Month: July 2007
-
The Mind of William Burt Pope (1822-1903)
William Burt Pope (1822-1903) was a great British Methodist theologian of the nineteenth century. In fact, I am coming to believe that he was the greatest doctrinal theologian ever to take up the task of teaching Christian theology from the point of view of the Wesleyan revival movement. A few months ago I found his…
-
Running in Virtuous Circles: The Truth of the Bible
Have you ever wondered why application forms ask you to list references? I recently filled out a reference form for a friend, and as I was saying things like “this person is reliable, trustworthy, and a good judge of character,” it occurred to me that one reason I thought he was a good judge of…
-
Dollars Have Wings (Prayer for the Offering)
Lord, dollars fly away. Wealth makes wings for itself. We put money where we want it put, but it doesn’t stay put. Our money blows away, rolls away, goes up in smoke, and vanishes. We try to keep control of it, but we keep finding it beyond our control. This money is not up to…
-
Reading Books: Quantity or Quality?
Well, Harry Potter has once again hit the stores, to the rowdy “Hurrah!” of millions of devotees (one of whom blogs frequently about the boy wizard on this website). I imagine that Amazon.com employees have really racked up the overtime this week while the US economy has likely stayed steady given that profits from Potter…
-
Sermon on the Mount Comix #1
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) was the first passage of Scripture that ever grabbed ahold of me in a way I couldn’t ignore. In this message, Jesus breathes the pure spirit of grace even as he applies the law with a strictness that only the author of the law could accomplish. In…
-
Emergent Allergies: Bigger is Better
If anything, for emerging churches, smaller is better. But why? Like any renewal movement in the church, the emerging church movement hearkens back to the good ol’ days of Acts 2. These were days of community, economic simplicity and radical discipleship, days when the church was the church and the world was the world. But,…
-
Half A Giraffe
Here is a drawing of a giraffe by Phoebe Age Five. It conspicuously omits the main thing that we would expect to see in a giraffe image. Surely by its long neck shalt thou know the cameleopard; and if the neck be shortened unto vanishing, how shall it then be known? The drawing includes some…
-
Cuneiform tablets, big fish and God’s Word
I ran across an article today from the on-line edition of the London Times from July 11 entitled “Museum’s tablet lends new weight to Biblical truth.” For obvious reasons, this article caught my attention so I began to read. The verdict is this: from the 100,000 or so cuneiform tablets located in the British Library,…
-
Emergent Allergies: Boundaries
The problem with boundaries is that they serve too often to keep people out, rather than to keep people in. Insider/outsider, or ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ language too often threatens to undermine a gospel which is about an ever-expanding ‘us’ group. Furthermore, it tends to seduce us into thinking that ‘they’ are the problem, at which…