2012, Day 4- Resolved to: Revel in Your Rest, and for my soul to be Pacified in Your peace…[1] This last week, I had my first experience with the popular stretching-exercise phenomenon we refer to as Yoga. For the last month and a half, I have been detained from my usual workout routine due to posterior tibial tendonitis (don’t let it happen to you). As a result, I’ve been forced to explore some other low...
It’s a new year, which means millions of people like you and me are taking time out for some self-reflection. A long look in the mirror—both literal and metaphorical—to find and fix our flaws. When I look in the mirror, past the fingerprints and flecks of toothpaste, what strikes me are the physical signs of sin—the aging image of God that stares back at me. Gray hairs (where hairs may still be found), crow’s feet,...
In keeping with the Christmas spirit that has been permeated the blog, I thought I would attempt to meld my two-kingdom series with something relevant for the holiday season. In the secularized west, the constant debate about Christ’s relationship to Christmas provides a fantastic peek into the practicality of the two kingdom’s discussion. Today’s article takes us to a small Texas town in Henderson county called Athens. I ran across a most curious article about...
Last week I talked about advertising and evangelism. As a related issue, I also want to discuss the way in which Christians do Apologetics. How far can Apologetics take us? Do we assume that someone can be argued into the Kingdom? Is the goal of Apologetics merely to convince? Is being convinced the same as exercising faith? These are some of my general questions about the efficacy of Apologetics as a whole. Personally, I chose...
Don’t worry, this exercise won’t involve an hour sweating on the stair-master… Today, many of us in North America[1] prepare for the annual traditions associated with plump and tender turkey, cranberries and gravies of countless varieties, and yammy, applely, and pumpkin side dishes with enough to cover a table with enough calories to power the launch of the next mars land rover. Yet despite the hustle in the kitchen, we can’t escape the namesake of...
“The Problem with Contentment is that we always want more of it.” There is much that could be said about our chronic compulsive need for contentment. Indeed, our narcissism and incessant hunger for more than we have is the result of an insatiable appetite of covetousness. As Francis de Sales warns, “as long as your spirit looks elsewhere than where you are, it will never apply itself rightly to profiting from where you are.”[1] Regardless of...
After two thrilling weeks (I’m not overstating, am I?), we reach the conclusion of our look at multi-site churches. Having taken an overview of what multi-site churches are, and a look at some of the arguments in favor of adopting such a model, we take a turn to negative town and look at the arguments against multi-site. As I pointed out in the first post on this subject, there are a variety of ways in which...
“…you become better and better by looking for so great a good which is both sought in order to be found and found in order to be sought…” -St. Augustine “Ethics” means more than understanding how one should act in a certain situation in order to be free from blame. This type of ethics is sinful man at his worst, worrying only about himself. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that this type of ethics started at the...
In the undergraduate class I am teaching this semester, one of the research assignments students can choose is an analysis of the Barth and Bultmann debate over the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. One student who chose this assignment later changed their mind; this person sent me an email asking if it would be possible change to another assignment because, they asked rhetorically, “Isn’t Karl Barth heretical?” In fact, this person went so far as to...
It’s estimated that there are over 2,000 churches in America that employ the multi-site model in some form. What are their reasons for doing so and is there biblical support for this decision? Browsing through the web for proponents of the multi-site church model reveals a number of arguments in favor of multi-site that are also true of church planting. Indeed the main reason churches decide to multiply sites seems to be to deal with growth. And the...
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