Pastors, if you are not following Brian Croft’s “Practical Shepherding” blog, you need to. He consistently has great, relevant content that I think you would find helpful. His latest post is titled, “How Long Should My Sermons Be When I Preach?” And it’s about just what you think it’s about—the length of your sermons. Brian doesn’t mandate a certain length, but rather gives a set of principles to consider. He says that pastor should determine the length of his sermon… 1) Based on where your people are, not where you think they should be. 2) Based on how good and seasoned a preacher you are. 3) To leave your people…
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Fascinating Interview with Tim Challies
Is there a code among Christian bloggers that determines who writes what and when? Is there any competition among Christian bloggers? Are there any topics that are off-limits? These are but three questions from a fascinating interview with Christian uber-blogger Tim Challies. Challies.com is one of the most widely read Christian blogs on the planet, and I found his answers to the questions to be refreshingly candid. There are sixteen questions in all (see below), and you can read Challie’s answers here.
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J. I. Packer Delivers the Sermon at John Stott’s Memorial
(HT: John Starke)
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Michele Bachman’s Leap of Faith
Ryan Lizza has written a thoroughly unflattering article about Michele Bachmann for The New Yorker titled “Leap of Faith: The Making of a Republican Front-runner.” The article takes a close look at her Christianity as a key to understanding her candidacy. He writes: Bachmann belongs to a generation of Christian conservatives whose views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians. Her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature, including Sarah Palin, to whom she is inevitably compared. Christian readers will be interested…
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Governor Rick Perry’s Speech at “The Response”
Perhaps you heard the news about a giant prayer gathering in Houston, Texas yesterday called “The Response.” About 25,000 people gathered to pray and to hear messages from a variety of different speakers. One of the speakers was Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is expected to announce his candidacy for U.S. President by the end of the month.
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JFK Weighs-in on the United States’ Budget Deficit
I have been reading Robert Dallek’s magisterial biography of John F. Kennedy and came across an item of great contemporary relevance. Among the interesting facts about President Kennedy was his “fiscal conservatism.” He did not fit the caricature of the big spending liberal. In fact, he had a certain antipathy toward FDR not only for his “New Deal” programs, but also because he thought FDR had appeased Stalin during World War II. In any case, as a Congressman JFK openly opposed “unbalanced budgets,” which he perceived to be a threat not only to the economy but also to national security. From Dallek’s biography:
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Bart Ehrman Strikes Again
Bart Ehrman is out promoting his most recent book Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. As with his previous popular books, Ehrman is on a mission. He is doing everything he can to undermine the reader’s confidence in the truthfulness and the authority of scripture. In Forged, he attacks the apostolic authorship of the New Testament. Responses to Ehrman are already appearing. Dan Wallace has written a three-part review that is very helpful, and I encourage you to read it here: part 1, part 2, part 3. Wallace concludes with this:
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When Jon Stewart Cried on TV
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and our country will be marking the date with a variety of special observances. We will all have occasion to remember the horror of that day and what life was like in the United States in the immediate aftermath.
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Are There Errors in the Bible?
Albert Mohler just highlighted an important article by Greg Beale on inerrancy. The article appears in The Westminster Theological Journal and is titled “Can the Bible Be Completely Inspired by God and Yet Still Contain Errors? A Response to Some Recent ‘Evangelical’ Proposals.” Here’s the problem Beale seeks to address in this article: Recent writers have especially questioned the traditional understanding of inerrancy. In particular, a central idea underlying inerrancy has been that since God is true and without error and, therefore, his oral word is true and without error, consequently, his word in Scripture is true and without error.
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Alan Wisdom on Immigration Reform
I think Alan Wisdom’s analysis of the contentious immigration debate is well worth the read. Writing for The Institute on Religion & Democracy, he advocates for no specific policy. He merely lists items that citizens (in particular Christian citizens) ought to take into account when considering competing proposals for immigration reform. He writes: