They pursue discipline for any reason other than for the good of the individual, the good of the church, the good of the onlooking community, and the glory of Christ. Jonathan Leeman, “Appendix: Mistakes Pastors Make in Practicing Discipline,” Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (9Marks; Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 139–40: Pastors sometimes make the... Continue Reading

The following press release was just received by The Aquila Report. Content of a message Dr. Ryken sent to alumni of the school follows:

We need to be careful of saying “Just believe,” because what we’re really saying is, “Believe because I say so.” That sounds like a Nietzschean power play. That’s very different from Paul, who reasoned, argued, and proved in the book of Acts, and from Peter, who called us to give the reason for our hope in 2 Peter 3:15

I want him to understand that no matter how much education he has or how well he preaches, people mostly just care about how much he loves them.

"The problem biblically is: legalism sends people to hell and antinomianism sends people to hell," he said. "Reacting against a hellish-legalism with a hellish-antinomianism is still sending people to hell." --R. Moore

“Paul, in the Bible, tells my wife to be silent in church. Screw St. Paul, screw him!” shouted a visibly angry Frank Schaeffer during one session of the festival. Schaeffer, son of deceased author and evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer, lamented his family’s role in building the “Religious Right,” and the gathered audience of disaffected former... Continue Reading

Conference is being organized for October 27 and 28, 2012. Dr. Wiley Smith and Dr. Sharon Kuhn will be attending as family physicians, but they would love to have a contingent of other specialists, pharmacists, nurses, and the like to come with them to speak. Present students would be welcome too.

"Some people are just wired to do this," Lanier told me. "Sometimes it's men who know they're not equipped to work in the church nursery or to sing in the church choir. But if they're like me, they can feel the smile of God as they exercise their tool skills—and because they have a chance to relate one-on-one to someone who maybe never heard the gospel of Jesus before."

Wayne Sparkman, at the PCA archives, pulled out a book of letters written by a Puritan pastor and handed it to me. He showed me a letter written to a young woman who just lost a newborn. In that, the pastor related his own pain and how God grieves with his children, but still offers hope. Reading that letter, full of real life helped me make a little sense of the mess. Five and a half years later, I hope I can help others make sense of it a little better too.

It’s time to replace an old paradigm, mission trip, with a new paradigm, empowerment. In the old paradigm, somebody comes and does something for the Africans, which they don’t maintain, because it wasn’t their idea in the first place. In the new paradigm, true development and growth take place because the Africans were involved and... Continue Reading