Theology
You can finally come out of your prayer closet: Joe Thorn is blogging again.
Gary Rohrmayer put up part 3 of Engaging in More Spiritual Conversations.
Drew Goodmanson is Transforming Cities. Great stuff.
Ligon Duncan on Together for the Gospel, and Sam Storms adds a little more to the baptism/communion discussion.
Every few months I feel like I need this again: John Piper's "Running with the Witnesses."
Sam Storms' response to the whole baptism and the Lord's Supper thing that has been buzzing around online: "Piper, Grudem, Dever, et al, on Baptism, the Lord's Table, and Church Membership (just how "Together for the Gospel" are we?)"
I read the article this morning but with no direct link available (and some grocery shopping to do) I left it alone. In the mean time Glenn Lucke wrote a great post and Abraham Piper quoted some Storms.
You need to read the whole Storm's article for context, but I agree with him and loved this paragraph...
My question...is this: How can we claim to be "together" or "united" for the sake of the gospel and turn away a brother or sister from the very expression and proclamation of that gospel that is so central to the life and testimony of the church? What does this prohibition say to the world around us? What must they think of our professed "togetherness" or "unity" when the elements of the Eucharist would be withheld from a brother such as Ligon Duncan?
UPDATE: Grudem has now responded to Piper.
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Here we go again. Wayne Grudem tweaks his take on baptism and church membership in his Systematic Theology (HT:JT), and Piper isn't happy with the results. Justin Taylor writes...
Grudem previously argued for "allowing both views of baptism [i.e., paedobaptism and credobaptism] to be taught and practiced in denominations on both sides of the question." Grudem has since changed his mind.
Remember Piper going through this issue with his church and constitution? From his response to Grudem...
Evidently, Wayne is not so sure any more that we should make the effort to overcome the divisions among evangelicals for the sake of welcoming true brothers and sisters as members in the local church. I think his first edition was closer to the biblical balance.
I originally posted on this issue back in September of 2005.
From Tyler at the Desiring God blog...
Every two years John Piper completes a rotation of weekend seminars on different aspects of Christian doctrine and practice. These seminars include:
- Biblical Eldership
- Desiring God
- Future Grace
- Gravity and Gladness on Sunday Morning: The Pursuit of God in Corporate Worship
- Prayer, Meditation, and Fasting
- Sexual Complementarity: The Pursuit of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
- Suffering for the Sake of the Body: The Pursuit of People Through Pain
- TULIP
- Why We Believe the Bible
The audio for each of these seminars is now online. Complete course notes are also available so that you can follow along.
CT talks Glocal with Bob Roberts
Tentmaker Group looks promising
I heard an interview with Eric Maisel on the Writers on Writing podcast (see Pen on Fire). A couple of interesting thoughts on creativity. Here's Maisel's site.
Simpsonize yourself. Here's what Jonathan Edwards would look like on the Simpsons.
Two new fantastic movies: The Bourne Ultimatum & Sunshine
This is online elsewhere, but The Gospel Coalition has now put up J.I. Packer's introduction to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Good reading. (HT)
John Piper reflects on the bridge collapse in Minneapolis today. For some reason this paragraph (near the end) stood out to me...
The word “bridge” does not occur in the Bible. There may be tworeasons. One is that God doesn’t build bridges, he divides seas. The other is that usually his people must pass through the deadly currents of suffering and death, not simply ride over them. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you” (Isaiah 43:2). They may drown you. But I will be with you in life and death.
Thanks to an email from James I can offer you two links to new Tim Keller sermons preached at St. George's-Tron Church in Glasgow. Enjoy.
Dana Gioia, American poet and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, delivered the commencement address at Stanford in June. Here's an excerpt, but you should read the whole thing...
Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that bit by bit trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening—not just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.
Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure—humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who spends a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on Xbox has not been awakened and transformed the way that child would be spending the time rehearsing a play or learning to draw.
[...]
Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world—equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being—simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory, and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories, or songs, or images.
Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens, enlarges, refines, and restores our humanity. You don't outgrow art. The same work can mean something different at each stage of your life. A good book changes as you change.
(HT: BHT)
We need to be as critical of ourselves as we often are of others, and as generous to others as we always are to ourselves.
John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, BST, p 180.
Here's Mark DeVine's talk on the emerging church from the Gospel, Church & Culture meetings.
