What do you get when you mix up a megachurch sex scandal, a Reformed pastor in a fistfight, an ambitious blonde TV reporter, a zealous but slightly misguided youth worker who likes Brandy (a girl, not a drink), an officiously small-minded middle-ranking accountant, a seasoned detective and an ageing ex-Christian New Ager called Mystic Union? The answer is Evangellyfish, a web novel by American author and pastor Doug Wilson. (more…)
Monthly Archives: June 2009
The unease of the next generation
Up front
There seems to be a restlessness—an unease—among younger evangelicals. Something is wrong with the way we do church. How can we fix it?
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Reading the Bible with your ears open
Up front
You read what you hear. Even with the Bible, you read what you hear.
Let me explain. Study leave got me to England in 10 inches of snow. Beautiful. Because it closed the airports, it almost got me to France. How would I have explained that to the college board? Then driving around a country not my own just confused me; there were so many signs supposedly telling me what to do, but I didn’t have the right framework to assimilate them so that they actually made sense. On the freeway: “Spray may be possible”. What, was I going to be ambushed by a tomcat? Coming into Colchester: “The oldest town in Britain. Please drive carefully.” If I don’t, will it break? In an alley way in London next to a huge dumpster: “Fly tipping will be prosecuted”. It’s going to take a lot of flies to fill that bin, for sure.
If Galatians was published in Christianity Today
Up front
Reprinted with kind permission from The Sacred Sandwich http://sacredsandwich.com. (more…)
To mourn or not to mourn?
Up front
I was talking to a friend the other day who told me this story:
I was in a prayer meeting this week with a lady who asked us to pray for her relationship with her parents. They were getting divorced after having been married for several decades. She doesn’t live at home anymore, and she talked about the whole thing quite matter-of-factly. I told her that that was really sad, and the sharing of prayer points moved on to the next person.
Review: “Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament”
Review
It always bothers me when the author or editor of a book starts by telling me what their book is not. So it was with some concern that I began my reading of Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament—a book that, the editors say, neither surveys, summarizes nor takes a position on the debates over the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament. However, it was not long before I became pleased with it. (more…)
Introducing God to my friends
Everyday Ministry
‘Jars of clay’ is a column featuring stories about people speaking the Bible’s life-changing word in every situation. In our first-ever instalment, Karen Beilharz reminisces about the year she spent trying to introduce God to her friends. (more…)