The whole liturgy enacted over the whole Christian year developed over a lifetime is the presumption necessary to enable one sermon to concentrate on a few texts and specifiable topics. Stanley Hauerwas This is an interesting statement, I find myself in this tension every time I prepare to teach. The question of how much of [...]

When a thought captures my attention, I tend to find lots of related ideas throughout the daily activities & thoughts of my life. Here is my latest example. Recently Don Miller posted about relationship rather than right belief/theology being what “it” [Christianity] is all about. My previous post made reference to this post, and I [...]

As you might of gathered if you follow me on twitter, I just began reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. For those not familar with it, it’s one of the essential primers that just about every reform type will suggest as thorough introduction to ‘good theology’. It’s also huge, 1200 pages, covering nearly every possible topic. [...]

Reformergent = Reformed Theology + Emergent PostModern Perspective I don’t know exactly what this might be, but I really want to start working on a theology merging reformed & emergent theologies. There is much strength/vitality/growth on both sides; sadly though they seem to be creating the new liberal/conservative social/evangelical divide for the next generation. The [...]

I recently read Phyllis Tickle’s newest book The Great Emergence. It is a short quick read, really only evaluating a single premise, but the subject is very enlightening, even in its simplicity. The basic thesis is that that every five hundred years there is some sort re-formation within the church, a giant rummage sale as [...]

Violence Leadership Wild at Heart BraveHearts Men These words have been traveling around at high velocity in the cerebral cortex for the past few weeks. Our men’s Bible study just finished a study through the book Wild at Heart by John Eldridge. If you have spent any time at all in any church in the [...]

A friend sent me an email about Mars Hills Graduate school, a few weeks back. As I was trying to clean out my inbox, I finally got around to looking it over. At the end of the forwarded email, there were a few links to some articles from The Other Journal, which I’m guessing is [...]

So I decided one day that I should probably read that weird first two-thirds of my Bible that no one really talks about in church, except the occasional reference—when they make occasional references to Winston Churchill also, you think it must not be that important. I don’t know if you know this, but there is [...]

I couldn’t help but point this out. Typically religious conversatives are anti-homosexual and anti-immigration. Thankfully enough the Israelites were already given laws by God in how to deal with both of these issues. The aforementioned group has already found the laws concerning what my Bible calls the “unlawful sexual relations”,  at the end of a [...]

This past week I had the opportunity to go to Kansas City and listen to & talk with Pauline scholars and Emergent Church writers and/or church-planters for a couple of days. It was a very nice experience as a whole. There are a few themes and discussions which I would like to share which were [...]