The Gospel, Idols, and Defense Contractors

I’ve been studying the second half of Acts 19 in preparation to teach from the passage on Sunday night. It’s an interesting and strange passage. Basically, what’s happening in the passage is that silversmiths in Ephesus are mad at the apostle Paul because he has been preaching about Jesus and telling people that Jesus is [...]

A Better Way To Buy Books

Being a responsible consumer in America is really difficult.
I will be the first to admit that.
Products whose production trample on human rights and destroy the planet are readily available for low prices at just about any retailer you can think of, while finding ethically produced and distributed clothing, food, and books sold my companies that [...]

Why I Drink From a Wide Stream

-The two preachers I listen to most frequently (pretty much every week) have views about the gifting of women for ministry that are, in my opinion, unbiblical. I have books on my shelf from several pastors and authors who share their view.
-Getting one of my favorite authors to plainly state what he believes about substitutionary [...]

Talking Deep Church with Jim Belcher (Part III of III)

Here is the third and final installment of my interview with Jim Belcher, author of Deep Church.
Before I get into this part of the interview, I wanted to mention that Jim will be speaking and signing books TOMORROW October 13, at 4:00 p.m. in the Fuller Seminary library.
The questions below were not published in the [...]

Fighting the Zoolander Effect

Last night as Christie and I walked out of the gym at Azusa Pacific University I kept thinking about the Zoolander Effect.
We’d just finished hearing Donald Miller and Susan Isaacs speak as part of the A Million Miles in A Thousand Days Tour. It was a wonderful evening, and I highly recommend shelling out the [...]

Some Disorganized Thoughts on “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller

As any of you who read this blog with any regularity know, I read a lot of books and I like to write about what I read. Sometimes, like with this post, I’ll write my thoughts on a particular book as a whole. These thoughts are far too disorganized and haphazard to be called a [...]

Thinking about Our Stories

So I just finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. When I say “I just finished reading” it, I mean I literally closed the book, sat in silence and reflected on what I’d read for a moment, dried my eyes, stood up, sat back down and began typing. I’ll take [...]

Creationists on par with Holocaust deniers?

Part of me hates to draw any more attention to this story, because it really is unfortunate, but I thought it was interesting in light of the post I wrote the other day about the importance of using language appropriately. That post was about translating the Bible in a way that is driven by what [...]

How Can I Know God?

This weekend I’ve been reading Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. I am enjoying it immensely. It is challenging me to rethink some of my convictions about church life and how it should work while at the same time articulating some of my beliefs and convictions [...]

The Overlooked Mission Field : Reaching the Campus Tribes, part I

This morning I finally sat down to start reading Reaching the Campus Tribes by Benson Hines. Benson spent the 2007-08 school year traveling the country visiting 181 college campuses and interacting with people doing ministry on those campuses. After the trip he wrote his book, which he turned into an e-book that can be downloaded [...]