I wish to address this post to all my Southern Baptist readers. So the rest of you have fair warning that what follows is a bit of inside baseball for my fellow SBC’ers. Last week, I wrote about the “Building Bridges” conference that was taking place in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. The conference theme communicated the organizers’ intention to “build bridges” between the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists of the SBC. The divisions of late between some Baptists on this issue have left many SBC’ers wondering if the heated controversy might prevent future cooperation for missions. Thus it was good to hear many of the speakers (both five-pointers and non-five-pointers) communicate their…
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Un-stinking-believable: LSU in the National Championship?
I woke up this morning thinking that Les Miles would likely be leaving LSU for Michigan and that an injured LSU team might very well lose the SEC championship game against Tennessee. Boy was I wrong. Les Miles announced this afternoon in no uncertain terms that he would be staying at LSU. Then LSU beat the Vols to win the SEC title game. And as if that weren’t enough, the top two teams in the nation lost, and now LSU is back in the hunt for the national championship. Un-stinking-believable.
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Albert Mohler on NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News produced a feature on the emerging church in which Tom Brokaw interviewed Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s a short, but interesting bit. Dr. Mohler does a great job, as usual. I would make one observation about this piece. It seems to me that the media’s interest in the emerging church is almost entirely political. Brokaw’s coverage in this segment is a case in point. Underlying Brokaw’s attention to the new movement is a curiosity about how this new section of evangelicalism will affect electoral politics. I suppose that this should not be very surprising. But it is interesting to note…
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The Phony YouTube Debate
On Wednesday night, CNN hosted a “YouTube” debate for the Republican candidates for President. Questions came to the candidates from “ordinary” citizens who videoed themselves asking questions about the important issues of our time. Anderson Cooper hosted the event for CNN, and it came off without a hitch . . . until the post debate discussion.
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Support CBMW, but count the cost.
David Kotter, the Executive Director of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), has some wise words about how to prioritize your giving for kingdom causes. Read this one, and support CBMW.
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Huckabee Clinches Nomination with Chuck Norris’ Endorsement
In case you didn’t know, Chuck Norris has a huge cult following among the American electorate. And he has recently thrown his weighty political endorsement to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. This is big news, because we all know that the world must defer to the superior martial arts skills of Chuck Norris. Here are some facts to support the point:
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Southern Baptists, Calvinism, and W. A. Criswell
Are Southern Baptists Calvinists? That’s one of the questions being discussed this week in Ridgecrest, North Carolina at the conference “Building Bridges: Southern Baptists and Calvinism.” This conference could not have come at a better time, given that debates about Calvinism among Southern Baptist often generate more heat than light. I have great hopes for better things from this conference. Speakers include Albert Mohler, David Dockery, Malcolm Yarnell, Tom Nettles, Voddie Baucham, Danny Akin, Tom Ascol, and many others. You can podcast the messages from the conference through iTunes at the following link: Building Bridges Podcast (SEBTS Audio). Or you can visit Lifeway’s site and download the MP3 messages directly…
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Programming Note: Luke’s Gospel in Prime Time
This is a programming note about a special television broadcast this evening. Tonight on ABC at 7pm (Central Time) there will be a one hour broadcast that culminates with the reading of Luke 2:8-14. The broadcast will consider the excesses of holiday commercialism and then conclude with the assertion that the real meaning of Christmas is to be found Luke 2:8-14. This program might seem to be sort of an odd thing to find among the banal offerings of prime time television in 2007. But the broadcast is actually an annual event, and I’ll bet you’re already familiar with it. The program is called “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I’ll be…
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Who Would Jesus Bomb?
Don’t miss Russell Moore’s “Who Would Jesus Bomb? War, Peace, and the Christian.” In this short essay, Moore considers the poles of pacifism and militarism and suggests that the Just-War tradition is the best way for Christians to think about issues of war and peace. Here’s a snippet: “When, if ever, is it right for a government to kill people? As you sort out the ethics of war, the stakes are high for your spiritual formation. Sure, you probably won’t single-handedly decide whether the United States should invade Canada. But the way you think through the rightness or wrongness of military action tells you something about how you see your…
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McKnight vs. “Hyper-Calvinismâ€
Scot McKnight has posted a letter from one of his readers who is having problems with “hyper-Calvinists,” but the difficulties to which he refers include nothing of what hyper-Calvinists actually believe. Rather, the real difficulty with the ones that he labels “hyper-Calvinists” is that they are self-righteous and condescending in their eagerness about regular Calvinism. If the letter-writer’s description is accurate, then the problem is not Hyper-Calvinism or even regular Calvinism. The problem is sin—self-righteousness, condescension, and arrogance, to be specific.