In American evangelical circles, it is usually taken as a given that the chief purpose of the Gospel is to bring people into a “personal relationship with Jesus.” Jesus is depicted as our perfect friend who always accepts us no matter what and helps us through our troubles. For the most part, this relationship is [...]

Back in 2004 my dear friend Jeremy Casella suffered a disappointment that probably would’ve had many musicians at the pawn shop the next morning, guitar in hand. After two independent releases and thousands of touring miles, Jeremy had landed a recording contract with a major label. Suddenly there was money to do the kinds of [...]

I’ve added many new pictures to my post about teaching at the CLIS this past July. All of the pictures were taken by our team photographer/videographer Coury Deeb or his assistant Jesse Allen. Many thanks to Coury for sharing them with me.
If you missed my series about the trip, all the other posts are linked [...]

My review of Mark Strom’s Reframing Paul and my more recent post concerning John Armstrong’s article “Getting the Role of the Pastor Right” generated discussion about how we train and ordain pastors. I was delighted, therefore, to stumble across a 1972 essay by Reformed Theological Seminary professor John Frame entitled “A Proposal for a [...]

Yesterday Karyn and I finally ended nearly a year of using our bicycles as garage wall decorations and got the wheels rolling once again. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full year since my trip on the Delaware Canal tow paths. I realized that was the last time I had the bike out [...]

Just ran across another very worthwhile blog, this one a collaboration of a whole team of gifted Christian writers, several of whom are friends or acquaintances of mine. Common Grounds is dedicated to continuing the conversation begun in the book Common Grounds: Conversations About the Things that Matter Most by Glen Lucke and Ben Young. [...]

My friend John from Charlottesville tipped me off to this article in the Charlottesville Daily Progress about UVa professor Justin Holcomb. Holcomb has been visiting southern Sudan and training

My LSW (Long Suffering Wife) Karyn has written about her experience training teachers in Yei, Sudan. See her story (with lots of pictures!) here.

Columbia Theological Seminary professor Walter Brueggemann (who has far more unnecessary letters in his name than should be legal) published an article titled “Enough is Enough” in the Nov/Dec 2oo1 issue of The Other Side. I was hooked from the beginning by his assertion that “the rich–the ones with the abundance–rely on an ideology of [...]