with him but to pull out favorite lines and offer reflections and commentary on friendship. Here’s what I promise: the most elegant American essayist, and one with more quotes of great lines than any human alive. And more. Read more
Who will explore this incident as a parable of the Church at times? (By the way, my thinking has nothing to do with it being women.) |inline Read more
As I sat on my back porch recently reading a book, I had a visitor. One I had not had in the twenty years we have lived in this home: a Red-headed Woodpecker. We are regularly visited by Yellow-shafted Flickers, along with the garden variety of birds — robins, house finches, starlings, and mourning doves — but never have I seen a Red-head. |inline Read more
Stephen Shields has a lucid and useful post on Mark Driscoll‘s use of Ed Stetzer’s categories of emerging. That set of categories was relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists — those who are ministering to, those who are ministering with, and those who are ministering as postmodernists. Driscoll adds a category. |inline Read more
We come now to our last post on Michael Horton’s book on covenant theology, God of Promise. Many of us generic-brand Bible readers can benefit from being exposed to this covenant approach, even if we disagree. I offer a critique at the end of this post today. |inline Read more
There is a translation issue here in Romans 5:18, but the translation issue is not the real issue. A woodenly literal translation is offered by Wright: “so also through the righteous act of the one unto all people unto acquittal of life.” Thus, Christ’s act of righteousness (either his whole life or his quintessential act of dying for others) brings an acquittal of life “unto all people” or “for all.” Really? For “all”? What is the last word and the... Read more
From a fellow blogger (HT: Hal). This, I guess, is why my students can actually communicate with students in other classes without having to say a word or write something that is knowable to professors who don’t know cell phone lingo. |inline Read more
Evidently very. Time magazine has an article on how influential the bloggers of the SBC were in the recent voting for leadership. Mark Roberts, who links to the Time article itself, has made some observations and I’ll make some here. |inline Read more
Here’s the problem with the World Cup. The problem is that they are playing soccer. And a good case in point were the games on Monday. 180 minutes of play, with another 10 or so for stoppage time, and then two overtimes, and then penalty kicks/free kicks. In that amount of time, and let’s estimate it was 220 minutes, exactly one goal was scored by an offensive player kicking the ball by the goaleegoalkeeper. That, I say, is a problem.... Read more
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