Revival Hope
A quote for use sometime:
“A revival is not really measured by the reduction in lost souls. A revival is measured by the increase in changed lives.”
Free unChristian Book
Baker Publishing is offering a free copy of Barna’s new study of 16-29 year olds, unChristian: What a New Generation Thinks About Christiantiy…and Why It Matters. There is only one free copy per church, so tell your pastor.
Here is the webform.
I don’t know how long the offer lasts.
Faith Gives Glory to God
Quote, Dr. Tom Schreiner (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary):
“Faith gives glory to God. That is the theme of Romans,” Schreiner said. “Faith trusts God. I give glory to my mechanic when I trust him with my car. I don’t glorify my mechanic when I go in and say ‘did you cheat me?’ Now, mechanics are fallible. But God is infallible. And I glorify Him by trusting Him.”
Church Planting Resource (Small Churches, too!)
The North American Mission Board continues to produce many unknown web initiatives. The main site is so disorganized and confusing that you can easily miss many of the interesting things available to us all.
ChurchPlantingVilliage.net is intended for those who are planting or planning to plant a new church. It is loaded with planning and growth tools in the form of .pdf files. A lot of their material would also be helpful to the small church pastor who is looking to revitalize his congregation or adapt to changing community demographics.
Start with the Church Planting Resource Library - lots of good stuff. The site also has several hidden nested libraries that you will discover by clicking on stuff that interests you. If anyone wants to make a motion at the next SBC to give NAMB a few more bucks to overhaul their websites so that we can all better find their information, then I’ll second it. Until then, let’s keep one another in the loop as we discover some of these great sites.
Communion With the Triune God
By John Owen
Edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor
In 1657 John Owen put pen to paper and produced an organized treatise on the Trinity based on a series of sermons years earlier. He wrote as both a visionary of timeless truth and as a product of his times. Over the years, the barrier of time and the evolution of language have reduced Owen to a name seminarians might have heard about in Church History or the focus of study for only the most dedicated theologians. Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor think that should change.
Kapic and Taylor have edited Owen’s Communion With the Triune God – revising the layout, clarifying the footnotes, updating the language and spelling, etc. – in order to produce an extraordinarily more accessible Owen. A modern reader no longer has an excuse to avoid this classic work.
In three main divisions, Owen systematically introduces the three persons of the Trinity and painstakingly (in a quite positive sense) details their roles and works in the lives of believers. The work is balanced as to the persons of the Trinity, meaning that it is not a distant look at an Almighty Father or a charismatic ballyhoo over the Spirit. Rather, each person of the Trinity gets his due as a person who wants to relate to each of the people of God. Owen, in keeping with the New Testament emphasis, rightly devotes the most contemplation to the work and fellowship of God the Son, but he does so in a way that emphasizes the holistic nature of our communion with God.
What impresses me most about this volume is Owen’s approach. The book is theology done well, but is not merely a list of theological categories or abstract metaphysics. Owen wants you to know God, to fully know Him, to love Him, to abide in Him, to truly commune with Him in a deep and eternal way. Don’t get me wrong, Owen does not write in a 21st Century touchy-feely self-help style by any means. But once you get into the ebb of his words and the flow of his thought, you find yourself loving God more as you realize all of the ways He intends to be a constant enlivening part of your life.
The editors have done a fine job “cleaning” the text with restraint. They have not paraphrased and have preserved Owen’s authentic voice. At times, I thought they actually showed too much restraint, electing to preserve words like “nigh” with a footnote explaining the word means “near.” Still, the work is quite readable with most of the retained archaic words carrying some particular theological freight in Owen’s usage and defined by a glossary in the back of the book (a very considerate addition). Kapic has also included a lengthy essay on Owen’s Trinitarian theology. It was quite helpful in enjoying the text proper.
I recently prepared a study of the Trinity for use in my church.
Breaking News: Knights Templar Not Guilty
The Vatican is releasing a collection of documents related to the Knights Templar. These almost perfect parchment reproductions are intended for serious medieval scholarship.
But they also have theological implications (for the Knights anyway):
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Knights Templar, the medieval Christian military order accused of heresy and sexual misconduct, will soon be partly rehabilitated when the Vatican publishes trial documents it had closely guarded for 700 years.
The most titillating part of the documents is the so-called Chinon Parchment, which contains phrases in which Pope Clement V absolves the Templars of charges of heresy, which had been the backbone of King Philip’s attempts to eliminate them.
Templars were burned at the stake for heresy by King Philip’s agents after they made confessions that most historians believe were given under duress.
I am glad the Bible is meant to be read, and that it tells me that the status of my soul is not beholden to any merely mortal man. Whether or not I am burned at the stake, the only one I ultimately have to please is the one who was pleased to give himself for me.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Jesus, Justification, and Justice
This is good. Courtesy of our NAMB Apologetics website - www.4truth.net.
Jesus, Justification, and Justice: Answering Objections to the Justness of Jesus’ Substitutionary Atonement (By Abdu Murray)
SBC Conservative Subgroups
LifeWay gave every messenger to the 2007 SBC Annual Meeting a copy of Building Bridges (online, 6Mb), a booklet containing essays by David S. Dockery and Timothy George.
I thought the most helpful section of the booklet was Dockery’s description of the various types of conservatives that influence the SBC (pp.24-25):
- Fundamentalists: hard-lined people who have more in common with “independent” Baptists than with the SBC heritage.
- Revivalists: true heirs of the Sandy Creek tradition, including their suspicion of education.
- Traditionalists: heirs of the Sandy Creek theology, commitment to evangelism and revivalism, but affirming of education.
- Orthodox Evangelicals: An irenic group that looked to Carl Henry, Harold Ockenga, and Billy Graham as models. This group wanted a theological course correction, a commitment to the full truthfulness of the Bible, serious intellectual and cultural engagement while interacting with all who would claim the great orthodox Christian tradition.
- Calvinists: A group that wanted to reclaim aspects of the “Charleston” theological tradition. Some among this group have a rather isolated mindset. They have much in common with the “Evangelical” group above, but tend at times not be as irenic or inclusive. Sub-groups include “Nine Marks,” “Sovereign Grace,” “Founders,” and others.
- Contemporary church practitioners: A group of pastors who wanted to find new ways to connect with the culture, resulting in new models for doing church, including “Willow Creek models,” “Saddleback models,” “missional,” and even some “emergent church types.”
- Culture Warriors: Another group of conservatives who desire to engage the issues of culture and society. This group includes a variety of approaches including “church over culture,” “church transforming culture” as well as “church and culture/social justice types.”
I thought the essays were humble and irenic and I commend them to you, if you haven’t read them in awhile.
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