The final genre I am going to write about is epistle. I think that by and large, the church gets the reading of an epistle pretty close to right. In a way, that is the problem with how we read everything else. We tend to apply the interpretation schemes we use for epistles to everything… Read More »
There are four gospels in the Christian Scriptures. There were dozens of others circulated for the first couple centuries after Jesus, but only four stood up to the scrutiny of the early believers. Gospel is not modern biography. While scholars have shown that the gospels all conform to what the ancients would have considered bios… Read More »
There is no more confusing genre in the Scriptures than the apocalyptic literature. In a literal sense, an apocalypse is the unveiling of the future. We have charged the word with violent overtones in our culture, although originally the word did not have a negative meaning at all. It simply means “unveiling” or “uncovering.” In… Read More »
Of the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), a large proportion is legal code. Leviticus in particular focuses on a lot of “do this” and “don’t do that”. When reading these codes, you must remember that they were the “Law of the Land” and not simply moral codes… Read More »
Hebrew narrative is generally poetic in nature, but it is not true poetry. It sets up poetry, but it has a different feel and rhythm. Often narrative sets the scenes between poetic portions. So, for example, we have a narrative passage that introduces and connects the various poetic portions of the Exodus story. (YHWH’s words… Read More »
When we started the merger process between Grace Baptist Church and Heritage Baptist Church back in 2009, our elders and I did a lot of digging and found few resources to guide us. There just wasn’t much out there on church mergers, and what was out there was overwhelmingly negative. Despite this, we decided that… Read More »
The quest for cool is an endless one. Personally, I think coolness is defined by factors that have no bearing on effectiveness or reality. Consider for a moment how we now listen to television, film and music celebrities on matter to which they have no right to speak. Just because someone is a popular person,… Read More »
You’re going to make a major shift or change at a congregation. You think you know what you want to do. That’s great, but do you know what the result will be? Most people (including church leaders) make decisions because they are focused on some element of the process. They like a certain style of… Read More »
One of the most important reads of my ministry life was Confessions of a Reformissional Rev by Mark Driscoll. In a time when I really needed a good old fashion kick in the can, this book was just that. Of course, when Driscoll wrote the book in 2006, Mars Hill Church was a very different… Read More »
Gabe Lyons is one of the cofounders of the national conference “Catalyst” and the co-author of the Christian bestseller unChristian. He has become something of a spokesperson for the post-emerging evangelicals that he calls The Next Christians in the book of the same name. I am not sure what I expected from Lyons’ book. For… Read More »
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- …
- 13
- Next Page »