Theology
My dear friend, Ken Wilson, who pastors the Ann Arbor Vineyard, showed me a chart that I found very helpful:
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Evangelical |
Charismatic |
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Social Justice |
Liturgical |
What has happened in the last generation is that there has been border-blending among the four great movements in [...]
In church one day, my pastor asked us to raise our hands if we believed in what the Bible said. The right answer seemed pretty obvious, and the whole congregation and I raised our hands. Then he asked us to raise our hand if we had read the Bible in its entirety. Touché, Pastor Sean. Touché.
In his latest book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as [...]
Let me give you an illustration of the difference between the narrow focus of contemporary American evangelicalism and the big focus of the Bible.
D.L. Moody, the great 19th-century evangelist, described his calling and said that he essentially understood the world as being like an ocean liner that hit an iceberg. God had said to him, "Moody, it is your job to pull as many drowning people out of [...]
Social justice is not a distraction from our commitment; it is part and parcel of the gospel of the kingdom. We read in Mark 1:15:
"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!"
What is the message of the kingdom? Certainly the center of the message is the proclamation that through one's faith in Jesus Christ (the King), a person can be eternally saved. Thus my church regularly calls people to put [...]
I've always wanted to be part of a church that seeks to be and to do everything the New Testament calls the church to be and to do. I've described this kind of church in the past as a holistic church, or a church that works on all eight cylinders. In other words, it is not enough if my church is known as a great worship center, or a great preaching church. The New Testament demands more.
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright gets us right to the heart of the matter when he [...]
Yesterday NPR ran a story about the on going Senate investigation of the so-called Grassley Six; Crefflo and Taffi Dollar, Paula and Randy White, Eddie Long, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Joyce Meyer
More than seven years ago, James Carroll, award-winning novelist and Boston Globe columnist, wrote Constantine’s Sword, which traced the history of anti-Semitism in the chu
When I interviewed Phyllis Tickle for Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, she reflected on the seismic changes she sees occurring in contemporary Christianity. "Evangelicalism has lost much of its [...]
On a Sunday when Americans flooded houses of worship seeking words of comfort, hope, and healing, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago dared to forgo the singing of "God Bless America." Instead, Senator Barack Obama's pastor claimed the prophetic biblical message of the hour ought to call us to proclaim, "God Damn America."
The words remain jarring and infuriating. Wright's comments seem at best incomplete and untimely. At worst, they imply that God is [...]
When I got an invite to attend a screening of the documentary, Purple State of Mind, I went in expecting to see a blue state v. red state dialogue/debate with some quest to find political common ground.
Wrong.
Instead, I was treated to an honest and humorous dialogue between Craig Detweiler and John Marks, two former college [...]
While working on my upcoming book for Seabury Press - Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television, a theological and cultural commentary based on my experience watching 24 consecutive hours of the Trinity Broadcasting Network - I faced the issue of sanctification, sin, and leadership in the church. TBN preacher Paula White said the following on her show: "Sanctification is a progressive process you go from glory to glory to glory." (And by "progressive," I don't [...]
Last Friday I was in Santa Barbara, California, to speak at Westmont College - where even on a Friday evening, the gymnasium was packed with students. Before that event I did an interview with The Santa Barbara Independent, a local weekly newspaper, which they titled The Next [...]
Last week I shared a snapshot of the new monastics. This week I will look at the mosaics. God is doing something new through a new generation of multicultural church planters.
Efrem Smith, who coauthored The Hip-Hop [...]
A comment thread from Jim's "Moral State of the Union" post frustrated me a bit until I was encouraged later in the week by a sermon mp3 by N.T. Wright. (I like to listen to sermon podcasts during my morning hikes in the park.) Here's an initial comment on Monday's post:
Discover what God is doing through a new generation of risk-takers, innovators, and prophets at The New Conspirators. We have asked these young conspirators, who comprise at least four new streams, to share their stories, dreams, and struggles on Feb. 28-March 1, 2008, in Seattle. These four streams include: the new monasticism, the mosaic [...]
Everyday there seems to be some new outrageous charge leveled at Barack Obama. One of the most pernicious is that he is a Muslim who is dishonestly masquerading as a Christian. This charge is so malicious - and so untrue - that it is time to set the record straight.
Barack Obama has never been a Muslim. He has never attended a Muslim school. From about age eight to age nine Obama lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, with more Muslim schools than one can [...]
When I asked a leading progressive biblical scholar who was doing the very best bible work on images of God and gender theology, she didn't hesitate in her answer: Elizabeth Johnson, she said.
Johnson, a Roman Catholic sister in the Congregation of St. Joseph, is interviewed about images of God in the January U.S. Catholic (
During the South Carolina Republican debate, Mike Huckabee garnered greatest applause when defending his views of wifely submission as part of his evangelical faith. The questioner quizzed Huckabee about being one of 131 signers of a 1998 USA Today ad by the Southern Baptist Convention that asserted, "a wife is to graciously submit herself to the servant leadership of her husband." Huckabee responded by saying "I am not the least bit ashamed of my faith." He joked that his own wife [...]
When I first landed in El Salvador, all I knew about the tiny Central American country was its war. What I found was lush mountain ranges, volcanoes, and air heavy with grief. It was 2003, and I was there to produce a documentary for a public radio series titled Despues de las Guerras/Centra America: After the Wars about the violence suffered by [...]