Dangerous Gospel-The Model Home, by Jonathan Storment For the past few weeks, I have been reviewing Jon Nugent’s great new book Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church. Today I would like to conclude this series with the analogy Nugent uses that I appreciated the most. Nugent’s point throughout the book, is that Christians have, for a variety of reasons stopped prioritizing the Christian community. By our unintentional neglect we have created a kind of lukewarm fellowship... Read more

Culture matters and when it comes to an ancient texts it matters even more because that culture is not ours. In her new book, Paul and Gender, Cynthia Westfall investigates culture as a filter we need to rediscover and she then examines what it meant for Paul to ask women to veil. Here is a complex sentence but she packs into it a boatload of information vital for what happens in the chapter: “Cultural and linguistic information about gender is demonstrated... Read more

By Michael Chung (BS, The Ohio State University; MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; PhD University of Nottingham) has taught at Fuller Theological Seminary-Texas, Houston Baptist University, Calvary Theological Seminary-Indonesia, and Houston Christian High School. He is also the author of Praying with Mom (2012) and has published academic journal articles in North America, Asia, and Europe on Gospels, Paul, Spiritual Formation, New Testament Theology, and Missiology. He has also done missions and pastoral work. The Priority of Rest The Easter... Read more

J. Richard Middleton has thought-provoking post at BioLogos that deals Evolution and the Historical Fall (now a couple of weeks old, but I only read it in the last few days). This short essay is well worth reading, and worth some comment here. (1) A historical Fall. Richard, like many of the rest of us, finds the biblical and empirical case for a Fall of some sort  compelling. He points out that the the Scriptures clearly teach a fallen humanity.... Read more

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey: Concern is mounting among evangelicals that Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm, could lose his job following months of backlash over his critiques of President Trump and religious leaders who publicly supported the Republican candidate. Any such move could be explosive for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has been divided over politics, theology and, perhaps most starkly, race. More than 100 of the denomination’s 46,000 churches have threatened to cut off financial... Read more

Jonathan Algier: [SMcK: He does not mention but Andrew McGowan’s book is the best place to begin.] Performance worship is now the norm. I fear this is the case with practically all evangelical megachurches and their emulating congregations, which now includes a growing number of desperate mainline congregations, as well. We also see it in the hip, edgy, urban emergent congregations that tout their return to liturgy, but still find themselves enslaved to commercial entertainment forms. Yes, performance worship has... Read more

One can at least draw attention to implications of the gospel preached and the demand preached in our churches, not the least of which would be 50% church attendance, common attendance being sitting in a pew and leaving as soon as “church” is over, a firm belief in God’s unconditional love while believing God does not really care all that much about obedience and discipleship, and an abysmal perception of Christian theology. One of the most recent ironies is the... Read more

What True Influence Looks Like By Michelle Van Loon www.MomentsAndDays.org www.MichelleVanLoon.com The Jewish feast of Purim took place this year from sundown Saturday, March 11th through sundown of the 12th. It is for me an opportunity each year to revisit this remarkable story of survival in the face of super-size, demonic anti-Semitism. The book of Esther found in our Bibles never once mentions God’s Name, yet his unseen hand is visible in every moment of this drama. I’ve always loved... Read more