I’m going on vacation until next Tuesday. My guest-blogger Matt Crawford will be writing until then. I’m really looking forward to his posts, and I hope you benefit from them. By the way, this will be my last vacation for awhile. Please welcome the guest-blogger who puts the host blogger to shame, Southern Seminary student Matt Crawford. Read more

The resource today is the New Attitude talk by pastor C. J. Mahaney. (Click the little play button next to the message entitled: “Discern Your Heart.”) New Attitude is a conference held annually for Christian singles in Louisville, KY that attracts some of the best Christian speakers out there. Mohler, Dever, Piper–they all go. Anyway, the NA website contains the talks from this year’s conference, and I want to encourage you to listen to C. J.’s talk. It is funny,... Read more

4) Find evidence for your thesis. This will mean reading in both the secondaries and the primaries. But you’ll be doing more focused reading than your before. Previously, you were reading in order to acquire a knowledge base–to understand your topic in a broad sense. You have already done that, and have narrowed your topic, and so you should read books that will relate closely to your topic. Don’t waste time on more general research. You likely don’t have alot... Read more

Without further ado, here is a suggested method for doing research. I use this not only with history papers but with papers of various disciplines. I’m no expert, and there are lots of ways to do research, but I thought I would share mine as I begin the last semester of my master’s degree. I should also note that my former professor Patrick Rael of Bowdoin College influenced certain parts of this method. 1) Select a topic. Should be something... Read more

I am still smarting from Joseph’s comments from yesterday, but I will attempt to compose myself such that I can blog today. Joseph, the key word for yesterday’s post was relative. Nash and Iverson are short relative to the rest of the NBA. Very short, in fact, and scrawny. And yet they, and the immortal John Stockton, managed to win MVPs and lead their teams to multiple successful seasons, despite the pronounced lack of a second star who could consistently... Read more

I read some time ago a fascinating book on size by a scientific writer named Stephen Hall. The book is titled Size Matters. Hall is an evolutionist and his theories were less than compelling, but his personal experience, his research, and his reflections combined to make for a fun and informative read. Hall essentially poses the title as a question and finds that in society, size does indeed matter, but oftentimes only because people assign value to height, albeit value... Read more

1) Here’s a hilarious video about the Maryland pastor, master preacher and denominational architect C. J. Mahaney. Staff members of the church Mahaney attends–Covenant Life Church, a great church–interviewed children about Mahaney’s ministry and came up with this video. It was played, I presume, at CLC when Mahaney stepped down from his pastorate and ushered Joshua Harris (yes, that Joshua Harris) into the role of senior pastor. Anyway, watch the video even if you don’t know who Mahaney is–it’s quite... Read more

One of the unique challenges a Christian institution has is balancing how it rewards right answers and good thinking. By this I mean that a Christian college or university must carefully weigh how much it rewards students simply for knowing the right answer and how much it rewards them for thinking hard and deeply about various subjects. You realize, of course, that this is the area where the secular world sneers at we who are enrolled in Christian schools, be... Read more