“The most expansive, energetic force in the world today is the Spirit of God.” So says Mel Lawrenz in Spiritual Influence. What this means, of course, is going where the Spirit leads. What this means is that the Spirit guides us into exploring where God is at work. Leadership becomes drawing others into a vision of what is around the corner, of what God might do next, of what is in store for those listening to the Spirit … it is... Read more
From Ed Stetzer’s research at LifeWay, and at the link you can read a fuller report about this study: When it comes to discipleship, churchgoers struggle most with sharing Christ with non-Christians according to a recent study of church-going American Protestants. The study conducted by LifeWay Research found 80 percent of those who attend church one or more times a month, believe they have a personal responsibility to share their faith, but 61 percent have not told another person about... Read more
For many the gospel has been reduced to Me. The operative question is “What’s in it for me?” Or, more intelligently, “What are the personal implications/benefits of the gospel for me?” When this is the operative question the gospel gets reshaped into therapeutics: how it can help, how it can save, how it can rescue, how it can restore — me — to God, to self, to others and to the world. It becomes an exercise in making people happier... Read more
Questions of cooperation, morality, and altruism are active areas of scientific investigation. The origin of moral law is a serious scientific question that is investigated quite seriously. Some reduce the existence of a moral law to a means to enhance population survival, and altruism is a by-product of evolution. In a reductionist world there must be a practical reason why moral behavior and limited altruism (it certainly isn’t an all-encompassing instinct) are valuable traits for survival. A couple of recent... Read more
How do we evaluate a local church, or even a denomination? (Not that I think we have to do this, but at some level we will begin to use terms that border on or express our evaluation of a church.) We will say things like “That’s a good church” or “There’s something special going on” or “That church is dead” or one of the more common ones “That church is totally irrelevant.” What term would you use? In what I... Read more
From Laura Donnelly, and at the link you can read much more: Shirley Chaplin shrinks from the limelight. As she sits in a modest bungalow in Devon, she struggles to relax, her arms wrapped around herself protectively as she recalls her private anguish. On Tuesday, the spotlight will be inescapable. Mrs Chaplin, a nurse for more than 30 years, left the NHS at the age of 55. She did so because she felt forced to choose between nursing – the... Read more
Here I am trying to read the liturgy at Finley’s dedication; Finley has other ideas. Read more
By Kevin Hartnett: Thesis: Parent time and education with children is of more value than which school kids attend. Social scientists have long tried to determine why some children grow up to be successful adults and others don’t. The causes are hard to untangle. High school dropouts tend to attend underperforming public schools and to come from poor families with unmarried, undereducated parents. Ivy League graduates more often attend good K-12 schools and come from well-educated, affluent, two-parent families. Because... Read more
Jeff Cook’s series on desire now moves on to Jesus. “Blessed are the Very Smart for They Will See God.” There’s a reason this beatitude strikes us poorly. It doesn’t seem to be how things work. It’s not simply that those who are mentally slower or even wise in non-analytic spheres are some how lesser in God’s eyes. We reject this beatitude because God clearly doesn’t work this way. Yet notice what this says about how we reason for Christianity.... Read more
How does the Christian live in, relate to and transform culture? This question, one that draws in the need for expertise in about fifty disciplines, shapes the lucid and informed and very brief study by Rich Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction. Kuyper’s approach to the Christian and culture is a classic Calvinist formulation, but it has far more nuance than most. It seems most evangelicals and mainliners are generally in favor of the approach of Kuyper, though I... Read more
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