From Michelle van Loon, on these words of Pope Francis: I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures, because these need to get out…Don’t forget: make trouble…. Michelle’s commentary (or should I say midrash?): The words of Pope Francis remind me that it is indeed kingdom work to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. This... Read more
From Carmen Jordan, one our fine Northern Seminary students who is also pastoring. It was Mother’s Day, 2012, after preaching a sermon on The Pursuit of Jesus, from Mark’s account of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years (Mark 5:21 – 31) that I first began to think about pursuing a doctoral program. After the sermon, my pastor extended an invitation to Christian discipleship and there were so many women and men who came forward, not only to... Read more
From John Frye: The Pastor and Community Pastors A gathering of community pastors is an intriguing affair. Pastors, while not admitting it, can be very competitive. I recall one pastor who came out on that, however. We were putting together a local church softball league. Christian men can go pagan very fast on a softball field. We wanted the games to be fun and relational. A colleague called one pastor and asked if he could tone down the edgy competitiveness... Read more
This week Kris and I had our first tomato from our garden — Heirloom, to be precise, and with it the wonders of the odd shapes in an Heirloom tomato. That tomato anticipates weeks of fresh, red, succulent and tasty tomatoes. (Unlike the nonsense pulpous stuff we buy at the grocery store.) Keep that tomato in mind. Abraham was promised he’d inherit the Land — the Holy Land, the Land of Israel, The Land, Ha-Eretz. The same promise was given... Read more
Thom Rainer’s very helpful list of SBC churches 1000 and bigger, and they are still less than 2% of the churches … which should remind us that “models” for churches ought to consider the typical rather than the atypical: By the way, the SBC has 46,000 churches, and 595 made this list. So approximately 1.3% of the churches have an attendance of 1,000 or greater. RANK CHURCH — CITY, STATE WEEKLY WORSHIP ATTENDANCE 1 Second Baptist Church — Houston, TX... Read more
From WSJ: Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students’ online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date). “The harder I work, the more I... Read more
Ray Comfort at The Way of the Master released a new video – put it up on YouTube and made it available for purchase just after midnight Wednesday morning. The provocative title? Evolution vs. God. This trailer should give a bit of an idea what the video is like: You can find the entire video (some 38 minutes) on YouTube if interested. I’ve watched it a couple of times and have to say that it contains a rather interesting mix... Read more
John, who got nicknamed “baptizer” either to distinguish him from other Yohanans or to signal the importance of his baptism, baptized and Jesus baptized — or he insisted on his associates baptizing (John 3:22-26; 4:1-2; Matthew 28:16-20). These two sorts of baptisms are not found in the Jewish world in quite the same way as among John and Jesus, for with them it was a singular and not a repeated event and by immersion (as to the right — my... Read more
Regent College sits noticeably on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (UBC edge of campus in the image). We were there seven days with six full days of sun — a glorious week of weather. I was there to teach a course on the Kingdom of God in the teachings of Jesus in Regent’s robust and impressive summer school offerings — I shared this week with folks like Soong-Chan Rah (Prof Rah), my former colleague at... Read more
Readers of Jesus Creed blog know how often science and faith comes up, and so we commend to you this new blog by our friend Justin Topp: Promoting Scientific Literacy in Pastors Pastors often have questions about science but struggle with finding the tools or time to answer them. This, combined with a lot of science misinformation can make the discussion of “science and faith” a heated one. My colleague (Craig Story) and I at Gordon College have funding to... Read more
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