2014-05-14T13:18:42-05:00

Jesus’ Way with Words Jesus did not shy away from giving people mind cramps.  Jesus was not afraid of being misunderstood.  While living in our reality, he spoke from a different realm altogether.  Immersed in that realm, he brought deepened meanings to ordinary words.  One of the most important dimensions of pastoral ministry is helping others recover the immensity of eternity in ordinary, daily life. Jesus was a masterful word artist.  As a brilliant conversationalist, Jesus could inject an ordinary... Read more

2014-05-14T02:41:51-05:00

Jackson Wu teaches theology and missiology for Chinese pastors. He blogs at www. jacksonwu.org. Wu has also written Saving God’s Face: A Chinese Contextualization of Salvation through Honor and Shame (2013). Follow him on Twitter by clicking here. A “Social Gospel” Worth Preaching In Christian Political Witness, how might McKnight and Gombis’ chapters practically shape the church’s ministry? (For a summary of their chapters, see my previous post.) 1. A “Social Gospel”? These two chapters should alert people that the gospel does indeed have... Read more

2014-05-15T06:05:09-05:00

On Tuesday we looked at the first half of chapter two of J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. In this half Middleton concluded that Genesis 1 intentionally conveys a royal metaphor for God as creator, but this is a complex metaphor and must not be understood as a simple one-dimensional portrait of God. Superimposed on and integrated with the picture of God speaking creation into being is the metaphor of God as designer... Read more

2014-05-15T05:45:16-05:00

One of the most contentious issues involved in the discussion of the intersection between Christian faith and evolutionary biology is the question of Adam: historical, unique, mythical, archetypal, representative, something else? The recent clarification of the statement of faith at Bryan College is an example of the depth of feeling this issue can evoke. Lines are drawn in the sand. According to a story at timesfreepress.com the statement of faith reads: that the origin of man was by fiat of... Read more

2014-05-13T22:08:40-05:00

Source: Two tenured Bryan College professors that were notified their employment will be terminated on May 17 after they failed to acknowledge the college’s recent “clarification” on the origins of man in their contract renewal are suing the college in Rhea County Chancery Court. The lawsuit, which was filed on Monday, states that when the Bryan College Board of Trustees approved a “clarification” to the school’s statement of faith saying that man descended from Adam and Eve and did not... Read more

2014-05-14T05:51:35-05:00

“Next time I’m in church, please no photos.” –Kanye West A couple of months ago, right after Donald Miller had written a blog admitting he wasn’t a regular church attender, I wrote a blog here disagreeing with him. Now it has started to dawn on me that I was wrong. Not about church, but about Donald Miller going to church, and specifically not understanding first the way he experienced church.  I have been getting paid to go to church for so... Read more

2014-05-14T02:47:31-05:00

Jackson Wu teaches theology and missiology for Chinese pastors. He blogs at www. jacksonwu.org. Wu has also written Saving God’s Face: A Chinese Contextualization of Salvation through Honor and Shame (2013). Follow him on Twitter by clicking here. [SMcK: I mistakenly got two posts out of order. “Is the Gospel Political?” will be followed Friday by the post about the social gospel. My apologies to Jackson Wu and to you, our readers.] Is the Gospel “Political”? In Christian Political Witness, Scot McKnight and Tim... Read more

2014-05-12T16:29:23-05:00

From Shane Claiborne: Southern Baptist leader Albert Mohler wrote a piece this week defending the death penalty. In his 1200 word argument for why Christians should support the death penalty, he does not mention Jesus a single time. Digging deeper, as you read the official pro-death penalty statement of the Southern Baptists, there is not a single reference to Jesus or the Gospels. There are plenty of other problems with the scriptural maneuvering used to justify the contemporary practice of the death penalty... Read more

2014-05-13T06:31:13-05:00

Chapter two of J. Richard Middleton’s book The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 turns to the the meaning of the imago Dei in context of 1:26-28 and in the broader context of Genesis 1:1-2:3 and in the context of the symbolic world that gives rise to Genesis 1:1-2:3. Although he sees value in traditional word studies – studies of the words selem and demut translated image and likeness for example – the symbolic context is essential to... Read more

2014-05-12T14:27:28-05:00

Source: Despite the fact that Pope Francis received many accolades for taking a position against traditional authoritarianism and for criticizing the church for obsessing over birth control and homosexuality at the expense of more important issues, such as economic justice, Francis is now pushing back on the nuns who do just that. I’m talking about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group that represents 80 percent of American nuns and is focused on social justice. In the past, the Vatican has gone... Read more

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