A call to a new Reformation in the teaching and life of Jesus' followers
My good friend Kurt Willems just launched a funny post over at The Pangea Blog about reasons “You Might be an Evangelical Reject if…” I got a good giggle out of the post and many of its follow-on comments, because I certainly have found myself in the “Evangelical Reject” camp with some regularity category myself. But the post got me to thinking…what kind of church … Continue reading The Church Virtual?
Over the last year or so i’ve been experimenting with the different spirtiual disciplines. Practicing the Sabbath has been one of three that I have found to be an amazing addition to my life. The other two are fixed hour prayer and silence / solitude, which I will write about at a later time. The book that I was turned on to as one of … Continue reading Why You Should Practice Sabbath
For over 15 years I had been deeply involved in one particular faith based institution. I had given a great deal of time and energy to do everything I could to inspire people to follow Jesus more fully and completely with every aspect of their existence. The last few years of my involvement in this church I had been doing some teaching at the many … Continue reading Are Theology Debates about Fear or Faith?
OK, so you know by now that the authors of this blog subscribe to the Open View of God, also called Open Theism. It’s one of the four points of our ROCK summary of faith distinctives. A key point all Open Theists make is that God does not know a settled, determined future–not because God’s knowledge is limited, but because no settled, determined future exists … Continue reading Life is not a game of chess
This Monday, May 30th, is Memorial Day in the United States. On this holiday, Americans remember those who have perished in the military service of the nation. Readers of this blog already know that I am convinced that service in any nation’s military is incompatible with the call of Jesus Christ. But as Ronald Sider said so powerfully in 1984, just because followers of Christ … Continue reading Remember the fallen
When discussing open theism with those who have a problem with it, the idea or fear of control always seems to come out. The argument is that if God does not know the future as one set of eternally settled facts how is he in control or ultimately sovereign? Not only is there all kinds of logical problems with this fear but its rooted in … Continue reading Why Open Theism is Frightening for Some Christians
I’ve been reading an amazing book by Abraham Heschel a leading Jewish Rabbi, theologian and philosopher of the 20th century. In his book “God in search of Man” I stumbled across a phrase that captured my attention and said so eloquently a key phrase. He said “There is in the bible God’s word to man, but there is also man’s word to Him and about … Continue reading When Reading the Text Do You Know Whose Talking?
I’ve written against the usual doctrines of hell and eternal punishment now and again on this blog…you can see the works by choosing the Hell category from the list at right. However until we changed to WordPress I never had a good way of providing my original source material for others to evaluate or critique. This post is just to make that material available. At … Continue reading New Testament Survey on Hell
A common phenomenon within theological, political, and other discussions that get us worked up, is that someone frames a question as “either-or” and then others jump onto that argument as “for” one side or the other…without anybody really stopping to consider whether the question itself was properly framed to begin with. The recent controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” seems to me a prime … Continue reading Burn-them-all vs. Universalism: A false choice
I encourage you to pop over to my friend Kurt Willems’ blog and read his post If You’re Reading This Post, You’ve Been “Left Behind.” Kurt does a beautiful job of casting what our role must be in the current “Tribulation” of this world. Borrowing nearly every catchphrase of an eschatology neither one of us can stand, he’s got a masterful call to live as … Continue reading For all of you who’ve been "Left Behind"