These are my remarks for the NSA Convocation 2013 Just over a decade ago, I spoke at convocation, much as I am doing now, and gave a mock convocation address for the year 2022, now just nine years away from us. In that address, among many other cogent observations, I said this: “We continue to …
The Sailboat and the Lighthouse
“Brian had always been thoughtful and deliberate about spiritual things, and he had been assembling the pieces for a number of years. He had been very diligent in his own way, but he was like a guy putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse, but one where things got mixed up in the closet, …
But a Lot More Rewarding
“Why is it that learning to live with your spouse can be awkward? . . . making a bottle of fine wine is a very different thing that mixing up a jug of fruit juice” (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 110).
A Quite Noticeable Effect
“The talk had been on confession of sin, and the effect of it had been the equivalent of dropping a hand grenade in your average living room goldfish bowl” (Evangellyfish, p. 209).
With Revolver Smoking
“The Greek word for ‘mortify’ here [Col. 3:5] is an aorist imperative — in other words, it’s telling you to put it [your earthly members] to death and walk away from the carcass with your revolver smoking” (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 107).
Metaphor or Five
These are my notes for a portion of the Wordsmithy conference we held, just now concluded. Many thanks to the students who participated. You will soon discover that I am using the word metaphor in a broad sense. Some allow it to expand to include simile—this is that, and this is like that are close …
Crowdsourcing Adam
Tim Bayly discusses a very troublesome drift on certain key questions relating to Adam here. If I might, I would like to add just a couple of comments. First, just as we evaluate individual lives by the video, and not by the snapshot, so also we should measure churches, denominations, seminaries, and so on, in …
More Than Enough Butterscotch
“This was not really supposed to mean anything in particular, but the elders were not about to press him on it. All they wanted was for smooth words to flow over them (and everybody else in the audience) like molten butterscotch, and it was looking as though they were going to get everything they were …
No Convenience Store Holiness
“There is such a thing as righteousness on the earth and righteousness within marriage. It is not the case that a backslidden Christian is under one hundred feet of water, and the godliest saint who ever lived is only under three feet of water, but both of them are equally wet. Rather, obedience and disobedience, …
The Racoons of Market Share
“During the scandal, before Chad had accepted the pressure to resign, these graphics impresarios had been just so many advertising hounds locked in the kennels of indecision, with the racoons of market share running through the woods pretty much as they pleased” (Evangellyfish, p. 202).