Tale of Two Catholic Churches

Last updated on: March 3, 2013 at 1:35 pm By Scot McKnight

From Hans Küng: There’s no way to ignore the church’s desperate needs. There is a catastrophic shortage of priests, in Europe and in Latin America and Africa. Huge numbers of people have left the church or gone into “internal emigration,” especially in the industrialized countries. There has been an unmistakable loss of respect for bishops and priests, alienation, particularly on the part of younger women, and a failure to integrate young people into the church. One shouldn’t be misled by... Read more

Best to Listen to Paul

Last updated on: March 4, 2013 at 8:14 am By Scot McKnight

One hundred years ago Roland Allen wrote a book that shaped the last century of missionary thinking and missionary praxis. Former missionary, Roland Allen, laid much of it out in a book called Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Missions today is not what missions was then, and the confidence in Western Christians in their missionary work is not what it was then. Many today, in fact, question whether Westerners even ought to be doing missions — some call it colonialism... Read more

Seminary Life Today 2

Last updated on: March 6, 2013 at 8:16 am By Scot McKnight

Following up on Monday’s post, another one from Northern Seminary’s Greg Henson: 81% of all incoming seminary students do not expect to have a parish ministry position. Less than half of all incoming students plan to be ordained. School websites account for more incoming students than all traditional advertising combined. Below is the second of three infographcis based on the 2011-2012 ATS ESQ. During the most recently completed academic year, 6,900 incoming students at 161 different ATS schools completed a... Read more

Go Run on Dunkin’!

Last updated on: March 5, 2013 at 6:23 pm By Scot McKnight

A man attempted to rob a Dunkin’ Donuts and a fast-thinking worker used coffee as her (anabaptist-approved) weapon: When the clerk refused to make the change, the man announced he was robbing the store and tried to climb through the window, police said. “He rushed himself, tried to get out of his car. That’s when I realized he was serious. I tried to close the window. He put his arm in it. He knew not to touch, because he knew... Read more

Northern’s DMin in Missional Leadership

Last updated on: March 5, 2013 at 9:14 am By Scot McKnight

For us at Northern and involved in the DMin program the good reasons to do a D. Min: Get trained to lead my church into the new challenges of ministry in context. Get trained to be a leader/change agent resource for the churches around me geographically. Get trained to become a capable practicing contextual theologian discerning what and how to be church in the contexts I am presented with in my ministry locale. At Northern Seminary, we’ve been working on the D... Read more

Pets at Work?

Last updated on: February 28, 2013 at 9:04 am By Scot McKnight

From USAToday: INDIANAPOLIS — Employers and employees are acknowledging the advantages and benefits of a growing office trend that allows pets in the workplace. And now there’s research to support what some have known for years. According to a Virginia Commonwealth Universitystudy, employees who bring their dogs to work produced lower levels of the stress-causing hormone cortisol. Published in spring 2012, the study, led by Randolph Barker, a professor of management, was conducted at a dinnerware company in North Carolina, which sees... Read more

Collective Outrage

Last updated on: March 2, 2013 at 7:13 am By Scot McKnight

Dean Obeidallah: But here’s the thing: Why not also unleash our collective fury over issues more meaningful than just a comedian’s joke or a celebrity’s tweet? I’m not suggesting we ignore those — because even if I did, no one would listen. But in addition to those, take a moment to express your powerful outrage over issues that might tangibly benefit your life and the lives of others. Let’s get collectively angry that every nine seconds, a woman in the... Read more

The Historic Christian Faith (RJS)

Last updated on: March 5, 2013 at 5:46 am By RJS

Following Tim Keller in The Reason for God we have now presented and discussed seven of the biggest objections raised against the Christian faith. None of these objections are fatal to the historic Christian faith when examined objectively. But this is not enough Keller says — it is time to go beyond doubts and questions and to begin to construct a reason for belief. But first…a brief intermission: In constructing a reason for faith Keller proposes that we first consider... Read more

A Courageous Biography of CS Lewis

Last updated on: March 8, 2019 at 4:01 pm By Scot McKnight

Two of the most influential voices in evangelicalism were not evangelicals themselves, though they have been claimed for evangelicalism and many younger thinkers can’t imagine their not being evangelicals. Those two are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an orthodox Lutheran, and C.S. Lewis, an Anglican with the sensibility of a “mere” kind of Christianity. In their day neither was claimed by the kind of evangelicalism that then existed, which was more like the very conservative side of evangelicalism today. One could probably tally... Read more

Working from Home

Last updated on: February 28, 2013 at 6:58 am By Scot McKnight

By Farhad Manjoo: Working at home isn’t for everyone. As a writer, I work according to what Y Combinator’s Paul Graham calls the “maker’s schedule.” My job requires long stretches of distraction-free time, and my output, on any particular day, is sensitive to my mood and environment. Working at home gives me the freedom to adjust these variables to maximum effect: Sometimes I find that I write better if I start a column after dinner, while other times I hit... Read more

Who was called out of Ur to go to a land God would show him?