A senior Church of England bishop has stated that people who attended John Smyth's summer camps at the centre of allegations of brutal assault would have known each other and talked about it. The Archbishop of Canterbury, a dormitory officer at the camps in the late 1970s, has insisted he was not part of the inner circle of friends and no-one discussed the allegations of abuse with him.
“Systematic theology thus contemplates the body of biblical teaching as a living organism, offering loving attention to its various members and tracing their organic relations to each another. Ultimately, systematic theology helps us better understand God and all things in relation to God.”
“Systematic theology” is a label with admittedly clinical connotations. It conjures a picture of the theologian as someone who takes in hand the living Word of God only to dissect and dismember the body of b..
It’s not an easy time to be a six-day creationist. For some time now, the weight of conviction within the Evangelical world has swung toward views that demand an old earth. While few Christians are full-out theistic evolutionists, more and more believers hold to an ancient universe with all the complications that come with it: the interpretation of the word “day” as used in the creation account, the necessity of admitting death before the fall, and the reality that in so many ways the early chap..
A few differences between preaching and teaching
By
Zach J. Hoag
|
February 2, 2017
One of my core callings (you know, besides writing and binge-watching prestige dramas) is preaching. And, there’s a difference between preaching and teaching. Over the years I’ve struggled to understand and express this, and honestly I’ve heard it expressed rather poorly in the past.
Some folks (who lean more charismatic and pentecostal) will denigrate teaching, implicitly if not explicitly..
If confession is good for the soul, then writing this post should be like spring cleaning for my heart. Hi, my name’s David and I have a football problem.
I’m a loyal, 3rd-Generation Miami Dolphin fan (don’t laugh… “it’s root-root-root for the home team. If they don’t win, it’s a shame”). I’ve rooted for them since I was little and Dan “The Man” Marino was lighting up the record books. I rooted for them when they went 1-16, with their only win coming off a last-second field goal against a strugg..
I’ve planted several churches and I know how hard it can be. I’ve never “closed” a plant, but I’ve sat with several others that have. It is painful– but sometimes it is helpful.
I think that doing an “autopsy” is a helpful part of the learning experience, and something which is not done often enough. Here is one such reflection from John Thomas, a former planter.
As an aside, one of the more fascinating documents we references in Viral Churches was an autopsy report by Todd Hunter. At the time..
Dr. William Struthers is Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College.
What do we understand about addiction, and what do we have wrong about addiction? One of the hallmarks of addiction, according to Dr. William Struthers, is that you’re craving something that doesn’t give you what you need, and you’ve lost your ability to make your own decisions. There is, however, a difference between dependency and addiction; we can be dependent on something, but not addicted to it.
There’s a generation comi..
Every day, disease eroded her youthful loveliness.
Every minute, her mother stood at her bedside and cherished her.
My patient was a teenage girl, and when jaundice sallowed her face to mustard color, her mother massaged her skin with jasmine lotion. When her eyes, vacant and bloodshot, darted about the room in delirium, her mother papered the walls with photographs and piled favorite toys around her.
The ventilator creaked and sighed, and beloved songs filled the room. In language appr..
Thus far Tim Keller’s book Making Sense of God : An Invitation to the Skeptical has looked at six aspects of human life, givens that Keller suggests we cannot live without: meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, hope, and justice. Each chapter looked at both secular and Christian narratives, and at the specific focus that Christianity offers. In the last two chapters he turns to a broader overview. He begins by asking “is it reasonable to believe in God?” and offers six specific reasons the a..
The Superbowl is this weekend, time for the obligatory polls about whether or not God gets involved in the outcome of sporting events. One-quarter of Americans believe that he does. About a half believe that God rewards faithful athletes with health and success.
Certainly, the easy answer is that of course God doesn’t care about a sporting event because He has much more important things to do. But if God attends to the fall of a sparrow, why wouldn’t He attend to the fall of a pigskin?
The real ..