Have we undervalued baptism?
I would say so, wouldn’t I? But Tim Chester thinks we have too.
To affirm is to apostasise
John Stevens looks at the biblical teaching on same-sex relationships in the church and points to what the scriptures say about those who would affirm it. He also draws some implications for the church today as result.
Translation is meaning-based
‘I was very passionate in seminary about Bible translation. I loved the NASB, which was so wooden and formal, I could feel the foreign grammar bleeding through the page. I remember having debates in classes about how we should translate certain words and passages. My passion was, however, poorly disguised ignorance. I had never really tried to translate the Bible and at that stage would have done a terrible job.’
You don’t need to apologize for crying
‘It isn’t uncommon for people to apologize for crying during a meeting. Why do you think this is the case? While it could be for a variety of reasons, two are especially prevalent.’
Was Christmas like this?
‘The Bible doesn’t actually give a lot of detail about the first Christmas and so we have filled in some details through tradition, sentiment and a misreading of what the Bible actually does so. In what follows, I will try to stick to what the Bible does say, but I will fill in some details from my reading of history and my experience of living in other cultures around the world.’
The case for taking video games seriously
‘A short essay like this can only surface a tiny fraction of the artistic value of video games, I hope it leaves a few skeptics a bit more curious. Gen X’s questions and concerns aren’t wrong; they’re just thin. It’s time for Christians of all generations to move past indifference toward gaming, and begin to take video games seriously as an artform.’
From the archive: Why does the Lord bless us and is it’s timing significant?
‘The Lord knows what is required to save whom he wants saved, to keep whom he wants to keep and to maintain what he wants to maintain. The Lord knows the ministers he wants to keep in ministry and he knows the members he wants to keep in membership. He knows the purposes he has for any given church and he knows just what is required in order to bring those purposes about. I don’t think it is speculative to say that the Lord’s decision to encourage us this way was any less than one of the means he uses to encourage his people to continue faithfully serving where he would have them.’