Scot McKnight writes a nice friendly piece, Why I am not a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
Among his many other reasons:
Now here’s my point: both the RCC and the EO have captured the Spirit in the Church so that Church too often has become Authority. One example, hardly foolproof, illustrates my point: RCCs and EOs talk about Church; Protestants talk about Scripture. It is their emphasis that I like — and I wish each talked more of Spirit.
Hindus in the Indian state of Orissa have been on a murderous rampage against Christians over the past few weeks. I’ve been following the story, but have not posted about it (or anything lately). Still, it is important to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters, and so I offer a few links for anyone with me on their feed reader.
The best recent summary: Christians Face Hindus Wrath, by Emily Wax of The Washington Post.
A previous roundup of links in the breaking days of the story: Mild Case of Christian-versus-Hindu Violence, by Terry Mattingly of GetReligion.org (a religious media critique, more links in the comments).
Announcing the launch of a new website designed to help ministers, ministerial students, and Bible students everywhere. BestCommentaries.com polls the most referenced commentary lists (and throws my own list in for good measure) and provides rankings and reviews. If you know John Dyer, give him a virtual pat on the back for providing a truly useful site for those who love good commentaries. Thanks, John.
Bookmark BestCommentaries.com today.
If you’ve never heard S. M. Lockridge preach the “My King” (also known as the “Do You Know Him”) sermon, you owe it to yourself to visit this site where you can download or listen to an mp3. You can also watch a video slide show with the straight audio (w/o background music other sites add). Enjoy - and Praise God.
(Thanks, 4:14!)
From Jason Cruise, Director of the Outdoor Ministry Network, a view about what’s wrong with evangelical churches:
We duped ourselves when as evangelicals we thought we could force reform of behaviors and attitudes as a way to steer the Church back to God. I’m a full on conservative, but I believe what happened was that we told the churches that just by adopting a line of “conservative” thinking that it would result in spiritual transformation. We duped ourselves there. It’s just a substitute for real discipleship. Look, I’ve been a leader in the church world for over 18 years now, and while that is not a lot of time in comparison to others ahead of me, it does at least give me a track record of time to observe the fact that what evangelical churches are calling “discipleship” is really behavior modification.
He is first to claim that he does not have all the answers, but he does have a few spot-on insights.
Berean Bible Study is a great, bare bones electronic bible program. It comes loaded with the ESV. The software is simple, intuitive, and small enough to load directly onto a usb flash drive (my key chain). This is a great single minded tool that allows a good reading platform and searchable ESV where ever you are, regardless of internet availability.
I can’t blockquote any of Thad’s excellent post over at The Pulpit & The Pew without stealing the entire thing. It is not long, but it is very good. You owe it to yourself to read Intellect or Passion? Overcoming Resistance to Theological Education.
Tony Kummer has added some new tools for the Said at Southern Network. The best new tool (imho) is the Network Search box. It is a Google custom search engine defined to only search Said at Southern linked blogs and resources. This way, you can search within a relatively narrow field for topics where you’d like some information from those with the mindset represented by faculty, alumni, and students of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Yes, of course it is not your only search tool - by all means open yourself up to the wider web community. However, this search tool will be incredibly valuable searching for book reviews from like-minded reviewers, or in finding a good starting point to think about certain theological topics. If I want to meditate on the Lord’s Supper, I might want to start with the thoughts of those in my own faith tradition, etc.
Overall, it is a great value-added tool capitalizing on Tony’s other tremendous work pulling the Said at Southern blog aggregator together. You can access the search from the sidebar on this site’s homepage or at Said at Southern. Well done!
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.
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)
I direct your attention to TheoSource, a website devoted to the review and collection of good theology books. Put this in your bookmarks somewhere and refer back to it when you are thinking of what to purchase next.
TheoSource has also compiled several recommendation lists for commentaries and other volumes you might need in your theological library. What is unique about their lists is that they have poured through several recommendation lists and compiled the suggestions, along with who recommended what. So, glancing through the list, you can see if a book was recommended by Don Carson, Danny Akin, and Denver Seminary - or others whose opinion you think is valuable.
The drawback of the list (every list as at least one), is that they nowhere detail their basic criteria for the inclusion of a volume. Many volumes are listed without being referenced in one of the source lists - why are they there? This lack of criteria carries over into a related problem. For instance, Dr. Akin’s list suggests several liberal/critical commentaries for their technical details or alternate point of view. Just because they are on his list does not mean that Dr. Akin thinks these are the volumes that should guide your theology or teaching. They are secondary resources, but they appear on the TheoSource list as recommended by Dr. Akin, which can be misleading. Still, the compilers do provide limited comments as to the conservative/liberal emphasis of the book, which helps mitigate any confusion.
After you have collected your first commentaries, you should download the TheoSource lists (as well as buy John Glynn’s Survey) for additional purchases. Overall, the site seems to provide helpful resources and is worth a look.
I have completed my sermon series on biblical Covenants. The series is heavily indebted to Dr. Peter Gentry and his lectures on “Kingdom Through Covenant.” Of course, the sermons draw from other’s teachings as well and any errors or faulty thinking are my own.
I think a healthy understanding of the Covenants is important to a healthy understanding of Jesus Christ. I do not think that “Covenant” is the end all / be all of theology - Jesus is. Yet, if we are to appreciate Jesus Christ in all his fullness, if we are to worship God the Father in all his providence, if we are to serve by the Spirit in all obedience, then we need to know the basics of the Missio Dei, and I think we get a little closer via this kind of study.
This is my first attempt at theological preaching (as opposed to preaching through a biblical book). It was challenging, especially the time element. You’ll find some of these run 45 minutes. I am thankful for a congregation that is bearing with a new pastor who is still really learning how to preach. Over the course of the sermon series, Sunday morning attendance rose about 15%. We’ll see if those levels stay the same as I return to a more comfortable verse-by-verse style. Don’t worry about my voice, I don’t like it either.
Tim Challies gives some tips for a healthy discipline of reading. He has also collected lists of books that have been influential to people you may have heard of over at the Discerning Reader. Check it out next time you can’t think of what to read next.
A long term study following nearly 100 homosexual men and women who pursued therapy designed to help them leave the homosexual lifestyle found that genuine conversions do occur and the therapy itself has no harmful psychological effects.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–In what some are calling groundbreaking research, a new four-year study concludes it is possible for homosexuals to change their physical attractions and become heterosexual through the help of Christian ministries.
The data was released Sept. 13 at a news conference in Nashville, Tenn., and will be published in the forthcoming book, “Ex-Gays?” (InterVarsity Press) by psychologists Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse. Thirty-eight percent of the subjects followed in the study said they had successfully left homosexuality, while an additional 29 percent said they had had only modest successes but were committed to keep trying. In another significant finding, Jones and Yarhouse said attempts at conversions do not appear to be psychologically harmful.
Truth Wins Out, a gay advocacy group, has been lobbying news organizations to discredit the study. Their main contention seems to be that MRIs were not used to measure physical responses to lying and truth-telling to ensure that those who described themselves as successfully leaving the gay lifestyle were not lying to researchers.
Any ex-gay study that does not include physical components that measure truth are [sic] essentially meaningless, said Truth Wins Outs Executive Director Wayne Besen.
It seems that ex-gays would rather mislead and practice skullduggery than get behind the skull, said Mr. Besen.
I think the MRI might be a good idea for a future study, but does not in any way invalidate the research of Jones and Yarhouse. Truth Wins Out could stand a measure of its own criticism.
