thoughts on the Christian spiritual life
9 May 2013 Leave a comment
My latest book review for Asbury Seminary’s ministry resourcing site Seedbed.com is up. The book is Minding the Good Ground: A Theology for Church Renewal (Baylor 2011), by Jason Vickers. Vickers is a professor at United Methodist related United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
Here’s the link.
15 April 2013 Leave a comment
My latest book review is up at seedbed.com. It’s a look at Andy Stanley‘s recent book for pastors and church leaders, Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend.
Check out my review here.
12 November 2012 Leave a comment
My review of Christine Pohl’s excellent book, Living into Community: Cultivating the Practices That Sustain Us, is up at seedbed.com. I had Dr. Pohl for a couple of classes as a student at Asbury Seminary, including Ethics of Hospitality. This new book is a wonderful companion to her classic Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition.
21 August 2012 Leave a comment
My latest book review is up at Asbury’s resource site, Seedbed.com. It’s a review of Philip Jenkins’ fall 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses.
The book deals with a difficult subject, the presence of troubling examples of, and even commands to participate in, extreme acts of violence. It’s a subject that represents a stumbling block to many.
Jenkins is a scholar with a good reputation. I read his excellent book, The Next Christendom, ten years ago. It calls attention to the shift in the “center of gravity” in global Christianity from the northern to the southern hemisphere with the exceptional growth of the Church in South America, Africa, India, and China.
Check out my review of Laying Down the Sword here.
21 July 2012 Leave a comment
My latest review is up at Asbury’s Seedbed.com resourcing site. The book is Practicing Theological Interpretation, by Joel B. Green. Joel was my professor for Introduction to the New Testament at Asbury. Great teacher and scholar. He is now at Fuller Seminary in California.
I enjoy reading Joel’s work. It’s challenging–you need your thinking cap. He has a wonderful command of the English language and never fails to offer penetrating insights and arguments. Practicing Theological Interpretation is no different.
11 June 2012 Leave a comment
Didn’t get this posted here when it first appeared, but here it is now. My review of How the Church Fails Businesspeople (and what can be done about it), by John C. Knapp, is on Asbury Seminary’s resourcing site, Seedbed.com.
As a pastor, this was a challenging book to read. I’m glad I read it. It is helping me think about how to disciple and lead people for how Christ calls them to engage their work as an essential part of their Christian witness and ministry.
Hope it stimulates your thinking as well.
13 April 2012 Leave a comment
I’ve got two reviews on Asbury Seminary‘s resource site, Seedbed.
One is for Hijacked: Responding to the Partisan Church Divide, by Mike Slaughter and Chuck Gutenson. It addresses the issue of churches becoming overly characterized by political affiliations rather than their commitment to the gospel. Mike Slaughter is pastor of Ginghamsburg UMC, a large church in Ohio. Chuck Gutenson has a PhD in philosophical theology (also a prof of mine and good guy!).
The latest is for God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China, by Liao Yiwu (translated by Wenguang Huang). It is an amazing collection of interviews with Christians in China. Through their own stories, the author introduces us to incredible testimonies of faith and shares his own exploration of Christianity.
23 February 2012 Leave a comment
I’ve got a new “Seedbed Summary” up on Asbury Seminary’s resource site, asburyseedbed.com.
This one is on The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, by Scot McKnight. McKnight is a New Testament studies professor at North Park University in Chicago.
Check out my summary here.
2 February 2012 Leave a comment
I’m proud to be a part of Asbury Seminary‘s new resource site Seedbed.
I’ll be contributing book summaries/previews roughly monthly. The first one is up today on an excellent book I recommend, Timothy Keller’s Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just.
Check it out my preview of Generous Justice here and while you’re at it, browse around and check the site out too.
1 February 2012 Leave a comment
In the last post, we said that there are two views of the universe, the materialist and the religious (or spiritual) views. And we added that one of the great gifts to humankind, scientific study and knowledge is able to discover a staggering amount of knowledge about the universe itself, but is limited to the universe and therefore unable to speak to the existence of Something Behind the universe.
So if there is “Something Behind” the universe, we can’t discover it through science, therefore it would have to make itself known to us some other way.
Lewis claims that since we have “inside information” about one part of our universe that we don’t have about anything else, namely ourselves, human beings. “We do not merely observe [humans], we are [humans]” (emphasis his). This is the key. To put it a little differently, there is one case in which we have more than just the observable external/behavioral facts. Our case.
To quote Lewis:
Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?
Having presented this argument, Lewis reminds the reader:
Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet with a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.
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