This is a repost of an article I wrote back in 2009, addressing the problem of preaching. Since I grew up in a pastor’s home, I got to hear a lot of good preaching. Unfortunately, I heard an awful lot of terrible preaching as well. My dad and I would often analyze a preacher’s approach… Read More »
Christian Ministry and Idolatry
This morning, I am reposting an entry from back in February 2009. Back then, the church I mention – Next Level Church – was in its infancy. Since then, NLC has grown to several locations. This was months before we began the merger process that produced Bedford Road Baptist Church, and I was the pastor of one of our… Read More »
Could Jesus Have Been a Shipbuilder?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7v5bWzx4yE] The first minute and a half or so of this clip from The Passion of the Christ is one of the most heartwarming of the entire film (mind you, this is not exactly a cuddly film). But how accurate is it? Recently, there has been a lot of controversy online about the “masculine nature”… Read More »
The Spotlight Is On You!
The guys who lead music for our congregation (it’s mostly men, and we don’t have a “worship leader”) are not like this, but here ya go: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHT7_Ku4iPE] Many of us have wound up in services where the worship leader was either over emotional or way, way too friendly (in a Rock Hudson meets Liberace at Elton John’s… Read More »
Informal Church?
USA Today reported last week on the trend toward churches going “informal” as if this is a recent event. This is a trend that has been going on for the past forty years, and if you include the insanity of bus ministry, even longer. At our congregation, we are very casual but we still have… Read More »
Check What the Preacher Says!
Hey, I’m a preacher. But I’m also a human being, and sometimes I make mistakes. I am not going to get into a long-winded diatribe on everything that can go wrong in extreme fundamentalism, but I happened to watch one of Pastor Scott Anderson’s videos. Pastor Anderson is the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church… Read More »
A Little Bit About Galilee
Sunday, I taught the latter half of Luke 4. After Jesus leaves his hometown of Nazareth, he travels to the town of Capernaum where he casts out the spirit of a defiling demon, heals a fever and spends an evening healing people before heading south toward Judea. All of these place names can get very… Read More »
The Creation Story of Genesis 1 as a "Temple Image"?
Out of Ur recently posted this video of Peter Enns asking readers’ questions to N.T. Wright. It is not secret that I find Wright a very thought provoking writer and thinker, so I was intrigued to hear what he had to say. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQpFosrTUk] I’m not completely convinced that Wright gets everything right (sorry, unavoidable pun)… Read More »
A Thought on Evangelism
One reason why Christianity has been the most successful of all world religions in crossing cultural boundaries is its adaptability. To be sure, this has not been manifested in all places and at all times, some missionary endeavors have been based on the premise that any rival belief system is of the devil and must… Read More »
Following Up on the Authority and Reading of the Scriptures
A couple of days ago, I posted about Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam. It was interesting to watch how people reacted to the idea that Adam might not have been a historical person. There were some great comments and discussion, and it became obvious from the start that there are two camps – a dichotomy… Read More »
