An Evening with Mark Strom
I am making available my recordings of Mark Strom’s talk and the Q&A that followed at Westminster Theological Seminary this past Thursday evening. A gathering of WTS students, faculty, and alumni had the opportunity to hear the always provocative, never boring, Dr. Strom share a vision for a radically different kind of theological education. Along the way he touched upon such diverse topics as ecclesiology, preaching, the lives of institutions, the relationship between biblical and systematic theology, leadership–and even how much the way we do seminary-level papers resembles the way we did poster-board projects back in sixth grade! Across all these topics–and many more–you hear in Mark a man deeply in love with Jesus and ardently passionate about communicating his good news to anyone and everyone.
Most provocatively, Mark believes that the church has been blind to the extent to which it has been captive to Graeco-Roman categories of philosophy, theology, and sociology right from the beginning. He calls us to a renewed perception of the Bible as the story of God’s projcet of redeeming the world, and more specifically to Paul not so much as master theologian (though certainly that) as he is master storyteller of the overturning effect this Jesus the Messiah had wrought upon his own life. More importantly, Mark calls us to fire our imaginations with what it might look like if we really believed what we say about our Reformed theology: that it is to be brought to bear upon every facet of existence and every calling is to be infused with and transformed by it. Throughout this talk and the ensuing Q&A you will hear Mark not only share theory, but his own personal journey and attempts to take that call seriously. It is a journey that rewrites the textbook definition of “success” in terms of the gospel categories of life out of death, riches out of poverty, triumph out of defeat.
Just a note: the audio was recorded on my iPod, so it is not “ready for prime time” quality, but still quite listenable.
To download, right click each link and select “Save file as…” or the equivalent.
Mark Strom shares (7.3MB mp3)
Q & A with Mark Strom (14.1MB mp3)
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February 26th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Thanks Mark! I was hoping someone mp3′d it. It was amazing for an “off-the-cuff” talk! I still have to disagree with his understanding of ekklesia, though.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Your welcome, Matt.
I was hoping there would be more time to unpack his reluctance to see Paul as using ekklesia as ever applying to the “universal church.” That’s just a one-line teaser in his book, and even at dinner he didn’t get to spell out fully what he meant (mostly because he had about seven of us peppering him with questions at that point!).
As far as I could gather, he seems to believe that Paul was working out of the common Graeco-Roman use of the word at the time, which always applied to some localized gathering, whether informal and small or formal and large.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:22 am
You’re welcome, Matt.
I was hoping there would be more time to unpack his reluctance to see Paul as using ekklesia as ever applying to the “universal church.” That’s just a one-line teaser in his book, and even at dinner he didn’t get to spell out fully what he meant (mostly because he had about seven of us peppering him with questions at that point!).
As far as I could gather, he seems to believe that Paul was working out of the common Graeco-Roman use of the word at the time, which always applied to some localized gathering, whether informal and small or formal and large.
February 28th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Sinner?…
Thanks to Mark Traphagen at Sacred Journey I am on a Mark Strom kick of late. Mark Strom is the principal and CEO of The Bible College of New Zealand and author of The Symphony of Scripture and Reframing Paul….
February 28th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
[...] Strom’s book The Symphony of Scripture has been a favorite for several years. Here’s some audio from this outstanding teacher. (HT to the Jolly [...]