By Mitch East, currently the preaching intern at the North Atlanta Church of Christ One summer during graduate school, a college minister asked me to speak at a retreat for his students. The retreat would deal with the students’ questions about Christian faith. On the first night, I shared four questions with which I had wrestled. I prompted the students to write their own questions on slips of paper and place them in a bowl. I told them I would answer... Read more

The approach to the Sermon on the Mount in the history of the church reveals as much about the authors as it does about the Sermon itself! Not that I think such revelations are bad for interpretation for each of them — from Augustine to Luther to Wesley to recent studies — give us a glimpse both of what that great Sermon meant in its world as well as its impact on the church. Hence, I turn to Jonathan Pennington’s... Read more

Source, Rachel Grate: It’s no secret that reading is good for you. Just six minutes of reading is enough to reduce stress by 68%, and numerous studies have shown that reading keeps your brain functioning effectively as you age. One study even found that elderly individuals who read regularly are 2.5 times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than their peers. But not all forms of reading are created equal. The debate between paper books and e-readers has been vicious since the first Kindle came out in 2007. Most arguments have been... Read more

In one of the most influential, however small, books on early Christian worship, Paul Bradshaw maps the development of the meals of Jesus into the eucharist. I have added numbers and reformated the citation. See his book Reconstructing Early Christian Worship (pp. 18-19). I believe that the regular sharing of food was fundamental to the common life of the first Christian communities, as it apparently had been to Jesus’ own mission. At these meals they would have experienced an eschatological anticipation... Read more

Shawna Dolansky: Taken together as a Decalog, what kind of document is this? Is it a religious text? Or a moral code? This question matters, because the anti-establishment clause in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment has been invoked on both sides of the debate about the appropriateness of displaying the Bible’s 10 Commandments in government spaces and on public property. Even though the Bible is a religious document, proponents of such Decalog monuments in courthouses and schoolrooms argue that the... Read more

This is a six minute clip from YouTube. What is your reasoned response? A few observations. First, very few define “new perspective” well, including MacArthur. Few also know the principal voices. They begin with Krister Stendahl and then W.D. Davies and then E.P. Sanders and then James D.G. Dunn and only then N.T. Wright. Some, like MacArthur, don’t take the full body of work into view for in other places Wright discusses imputation and wrath. MacArthur’s choice of books is... Read more

In a recent article over at Seedbed, Howard Snyder asks this question and offers his view: [HT: JS] How large should your church be? Silly question, you say. Depending on your theology or worldview, you might add: * Large as possible! Bigger is better! * That’s up to God! * I’m shooting for 1,000 (or 2,000, or 3,000, or whatever). * I like small and intimate! Here’s a better answer: A congregation should be large enough to fulfill all the... Read more

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. BCP Read more

On therapy animals, which we saw on a bus at Logan International airport this week: A therapy-animal trend grips the United States. The San Francisco airport now deploys a pig to calm frazzled travelers. Universities nationwide bring dogs (and a donkey) onto campus to soothe students during finals. Llamas comfort hospital patients, pooches provide succor at disaster sites and horses are used to treat sex addiction. And that duck on a plane? It might be an emotional-support animal prescribed by... Read more