One, but only one, of the African Americans I enjoy celebrating this month (African American History month) is Chicago’s Ernie Banks: [From an older article] Ernie Banks passed away late Friday. He, however, will live forever in the memories of baseball players, officials and fans. Banks arrived at Wrigley Field back in September of 1953, allowing the Cubs to become the ninth of the 16 Major League teams to integrate. More than 61 years later, he is still the face... Read more
By John Frye In my past spiritual formation and in my current neck of the woods, the gospel was and is reduced to “Jesus died for your sins, simply receive him, and you’ll be forgiven and go to heaven when you die.” All these things are true, but none of them are the gospel as defined by Paul (1 Corinthians 15:1-8) and by the gospel sermons preached by Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts. Let me rehearse for... Read more
By Ben Davis A review essay of Bruce Reichenbach, Divine Providence Too often, when a discussion of God’s providence is brought to the table, it is framed in such a way that only trained philosophers or theologians can fully understand it. Thus large, awkward words eclipse simple, useable ones, and impenetrable logical syllogisms clash like warring armies in the night. In the end no one is served because overly-wrought, abstract ideas inveigh the steady practice of commonsense reasoning. What is... Read more
With William Shiell, President of Northern Seminary Author of Delivering from Memory https://soundcloud.com/user-212639123/preaching-and-the-performance-conversation-with-president-bill-shiell-kr-40 Read more
Thus far Tim Keller’s book Making Sense of God : An Invitation to the Skeptical has looked at six aspects of human life, givens that Keller suggests we cannot live without: meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, hope, and justice. Each chapter looked at both secular and Christian narratives, and at the specific focus that Christianity offers. In the last two chapters he turns to a broader overview. He begins by asking “is it reasonable to believe in God?” and offers six... Read more
From Dennis Venema, Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome Before I get to clips from the book, I want to suggest that the best place to begin when it comes to the so-called “historical” Adam issue is not with the word “historical” but with the word “literary.” That is, the only Adam Jews knew was the Adam of the Bible. That’s the literary Adam and the word “literary” does not mean either “historical” or “mythical.” It means the Adam in the Bible. That... Read more
From Arise, used with permission By Maureen Farrell Garcia On January 25, 2017 Abuse If you haven’t yet read Ruth Tucker’s book, Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife, you should. Full disclosure: I have been reading her work for a few decades. It challenged me to reconsider what it meant to be created in God’s image as a female. While I do not agree with all that Tucker writes in her newest book, her methodology and her argument are... Read more
Ed Yong: “There are lots of people at the place where I work, but there is one person who is really special. This person is really, really smart,” said Lin Bian. “This person figures out how to do things quickly and comes up with answers much faster and better than anyone else. This person is really, really smart.”Bian, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, read this story out to 240 children, aged 5 to 7. She then showed them... Read more
From CT: American pastors aren’t as young as they used to be. As clergy live longer and stay in ministry longer, the average age of Protestant senior pastors has risen to 54—a decade older than 25 years before, when the average age was 44. Now, just 1 in 7 pastors leading congregations is under 40, according to Barna Group’s 2017 State of Pastors project. In the new report, Barna president David Kinnaman called the aging pastorate “one of the most... Read more
Both conservative evangelicals and progressive evangelicals lost their soul in the last two years. For two years Christians have ramped up their verbal engagement in a presidential election, and it seems to me that European evangelicals have engaged the same. Everywhere we have traveled in the last two years, especially in the last nine months, the conversation is about Trump, Hillary, and the president. Mostly about Trump. Serious Christian conversations about other topics have been brushed aside and even entirely... Read more
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