In the Protestant family of churches, the phrase “church tradition” raises a red flag and is almost immediately rejected as an assault on the Bible’s authority. After all, sola Scriptura is a key Protestant rallying cry. At the same time,…
Some words are difficult to like. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I am not being clear. There are various reasons why we may not like this word or that. Some may be on unfriendly terms with a word…
“The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” This line from the Second Helvetic Confession summarizes how we should think of the Biblical authority exercised in the pulpit. We see this concept reflected in Scripture, when…
Men and women were created in the image of God.[i] The image of God consists of true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.[ii] In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had true knowledge. Their minds could understand the mind of God…
Jesus thinks reading is a big deal. After all, he wrote a book. And Jesus thinks reading his book is a big deal, because, well, he is. For a blog post on the sufficiency of Scripture and biblical scholarship this…
In this final post (see part 1 and part 2 of this series), I would like to raise three challenges to the dominance of the extrovert and entrepreneurial ideals for pastoral ministry in the American church. First, the…
For the less adventurous among us who don’t like to take many risks, especially big ones, how handy it would be if God would give us a clear, detailed roadmap for our life and a smartphone app that guarantees we…
Young John Bunyan (1628–1688) hardly seemed fit for preaching. He was a coarse person with little education and a mouth full of foul language. He had lost his mother and sister to death and was exposed to the evils of…
Adam McHugh, plainly and accurately states that the “slant towards extroversion in the larger culture has also infiltrated the church.”[1] (See part 1 of this series for more on how this ‘slant’ came to be.) Not only has this slant…
The gospel of Jesus Christ is astounding. To think that when we were yet sinners God sent His only begotten Son to keep the law that we were unable to keep and to bear the curse we were unwilling to…
