I realize I don’t really have other scholars to dialogue about these matters because evangelicals are primarily concerned with “getting the gospel right,” “church planting,” and heretic hunting. For three full days last week I had an intense time of reading, thinking, and discussion with the following professors at Fordham University: · Dr. Barbara Andolsen,... Continue Reading

Some anemic academics say biblical belief has no place in the social sciences because it keeps people from open-minded analysis of data. Actually, the opposite is true: Reading the Bible often leads us to see the limitations of conventional approaches. Example: Welfare reform. The last major revisions, those of 1996, were successful, contra liberal predictions... Continue Reading

That things run down is a broadly observed principle of the universe. Stars die. Mountains crumble. Ground dries out. Fires die out. Cars break down. Organizations lose their way. Heart affection grows cold. Churches drift. That’s the kind of world you will be called to lead in. And people will expect you to make a... Continue Reading

A couple of months ago, I posted a question about an ethical dilemma for a minister. When it comes to the subject of gender, he’s a complementarian, and his wife is an egalitarian. He wants to know how their disagreement on this issue shapes whether he should serve as pastor. Here are my thoughts on... Continue Reading

No, the greatest crime of Erasmus and his ilk is that they remove all of the encouragement from one of the passages in the Bible which should be most precious and encouraging to parents Most Christians, if they have heard of Desiderius Erasmus at all, know of him as the man who helped put the... Continue Reading

Good questions prod us along toward greater effectiveness in fulfilling our calling. Here are some probing questions that I have found helpful in pastoral ministry. About Preaching 1. How can I show the congregation how this passage / topic fits into the grand narrative of Scripture? This question reminds me to connect the dots of... Continue Reading

Black culture (and most of American culture, for that matter) thrives in hierarchical organizational structures. Therefore the black churches that thrive either have episcopal structures (like black Methodism, COGIC, etc.) or have Baptist-like ecclesiology. Every conservative Presbyterian denomination should watch this video series on black Presbyterianism and re-think their strategy. Maybe the tears displayed by... Continue Reading

With the PCA’s General Assembly next week, I suppose I should attend to my annual overview of the overtures– which is to say, the actionable items put before the whole assembly by the presbyteries. I’ve done this now for several years (2009, 2010) and I prefer to do it with a sense of anticipation before... Continue Reading

In a devastating ruling that does away with what little Fourth Amendment protections remain to public school students and their families, the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out a lower court ruling in Alford, et al. v. Greene which required authorities to secure a warrant, a court order or parental consent before interrogating students at... Continue Reading

So how were things at your place on May 21? Were they as catastrophic as Harold Camping had predicted—or merely cataclysmic? (I’m still trying to distinguish accurately between those two terribly grim adjectives.) I have the advantage, of course. If Camping’s predictions had been right, and world history had in fact come to an end... Continue Reading