The only reason to read her book is if you have time — or if you need to have time — or if you want to have time. Perhaps you don’t have time, and perhaps this is reminder that you do need to take time, time to ponder and pray and contemplate. This is why Tracy Balzer has written this useful, gentle, steadily climbing and probing book called Permission to Ponder: Contemplative Wisdom for the Spiritually Distracted. Do you need to give... Read more
Northern Seminary is sponsoring a tour to Turkey and Greece to visit the sits of the apostles Paul and John. And I will be the lead teacher. Our tour will be nearly two weeks long and we will visit major cities and sites. Let me suggest that your church sponsor a pastor and spouse to take this trip with us. If you are not from the USA and want to join us in Istanbul — that works too, but you... Read more
By Mark Chaves, sociologist at Duke, and Alison Eagle, Religious Congregations in 21st Century America. The link takes you to the document where these conclusions (below) are found and where the evidence can also be seen. What Are Our Most Important Observations? • The number of congregations claiming no denominational affiliation increased from 18% in 1998 to 24% in 2012 . • White mainline congregations, and the people in those congregations, are older than the congregations and people of other religious... Read more
The Seven – Lust This is the season when pastors all over the world are trying to write Advent sermons from the same handful of passages that we turn to every year. As a preacher, I get how hard and challenging it can be to speak a fresh word into a story that people have heard a thousand times. So here is an idea (somewhat tongue in cheek), what if we did a Christmas sermon on the vice of lust? ... Read more
The church has two complexes: one says it is a fellowship for the saints while the other complex is that it a fellowship for the sames. To use terms that have been suggested by folks like Craig Vernall, Dawn Haglund and Robert Webber, the traditional church often says it works from behaving, believing to belonging. But Vernall, Haglund, Webber and now Brian Harris says the proper order — the one the 21st Century most needs — is Belong Believe Behave This might... Read more
Loren Swartzenrduber, president at Eastern Mennonite University: As the leader of an educational institution that not only teaches the analytic and critical skills of the liberal arts, but also values reflective practice of those skills, I also add, in addition to my invitation to prayer, these calls of action: A call… for reaffirmation of the invitation of Jesus and his teachings to love our enemies; for dialogue and engagement with those who are different than us; for greater sensitivity to... Read more
Tribune: It is a system seemingly designed to fail. Chicago police officers enforce a code of silence to protect one another when they shoot a citizen, giving some a sense they can do so with impunity. Their union protects them from rigorous scrutiny, enforcing a contract that can be an impediment to tough and timely investigations. The Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian agency meant to pierce that protection and investigate shootings of citizens by officers, is slow, overworked and, according... Read more
Tim Suttle: Notice the two paragraphs I italicized. In the wake of yet another active shooter incident, evangelical leaders have been rattling the sabers, and touting the wisdom of concealed carry. In a speech made at the recent Liberty University convocation, Jerry Falwell Jr. bragged that he had a gun in his “back pocket right now.” Liberty is offering a free concealed carry class to all students because, in Falwell’s words, “If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we... Read more
The next two chapters of Richard Middleton’s book A New Heaven and a New Earth look at the Old Testament view of God’s salvation in law, wisdom, and prophecy. The goal of salvation in the Old Testament is earthly flourishing for both God’s people and God’s creation. Given the reality of sin salvation cannot be separated from judgment, and these certainly are not separated in the Old Testament. God’s will for his people is expressed in terms of law and... Read more
Our decade is blessed with the completion and near completion of two scholars’ lifetime projects that take us from Jesus to the 2d Century. We are looking in this series at James D.G. Dunn’s completion of his series “Christianity in the Making” with the recent publication of Neither Jew Nor Greek: A Contested Identity. I began the series with an interview with Jimmy. (Yes, when I arrived at Nottingham to study under Dunn, he came to our home the very next... Read more
Jesus Creed
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In