Recently, someone showed me a “new worship song”. They were so excited about the way it made them feel closer to God. The “new worship song” opened with a pretty, melodic piano piece and was then followed by a single phrase – something like “I want to see you” – repeated five or six times… Read More »
Break Away from the Myths
Myths are powerful things. They are stories that might have some grounding in truth but are usually expanded far beyond their original scope. They drive and control the lives of those who accept them as fact without considering whether they align with reality. Recently, I sent a link to this article from Jon Nicol about worship… Read More »
Book Review – Messy Church
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTmD_bqAIIs] Ross Parsley was the worship pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. If the congregation’s name sounds familiar, that’s because you probably heard it on the news. In 2007, the senior pastor Ted Haggard resigned because he was outed by a male prostitute he had been paying for sex and crystal meth. The… Read More »
Finding a Good Bible
As a pastor, I am a teacher of the Scriptures. I spent most of my work life studying the Scriptures either alone or with a group. When someone becomes a follower of Christ, the most important purchase they can make is a Bible of their own. This single book is the revelation of Christ, and… Read More »
Three Languages Isolate and the Hebrew Bible
Around 5,000 years ago, there were three languages spoken in the Middle East that have no relationship whatsoever to any other known language – present or ancient. These three languages – Sumerian, Elamite and Hattic – are older than the pyramids. They are older than even the Egyptians. We have no clue where these languages… Read More »
All Those -Ites in the Bible
Amorites, Ammonites, Jebusites, Edomites, blah-blah-ites. What’s with all these -ites in the Bible? Sometimes the most confusing thing about reading the Bible is all of the names. Because the early translators used a sort of English shorthand for lots of different idioms, it gets overwhelming and redundant to have all these -ites and not know… Read More »
Herod Antipater
There are a lot of Herodians in the Gospels and Acts. It gets pretty confusing if you’re not keeping a score card. Herod the Great and His Kids They all descend from Herod the Great, who the gospel of Matthew says was ruling as King of the Jews when Jesus was born. He died in 4-3… Read More »
Theories as Facts
Among students of the Scriptures, it is often hard to discern the theories from the facts. Someone in one generation develops an idea, and the next generation – who learned the idea in their college classrooms – teaches it as fact. Nowhere is this better illustrated than the theory of the “historical Jesus” which fuels… Read More »
The Sad State of Biblical Literacy
I was once told by a fellow pastor, “I don’t teach deep stuff. I just preach Jesus.” That sounds great on a surface level, doesn’t it? Let’s just preach Jesus because He is after all the Savior of mankind, right? If people believe Him, then they can sort everything else out eventually, right? Wrong. Jesus… Read More »
Joab the Psycho
I have mentioned before that our Sunday School ideals of David’s kingdom are painfully mistaken. David formed an uneasy alliance between Judah and Ephraim, which Ephraim often tried to violate. The Ephraimites claimed that they were meant to rule because Israel (Jacob) had chosen Joseph to lead and had specifically blessed Joseph’s younger son Ephraim… Read More »
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