In churches where the classic hymns are still sung, church members can exert their influence to keep this great tradition alive. We can listen to these same hymns in recorded form. Ministers who know the great hymns can make effective use of them by quoting verses and lines in sermons. Mainly, though, we can practice... Continue Reading

So, okay. I’ll buy it.  I’ll review it.  But will this book transform my life?  It will not.  It will go on the shelf with all of the other books that breathlessly present themselves as “the answer” to “the problem” that “the church” has lost some time between 120AD and 400AD. But I’m simply not... Continue Reading

“And yet one of my biggest observations about Cohick’s book is how history teaches us that some things do not change—in between the lines history, that is. While we are more aware of what the literary documents and their attached ideologies and agendas say, Cohick couples this research with some of her own, looking at... Continue Reading

I appeal to the glowing endorsement of the book from Jonathan Edwards, which is included on the back cover. Comparing Mastricht with Turretin, he noted, “they are both excellent.” Yet he added that Turretin was fuller on controversial points while Mastricht was better on the whole as a “universal system of divinity.” This led him... Continue Reading

It’s not just that this technology allows us to stay “plugged in” all the time, it’s that it gives us the sense that we are tapped into something greater than ourselves. The narratives of meaning that have always filled our lives with justification and wonder are multiplied endlessly and immediately for us in songs, TV... Continue Reading

While Weinandy’s Roman Catholicism is evident in his treatment of the Lord’s Supper, this is a book that Protestants will otherwise find most helpful. I for one will never be able to preach the gospel narrative in quite the same way again.     The first is Thomas Weinandy’s Jesus Becoming Jesus.  Weinandy is a Franciscantheologian who is well-known in orthodox Protestant circles for his... Continue Reading

Idolatry ultimately is about our conception of who God is. If people have a significantly wrong conception of who God is, then they commit themselves to a false and distorted conception of God and thus a false God. This becomes tantamount to idolatry. This is why God’s people must know his word. Only by knowing... Continue Reading

My next project—tentatively titled From the Ends of the Earth: How the Majority World Is Reshaping American Evangelicalism—seeks to expand this narrative to other geographies and sectors of evangelicalism. It will chart how evangelicals abroad and American missionaries “spoke back” to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, mission strategy, economics, sexuality, and theology.   This... Continue Reading

We are formed by the hymns and songs we sing. We are (perhaps more than we realize) formed, too, by the tangible objects of our faith. We are people of the book—not just people of the Word of God, but also people who have been corporately, theologically, devotionally, and socially formed by hymnbooks.   When... Continue Reading

The last chapter contains a story that illustrates the value of the Apostles’ Creed. In the Introduction I describe the Creed as liturgical (to profess in community), catechetical (to teach), confessional (to express alignment), and missional (as a light to life in Christ). The story at book’s end shows the missional value.   Whether it’s... Continue Reading