Use the Wide-Angle Lens

“I think that it would give to our preaching just the quality which it appears to me to most lack now. That quality is breadth. I do not mean liberality of thought, nor tolerance of opinion, nor anything of that kind. I mean largeness of movement, the great utterance of great truths, the great enforcement of great duties, as distinct from the minute, and subtle, and ingenious treatment of little topics, side issues of the soul’s life, bits of anatomy, the bric-a-brac of theology”

Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 32

The Content Cluster Muster (01.23.20)

CrossPolitic, On the Road: A New Entry in the Annals of Terrible Ideas: Is your church languishing? Rejuvenate it by kicking out the oldsters. Here. An Open Road to the Sun: And more here. Grace & Peace: First things first.https://t.co/9bCWOEf4wq— Christ Church (@Christ_Kirk) January 21, 2020 Could be Titled: “Send Your Kids to New Saint …

Growing Corn on an Asteroid

Introduction: Let us accept for a moment the supposition—which I do not actually accept, by the way—that the Revoice organizers meant well. Let us assume honest misunderstandings all around. That is still no reason to let the misunderstandings stand, or to let them go unaddressed. This is because at some point, when confusion is in …

The View from the Bible Balcony

Introduction: A few days ago I wrote about Watermelons and Worldviews, which engendered, as they say, discussion. It was an intro piece, and you can’t always say everything in an introduction. I was tackling a certain kind of criticism of biblical worldview thinking, the kind of criticism that inevitably makes the thinking involved less biblical. …

Watermelons and Worldviews

Twenty years ago or thereabouts, Christian worldview seminars for young people were all the thing. The erosion of centuries of cultural consensus had become generally apparent, and so a number of organizations and churches threw themselves into the task of helping young people—who were obviously going to be bringing up their children in bizarroworld—to know …

And Like the Concrete . . .

Warning: some normal people may find some of the contents of this point disturbing. Some well-adjusted people may want to skip this one. But I simply want to briefly expand on a marvelous point made by Dan Phillips on Twitter, a point that deserves much wider circulation. Liberalthink: 1. You need to have a vagina …

Federal Vision No Mas

Introduction: I have decided, after mulling over it for some years now, to discontinue identifying myself with what has come to be called the federal vision. It used to be that when I was asked if I held to the federal vision, I would say something like “yes, if by that you mean . . …