John Frye, our friend up in Grand Rapids, is working his way through my Sermon on the Mount and I look forward each week to his post about what he’s seeing and how he’s responding. Over to John… The New Moses and the New People Scot McKnight instructs us to begin reading the Sermon on the Mount at its end. We will consider chapter one and chapter two of McKnight’s SGBC: The Sermon on the Mount. It’s vital to set the... Read more
Revelation is best used when one is doing analysis of culture and society and is best put down when one wants to know what will happen in the future. In other words, Revelation is potent political theology and not speculative eschatology. There are a number of really good, new, readable, brief books about Revelation (check our category: Revelation), and Paul Rainbow, The Pith of the Apocalypse, is one of the best. But, one wonders, when is the Book of Revelation most... Read more
By Warren Bird and Scott Thumma, at Leadership Network: Nearly two-thirds of attenders have been at these churches 5 years or less. Many attenders come from other churches, but nearly a quarter haven’t been in any church for a long time before coming to a megachurch. New people almost always come to the megachurch because family, friends or coworkers invited them. Fifty-five percent of megachurch attenders volunteer at the church in some way (a higher percentage than in smaller churches).... Read more
The second section of the new book from the Zondervan Counterpoints series: Four Views on the Historical Adam looks at John Walton’s view of Adam. Walton presents an archetypal view of Adam derived from Scripture and consistent with a number of scientific views of human origins. Again in this first post I will outline Walton’s view without much comment. This will be followed by a post that discusses the responses of the other three contributors and the rejoinder by original... Read more
This review is by a person who has thought about the topic and by a person to whom John Mark Comer has written his book, Loveology. The review is by former student, Kellie Carstensen, who led a student group that met in my office routinely to discuss relationships and love. When Traditional Meets Trendy: John Mark Comer’s Loveology John Mark Comer’s new book Loveology presents a remarkably comprehensive theology of love in the context of marriage, dating, and the male-female relationship.... Read more
Elizabeth Landau, for CNN, and at the link you can read the rest of this helpful article: (CNN) — When she was 12, Jennifer Traig’s hands were red and raw from washing them so much. She’d start scrubbing a half an hour before dinner; when she was done, she’d hold her hands up like a surgeon until her family sat down to eat. Her handwashing compulsions began at the time she was studying for her Bat Mitzvah. She was so worried... Read more
This post, by my friend Jim Martin, Vice President at Harding School of Theology, puts into print a dimension of Jim’s ministry at Crestview Church of Christ in Waco for which he was well-known. Could A Mentor Help You? In Mentor Like Jesus (p. 12), Regi Campbell tells of some people in their 90s who were surveyed several years ago and asked this question: “What are the three things you wish you had done that you didn’t do?” They responded:... Read more
The beat continues, the beat that persists in probing one question: Is ECT (eternal conscious torment) the most consistent view with the Bible and with theology? Or, the beat keeps asking, Is it possible that maybe conditionalism (annihilationism) is the most consistent? I have pushed this topic on this blog a number of times because the books are worthy of consideration and the issues continue to press against what many of us believe. I’m not convinced yet by the arguments... Read more
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The fifth chapter of J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 considers the ways in which Genesis 1-11 critiques the Mesopotamian ideology. This chapter is worth a couple of posts – the first will focus on Genesis 1-10 and the second will consider chapter 11 and the Tower of Babel Story as the culmination of the primeval history moving into the story of Abraham. The primeval history in the first 11 chapters of Genesis... Read more
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