It’s a bird, it’s a plane… yerkidding… it’s a woman! On Malaysian Airlines flight 370, about which I’ve not said anything … there is so much we do not know. Perhaps not knowing is the point of whoever flew that plane. That is, maybe disappearance was intended. As I see it, if the plane is in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth, it had to fly way off course and it is there by some kind of... Read more
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Young, Restless, and no longer Reformed Part 1 Young, Restless, and no longer Reformed: Black Holes, Love, and a Journey in and out of Calvinism caught my attention and I read it through in one sitting. I will do a two part review beginning with some observations and commentary. In Part 2 we will look closer at the book’s provocative content. Monday, March 17, 2014 and many University of Michigan Wolverines’ fans are down in the dumps because the Michigan... Read more
The last book in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, is not so much a text full of codes that need to be interpreted in order to dig out the secrets but, as David DeSilva puts it, “a text that imposed a Christ-centered interpretation upon the everyday activities, landscapes, and stories encountered by the members of the seven congregations” (Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation’s Warning, 77). We, too, can learn from John’s hermeneutic, from how John brings the One on... Read more
Source Over the past few years I’ve noticed a growing number of articles exclaiming, “How To Take Care of An Introvert” or “10 Things Everyone Should Understand About Introverts” and while I have no real problem with introverts and introversion, my issue is with the fact that people of the internet seem to have romanticized introversion in a way that turns any possible social impediments a person might have into desirable quirky traits. Not only this, but extroverts are suddenly... Read more
The fourth and fifth chapters of Ronald E. Osborn’s new book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering look at the nature of science and the push for mechanisms capable of explaining the events related in Scripture. In the practice of science we look for explanatory mechanisms that make sense of broad swathes of evidence. It is certainly possible to describe the solar system in geocentric terms, but as we learned more about the physics... Read more
This post by Christena Cleveland, author of the wonderful book Disunity in Christ, stunningly takes us to the mirror to look at ourselves. The American church’s divisiveness tells a story that Lent ought to provoke unto repentance. A few charismatic leaders — Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll in particular — have spawned flourishing church planting folks, but if these church planters do not work with already-established churches then opportunities to coordinate ministries will be missed. Christena has some important words... Read more
Source For those who have grown up around an attractional church, it’s a totally different set of metrics for success. It’s a different way of thinking about what it means to be a successful pastor. Attractional churches tend to attract very different leadership personalities than a “missional” expression of church. A different kind of pastor thrives in each. It can be disturbing for a pastor who’s developed his or her whole identity around having people come to church rather than... Read more
Lent: No Needy People Among Us? So we are in the season of Lent, the time of the year, when the Church calendar asks us to remember our sin, to repent of it, and to confess it. But this raises lots of practical pastoral questions for me. How does a Protestant church, from a free tradition, do this? I know there are ways of doing confession corporately, and we will certainly do them…but the problem with doing only corporate confession... Read more
John Mark Comer, whose new book just landed on my desk (Loveology) and I’m more than a little interested in what he says, was recently interviewed about Solid Rock Church. In the interview he made some comments about multi-site churches, and I’m wondering what you think: What do you think of multi-site churches? What kind of ecclesiology is at work? Why would one not start other churches with other pastors/preachers? Is this empire-building? The multi-site model is basically ministry franchising.... Read more
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