From my friend (and worship professor) Greg Brewton over at Biblical Worship, a quote from Martin Luther on preaching:
“If Peter and Paul were here, they would scold you because you wish right off to be as accomplished as they. Crawling is something, even if one is unable to walk. Do your best. If you cannot preach an hour, then preach half an hour or a quarter of an hour. Do not try to imitate other people. Center on the shortest and simplest points, which are the very heart of the matter, and leave the rest to God. Look solely to his honor and not to applause. Pray that God will give you a mouth and to your audience ears.
I can tell you preaching is not a work of man. Although I am old [he was forty-eight] and experienced, I am afraid every time I have to preach. You will most certainly find out three things: first, you will have prepared your sermon as diligently as you know how, and it will slip through your fingers like water; second, you may abandon your outline and God will give you grace. You will preach your very best. The audience will be pleased, but you won’t. And thirdly, when you have been unable in advance to pull anything together, you will preach acceptably both to your hearers and to yourself. So pray to God and leave all the rest to Him.”
(Here I Stand, Bainton, 273-274)
Even in my short time as a preacher, I have had all these experiences. God gives the grace, to him be the glory.
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Posted by blestou on July 12th, 2008 — Illustration, Review, Quotes, Church Life, Ministry, Culture, Daily Life, Doctrine
I’m not in the habit of favorably quoting Maureen Dowd, but you’ve got to give folks their due when they do well. I think the following NYT op-ed is worth reading…
An Ideal Husband by Maureen Dowd, Published: July 6, 2008, NYT
This weekend, we celebrate our great American pastime: messy celebrity divorces.
There’s the Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook fireworks on Long Island and the Madonna/Guy Ritchie/A-Rod Roman candle in New York.
So how do you avoid a relationship where you end up saying, “The man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was” — as Brinkley did in court when talking about her husband’s $3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit? (Not to mention the 18-year-old mistress/assistant.)
Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.
“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” the twinkly eyed, white-haired priest says. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”
For 40 years, he has been giving a lecture — “Whom Not to Marry” — to high school seniors, mostly girls because they’re more interested.
“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love, because then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”
I asked him to summarize his talk:
“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since, as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes, your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them in the race to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment.
“Does he use money responsibly? Is he stingy? Most marriages that founder do so because of money — she’s thrifty, he’s on his 10th credit card.
“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.
“Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he consults his mother. (I’ve known cases where the mother accompanies the couple on their honeymoon!)
“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.
“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive. That world-class misogynist, Paul of Tarsus, got it right when he said, ‘In all your dealings with one another, speak the truth to one another in love that you may grow up.’
“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.
“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. Kay made a monstrous mistake marrying Michael Corleone! Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home? Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.
“Imagine a religious fundamentalist married to an agnostic. One would have to pray that the fundamentalist doesn’t open the Bible and hit the page in which Abraham is willing to obey God and slit his son’s throat.
“Finally: Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?
“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.”
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Posted by blestou on July 7th, 2008 — Illustration, Review, Quotes, News, Church Life, Daily Life, Ministry, Culture
The increasingly famous Tim Challies has added “commentaries” to his long list of book reviews and recommendations. I’ve often been impressed with what seems to be his desire to help his readers pursue spiritual formation (rather than simply pontificating). That said, he falls into the traps that most commentary list makers do not take the time to avoid. I offer the following critique for future aspiring commentary list creators.
1) What is the criteria for the list?
Challies give us two commentaries for each book of the NT. How did he decide? What makes a good commentary in his opinion? He does warn readers to choose commentaries “appropriate to your education and expertise.” What is the education and expertise of Mr. Challies? How can I know if my requirements for a commentary match his requirements for a commentary so that I can have any confidence that his recommendation will mean anything at all to me? Why does the NICNT “appear to be the best complete New Testament set”? What sets it apart?
Is this list anything more than “stuff I like”? Tell us why - the readers need to know how you are choosing volumes so that they can gauge how appropriate your selections are to their situation.
2) What makes any of these particular selections worthwhile?
This is related to (1), but what I am referring to here is the lack of any annotation for each recommendation. Whereas (1) is a critique of the lack of selection criteria, (2) is a critique of the lack of its application. Why is Fee better than Garland for 1 Corinthians? Is it because of Fee’s commitment to a charismatic interpretation? Does Challies like Fee’s proposed construction of the early Corinthian church? Why would a volume from 1987 be a better choice than the survey style BECNT from 2003?
3) Who would actually be helped by these recommendations?
Challies takes a few positive steps toward answering this question. He does warn readers to be aware that not all commentaries are equally useful for everybody. He also acknowledges that he is a non-scholar who enjoys studying God’s word.
However, the lack of any additional qualifications leads us to this basic understanding of these recommendations’ usability - “A list for people who like to study the Bible.” While admirable, this doesn’t really narrow the field down much. Will Bible study leaders or Sunday school teachers like this list more than non-teachers? Does it matter if you have a college background or not? Is this a list for people who just like to know a bunch of facts or do its members genuinely help readers in translating biblical principles to practical godly living? Tell us who the list was created to help: pastors, educated laypeople, the “everyman” - who? By not guiding his readers to understand the intended audience, Challies leaves his readers with little more than a few clues for better guesses - and I expect his intention was to help more than that.
4) What was the extent of the comparison?
Though usually my primary critique of a commentary list is (1), this “extent question” looms large over Challies list. He refers to his “attempt at thorough research” and his “extensive research,” but nowhere details what that research included beyond references to a few online commentary recommendation lists. Did he only look at commentaries reviewed by these sources? Or perhaps only those that appeared on two or more of the lists? If we do not really know anything about the extent of the “extensive research” then how can we have any confidence that these recommendations are actually the best recommendations for any particular biblical book?
Further, the striking admission that Challies was “relying almost entirely on secondary sources” suggests that he has no practical knowledge of the volumes he is recommending. Readers are left with the impression that all he did was uncritically compare a few relatively random lists and make guesses as to what books would probably be good purchases, maybe.
Conclusion
I applaud anyone’s desire to help others not waste money on books, especially commentaries. There are lots of intelligent, informed, discerning people on the web making recommendations (Challies may very well be one) - but if they do not give us any basis for their advice, then they are simply adding their voice to the “because I said so” cloud of the internet. Such is useful as far as it goes, but most people who desire to make wise commentary purchases would be so much better served by list creators simply answering for their readers the questions detailed above.
For my money, the most useful all around commentary reference guide is John Glynn’s Commentary and Reference Survey (newly updated in 2007). It is thorough, instructive, and will save you money. If you cannot afford that one quite yet, you are welcome to download my own Basic Reference Commentary Set (first commentary recommendations) for free.
(Also, watch for a “Best Commentaries” comparative website to launch around mid-August. I’ll post a link when “they” get it up and running.)
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Posted by blestou on July 5th, 2008 — Church Life, Review, Ministry, Daily Life, Doctrine, Online
From my Starbucks cup this morning (#273):
All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles – someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.
– General Colin L. Powell
Founder, America’s Promise – the Alliance for Youth.
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Posted by blestou on July 4th, 2008 — Illustration, Quotes, Ministry, Daily Life, Doctrine, Culture, Family
