Going to Damascus

1) Don’t Waste Your Misquote

While I don’t like being misquoted — or at least quoted in a false context — there isn’t much use complaining about my name being attached to the misleading promo. The people who know me, and know of my disdain for the “prosperity gospel,” will chuckle at the misrepresentation. And the people who don’t know me won’t care what I think.

2) Letter from a Millennial Who Walked Away

When I think of the reasons that have led me to pen this letter, I get sad.

I never intended to walk away from the faith. There is so much about Jesus that I like: his personality, his teaching, his example.

I never wanted to walk away from Jesus or his followers, but I feel like I’m left with no choice.

3) Stuart Robinson’s 8 Point Interpretation of Genesis 3:15

Stuart Robinson, one of the leading Southern Presbyterian theologians of the 19th Century, set down 8 points of interpretion of Genesis 3:15 in his biblical-theological masterpiece Discourses of Redemption. In short, Robinson was seeking to highlight what our first parents could have known from the first preaching of the Gospel (what he called “the Gospel creed”) when he wrote…

4) Christianity and Homosexuality: A Review of Books

The relationship of homosexuality to Christianity is without doubt one of the main subjects of cultural conversation today. If you are a Christian in New York City, it is nearly impossible to talk about your faith without this subject being raised. Although it is not central to the gospel message at the heart of Christianity, right now the cultural moment requires that we be prepared to address this issue whenever we are publicly identified as Christians.

5) Why the Church Still Needs Seminary

Yes, there are more theological resources in this country than anywhere else in the world at any time in history. There are more ways to learn than ever before: through conferences, online sermons and lectures, by blogs and interviews and apps and videos. But I believe the church still needs the seminary. There are things the seminary can do that the even the biggest, best, and brightest church won’t be able to accomplish.

6) Rosaria Butterfield is Fighting the Good Fight

As Rosaria Butterfield began her lecture about her journey and “train wreck conversion” from a lesbian professor to a Christian, a pastor’s wife and mother of four, nine students in the front row of the audience stood up silently, took off their jackets, turned their backs to Butterfield and linked arms in front of a packed Oval Theater guarded by two University Police officers and two security officers.

1) Prepare Your Public Prayers

If you are in any form of spiritual leadership, work at your public prayers. It does not matter whether the form of spiritual leadership you exercise is the teaching of a Sunday school class, pastoral ministry, small-group evangelism, or anything else: if at any point you pray in public as a leader, then work at your public prayers.

I found this advice really helpful. I have often felt like a hypocrite for thinking it is important that my public prayers be accurate and well-spoken.

2) Learning From a Lesbian Visitor to Your Church

My friend said the conversation is usually over once the caller realizes the church holds to traditional teaching regarding sexuality. He told me he always shakes his head and thinks, Who do we think we are, that we can come to God and tell Him what we will and will not change? 

You and I are like the lesbian caller.

3) Some Thoughts on Pope Francis

It’s another week and thus another interview with Pope Francis. This one, I’m sorry to say, is more than just confusing. It’s a theological wreck.

4) 10 Silly Things Christians Say

Here’s what I am learning: It is my first instinct to jump all over this stuff, to sneer and snicker, to correct and nitpick. I have an odd, inflated sense of justice when it comes to these silly, stupid phrases. Even when I’m not correcting people, I’m thinking I really ought to. But this impulse says more about me than them. It is not the Spirit of Christ to ambush my brothers and sisters with smug nitpickery. It is not the way of Jesus for Christians to mock God’s children for their affectations, to bite, to self-righteously manage, or to otherwise shame. I am not the Holy Spirit of social media.

I thought I was the wittiest Calvinist on the block. Until I followed Jared Wilson.

5) John MacArthur and Strange Fire

It’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? We can’t all be right and we can’t both be right. Sooner or later we have to have a discussion about charismatic (continuationist) theology and whether or not the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit remain in operation in the church today (or, if you prefer, about cessationist theology and whether or not the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased in the church today). We have wanted to make sure New Calvinism is large enough for both, that it will not fracture along this particular line, and this has delayed the conversation. But at some point we just have to talk about it.

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Finally, Watch this: