The Not At All Secret History of Nicaea
‘If you read enough pieces in Time about the Gospel of Thomas and so on, or if you read Elaine Pagels, you get the sense that the “early church,” the time from say the year 100 when St John died to the year 313 when Constantine legalized it was a creature lost in the mists of history and apocryphal gospels. This is simply not the case.’
Be Drunk with Love?
This one reflects on a little phrase from Song of Songs: be drunk with love.
Listening to God’s Word
‘Lying somewhere in the home of each person reading this article is a Bible. Maybe more than one. The fact that nearly every Christian in the West has his own Bible is a rather recent privilege. For roughly the first fifteen hundred years of church history, Bibles were fairly scarce and protected. The printing press was not invented until the mid-1400s, and the ability for each Christian family to have its own Bible came much later. Our freedom to have them as we do was one of the great achievements of the Reformation. Thus, today, each Christian home probably has several Bibles; maybe more than one for each person. Yet for all those Bibles, how much time do we spend not just reading them but expecting to hear God speak in and through them?’
Defining How Pastors, Elders, and Church Staff Work Together
My forthcoming book addresses this question directly from an independent/Baptist perspective. This one is how an evangelical Presbyterian works it out.
Some reflections on Confidentiality and the church
This is a helpful one on the issue of confidentiality in the church (again, not to keep harping on, but a particular forthcoming book also addresses this issue directly – be sure to get it when it comes out later this year).
7 Secular Sermons You Might Have Heard This Week
‘The moment we recognize this broader definition of sermons, we begin to see that our culture is filled with competing pulpits, each vying for influence over our values, priorities, and beliefs. A pastor may speak for an hour on Sunday, but secular voices are preaching to us for the remaining 167 hours of the week.’
From the archive: If not reading, then what?
‘If you’ve followed the discussions on Twitter (I, frankly, don’t blame you if you haven’t), you will have seen that I’ve dared to suggest two things that haven’t been universally well received. First, I suggested Bavinck probably wasn’t your go-to text for new and young believers. I thought that one fairly uncontroversial, to be honest, but apparently not! The second, which I understood would be a bit more controversial (but I nonetheless believe is true), is that Christian books really are not vital for your Christian life. Helpful they may be, but essential they are not.’