Darrin Patrick speaks on Gospel, Church & Culture from a St. Louis Metro Church Planting meeting. There should be more audio coming, including some from Mark DeVine.
Christianity Today has a short article recapping the situation with Missouri Baptists: Brewing Battle. Nothing terribly new or informative to those who have been keeping up, but concise with some helpful external links at the end for those needing to catch up.
The policy addresses an ongoing SBC debate. Baptistshave championed alcohol abstinence since the late 1800s, but a growing number want the SBC to reexamine the issue, said Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School.
"There is growing discontent, people saying that we shouldn't be mandating things that aren't spoken clearly about in Scripture," George said. "It's hard to argue that the Bible requires total abstinence."
(New link to Keller's "Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age.")
I can't find a way to link to it directly, but you can read Tim Keller's "Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age" at the Gospel Coalition site. I don't think I have it linked elsewhere.
Start on the Gospel Coalition articles page, click on "authors," click on "Tim Keller" under the "Contemporary Authors" section.
Personally, I don't understand why sites are built so you can't link directly to everything. But at least it's there. Maybe they will eventually add permalinks to everything.
UPDATE: They have added url's to all the articles. Good work guys. "Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age."
God intends us to penetrate the world. Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: Where is the salt?
John Stott in The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, p 65.
I got this from Justin Taylor, and I understand it to be the final version of The Gospel Coalition's Foundational Documents. I have made it into a pdf file and hosted it on my blog. I have compared it to other copies that have been online for a couple of days and there are some changes, though they appear minor.
Allelon - "a movement of missional leaders" -- They have a website which has a number of resources, but I'm really loving Alan Roxburgh's netcast (especially the audio podcast) the most. There are things said that I don't like or agree with, but in general this is a great podcast for seeing the emerging missional church for what it is and what it claims to be in different locations. The interview with Steve Taylor is really great.
Theology Unplugged (TUP) is a podcast by some Dallas Seminary profs. They say, "The uniqueness of TUP is that we speak on theological issues of the day with clarity, honesty, and openness. TUP allows the listener to make informed judgments on the most important theological issues today." Their seven part series on the emerging church is a great example of that. I'm through the first three episodes and I'm pretty shocked at how well they do in trying to understand the emerging church. Well worth hearing. (HT: Internet Monk Radio)
Peter Leithart finds ways of saying things that just make sense to me...
One of my recurring frustrations with recent debates in the Reformed world is a widespread failure of theological imagination. Too many seem to operate on the assumption that we have everything already figured out; we have all possible categories and positions ready to hand. All we need do is deploy these categories on whatever happens our way. It'll fit, Procrustes says.
Thus, it is seriously proposed that someone is either on the road to Rome or the Road to Geneva - with no possibility of a third (or fourth, or fifth) destination, with no possibility that there might be something in between (though in between is where much of the Christian world lives). And if I suggest that we Reformed might still have something to learn from the Bible about justification, then I must be Rabbinic or Roman Catholic - there simply is no other alternative.
The Evangelical Outpost (Joe Carter) wonders why Southern Baptists would create boundaries with alcohol that would exclude Jesus from leadership in the convention. He asks, "Can we be more ethical than Jesus?"
Darryl Dash hears Tim Keller and blogs: Tim Keller on Spiritual Fruit and Ministry.
Desiring God Blog: 25 Ways to Help Kids Love to Read
Drew Goodmanson on Missional Eldership.
Miniature Earth -- "If the world's population were reduced to 100, it would look something like this..."
English 101 (we all make mistakes, but some of us make too many!)
Some Videos...
Children See, Children Do...
Doll Face...
Stop Motion Beatbox...
Recently I was browsing in my local bookstore. I picked up a bookwith lots of promises on the cover about what success will come if I implement the teachings of this book into my work. I brought it home only to add it to a bookshelf loaded with books with similar promises.
Wherever you work, there will always be another book to read, another leader to emulate, or another leadership model to adopt. If you want to succeed, there is no shortage of books telling you what to do. But how can we know if the success described in these books is what God considers success? How do we define godly success for our businesses and churches and schools?
Read my new article over at The High Calling of Our Daily Work: "God Wants Me To Be Successful?" (My bio page.)
Scott Thomas, Acts 29 Network Director, on the "Seven Misrepresentations of Acts 29."
