How would you describe your church in 5 words or less?

March 13, 2012 in Ministry with 2 Comments

“So, what do you think of your church?”

He had just moved here from out of town, so I probably should have been expecting the question. But I wasn’t. And it caught me off guard.

What do I think of my church? That’s not always an easy question to answer. I like my church. But I’m enough of a critical thinker to notice the many areas of weakness it has as well. (Or, at least, the areas that I think are weaknesses.) So my first instinct is to say something like “It has problems like any other church, but we like it.” Not a terribly rousing endorsement.

Why do I feel the need to qualify my answer like that? Surely everyone knows that churches aren’t perfect. Why lead with it? Why not just jump right in with what I love about my church?

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Heresy and a Call for Humility (random reading)

March 12, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

You’re a heretic. That’s a powerful claim. One with the ability to destroy. And like all weapons of mass destruction, it should be used with extreme caution.

That’s the message of a piece Justin Holcomb wrote last week on the nature of heresy and why we need to be more careful with our labels in online discussions.

There has been a lot of talk about heresy thrown around on the Internet lately.

The frequency and volume of the accusations suggest that some Christians may have lost a sense of the gravity of the charge of heresy. The time has come to call for a strong dose of humility, restraint, and a clear and informed definition of orthodoxy and heresy.

He goes on to argue that “heresy” is a loaded word that should be used with great caution, but that it’s a word we shouldn’t just eliminate entirely. And he offers some good thoughts for defining heresy.

Go read the whole article. And if you’re looking for more information on “heresy,” check out my series on What Is “Heresy” and Who Is a Heretic? In that series, I explored a number of different ways people try to define heresy:

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Random Reading: A New Series

March 12, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve had to put my regular Flotsam & Jetsam posts on hold for a while. I’m hoping to pick those back up again in the next few weeks, but that will depend on how quickly I take care of some other projects I’m working on.

In the meantime, I still run across quite a few interesting blog posts and resources that I don’t want you to miss out on. Instead of offering a regular roundup of links, which takes a while to put together, I’ll occasionally highlight a post that I think is worth reading. And I’ll include the tag “random reading” in the title so you can quickly identify them in your feed reader or email.

I won’t post these very often, since the whole point of taking a break from Flotsam & Jetsam was to create space for other things. But a few times a week, I’ll try to highlight one of the more interesting posts I’ve run across. Feel free to email suggestions if you see something you think is particularly noteworthy.

Thought for Today: Pondering Infinity

March 12, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

 

How to Unpack the Gospel

March 9, 2012 in Theology with 4 Comments

We’ve been looking at how the gospel is like my wife’s purse: a bag filled with treasure. Some of those treasures seem pretty “ordinary.” Others are treasures that we’ve forgotten all about. And some you never knew about in the first place. If you have a gospel bag like that, what do you do?

With a purse like my wife’s there’s only one reliable method for discovering everything that lies within. Every now and then, you have to turn the bag over and empty it on the table, giving it several good shakes to make sure that each wrinkled corner surrenders its precious cargo. Then you can pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, and examine what fell out.

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Your Dreams Are Dead

March 8, 2012 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

This is how I feel every time I post about how bad the Ph.D. job market is.

If you’re interested, here are my earlier posts on the job market:

Exploring the Unknown Treasures of the Gospel

March 8, 2012 in Theology with 0 Comments

We’ve been looking at how the gospel is like my wife’s purse: a bag filled with treasure. Some of those treasures seem pretty “ordinary.” Others are treasures that we’ve forgotten all about. But what if the gospel contains treasures that we never even knew were there?

The really great thing about my wife’s purse are the things even she doesn’t know about. I still haven’t quite figured out how that happens. But then, I don’t spend most of my day surrounded by small children.

I tested this the other day by digging down into the nether regions of her purse. (I did this with her permission, of course. I’m not stupid.) Along with the ordinary items, I found a single mitten (even though it was April), several plastic doodads of unknown origin and function, a small stuffed elephant, some Halloween candy (in April?), and a love note that one of our daughters had slipped in there months before. She had no idea how any of it had gotten there.

What if the Gospel contains treasures we don’t even know about yet?

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Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (review)

March 7, 2012 in Biblical Studies, Reviews with 2 Comments

This is a guest post by Jan Verbruggen, Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Western Seminary.

Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus. An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

Victor Hamilton is well known for his 2-part commentary on Genesis in the New International Commentary of the Old Testament series, his Handbook on the Pentateuch, and his Handbook on the Historical Books. He taught for 35 years at Ashbury University, and now in his retirement has been appointed as “Scholar in residence” at the aforementioned school. He has taken advantage of his retirement to devote himself full-time to research and writing, and this commentary is the first fruit of that labor.

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My Favorite Cat Picture

March 6, 2012 in Humor with 5 Comments

I heard that cat pictures are popular on the internet. So I thought I’d go ahead and post my favorite. I hope you like it.

via imgur

(I don’t actually know that this is a cat. But it makes me happy to think so.)

Recovering the “Lost” Treasures of the Gospel

March 5, 2012 in Theology with 4 Comments

We’ve been exploring the idea that the gospel is like my wife’s purse: a bag filled with treasure. Some of those treasures seem pretty “ordinary.” And that’s too bad. But what about those treasures that you’ve simply forgotten about? The ones you stuck in the bag a long time ago and have not taken out since?

When I was a kid, “cleaning” my room involved cramming as much stuff as possible into my closet and praying that my dad wouldn’t notice when he came to inspect. Sometimes that even worked. Usually it didn’t. That means I often had to spend an afternoon pulling everything out of my closet and putting stuff where it belonged.

I remember one afternoon in particular. Toward the back of the closet, I found an old lunchbox. Thoughts of rotten PB&J sandwiches and prepubescent flies swarmed through my head. Until I opened it. Nestled inside like a pirate’s lost treasure, I found the twenty dollars I’d hidden several months earlier, a considerable sum for a small child. This was my secret stash. (I’m not entirely clear on why all kids need to have a secret stash. But it seems pretty universal.) And I’d forgotten all about it.

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