UPDATE: My apologies for tolerating the troll.
So….imagine that a Baptist (or other evangelical)- like my dear wife used to be, for example- were to decide that he or she wanted to deepen their spiritual life; to grow spiritually and in spiritual disciplines; to seek out spiritual direction and pursue spiritual formation.
Where would they go within […]
OK. I cheated. I maybe kindof promised a review, but after reading the books, I decided I didn’t want to join the debate. I wanted to say something else, namely this: Agree or disagree, Viola is doing what evangelicals are too cowardly to do these days, and what we’re doing instead is killing us. Consider […]
This piece from two summers ago- A God Shaped Void? Maybe Not- explores some important questions about evangelism, our assumptions about those we are evangelizing, and especially our dialogue with atheists and young people.
It’s the kind of rethinking of evangelicalism I like to do, and it will challenge you, especially if you were raised […]
I’ve been doing an interview on “Post-Evangelicalism,” and I thought it would be a good time to list some of the books that define post-evangelicalism for me.
First of all, a brief definition: Post-evangelicalism is a way of relating to the present seriously compromised, perhaps terminal, condition of evangelicalism by accessing the resources of the broader, […]
BHT fellow Alex Arnold asks what a post-evangelical youth ministry looks like.
Post-evangelicalism is asking what the church itself looks like when it draws its identity, substance and focus from the larger, deeper, wider communion of the church catholic.
Nothing is more typical of evangelicalism in both its strengths and its weaknesses than youth ministry. Many of […]
Only Scriptural Baptist churches can make a legitimate claim to an unbroken succession back to the time of Christ and the apostles. Christ only built one kind of church and that church is described in detail in the New Testament. The only churches meeting the requirements of that description today are true Baptist churches. Baptist […]
Tony Jones sent me his new book The New Christians, and I’ve been looking at some of the resource material on Emergent Village. I’ve been very encouraged the the Values and Practices Statement from Emergent Village. In my own journey to create a Jesus-shaped spirituality, I was particularly challenged by the first section: Commitment to […]
Read the original (written back when I was a Calvinist): On Christless Preaching.
Recently I was traveling to a conference with a friend, and I listened to a sermon. Preached by a Christian, a Baptist, a minister at a church, a graduate of a Christian school training ministers to serve and communicate Jesus.
This preacher gave a […]
(Yes, Virginia, there’s a review of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope coming very soon.)
I grew up and was formed in a version of the Christian tradition that practiced a remarkably simple form of Christianity.
It was about going to heaven.
This life was preparation for heaven. God was preparing a place called heaven with lots of mansions. […]
“I am on a post-evangelical journey, discovering what it means to be vitally connected to Jesus.”
A truly prominent, not-post anything blogger has put forward the following theory:
Those who use the prefix “post” to describe themselves are claiming to be smarter than those who don’t.
Example: A “post-modernist” is saying “I used to be mired in the […]
Sometime in the past, I read an interview with Michael Card and he was asked a question about contemporary praise and worship music. Somewhere in his answer, there emerged the comparison of the current contemporary music scene to an industry, and the music emerging from it was the product.
Art. Creation. Industry. Product. Useful categories for […]
In the book Rising from the Ashes, Becky Garrison interviews emerging church leader Peter Rollins, author of How (Not) to Speak of God and the soon to be released The Fidelity of Betrayal: The Ir/Religious Heart of Christianity.
Rollins has always intrigued me. Some of his ideas are difficult to grasp, but in this interview he […]
This is the last post on the subject of the Church: Flawed and Finished. The others are directly below. I will be doing an F.A.Q. post on the topic.
1, 2, 3, 4.
What is the connection between the flawed church in history and the completed, finished perfect body of Christ?
Is it the fact that God […]
Before moving on into more posts on the relationship of the historical church and the ideal church, I want to ask and briefly answer some questions.
1. To what extent is the historical church flawed?
Like the human beings that make up the church, the historical church is fallen, sinful and affected by sin in every way […]
This series looks at how imperfect and flawed congregations can possibly be the church of Jesus. The first two posts in the series are here and here.
When scripture speaks of the church in ideal terms, it is always from the viewpoint of God’s finished work of love and new creation that begins and ends with […]
