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The Queering of the SBC - Center for Baptist Leadership
Jared Moore writes: "In a 2019 interview with Apologia Radio, Butterfield said that if she were still living a lesbian lifestyle today and were trying to repent, theologians and pastors who teach that same-sex attraction is not sin would have prevented her from doing so: 'I don't know how it would have gone for me today, because ... in working out what it means to have the indwelling sin of homosexuality, I would be told that it wasn't a sin at all; or I would be told it's only a sin if you act on it.'...
Moore discusses a long list of SBC leaders and influencers who have departed from Biblical truth on this question: Preston Sprinkle, Nate Collins, Karen Swallow Prior, David Prince, Patrick Schreiner, Sam Allberry. He points to analysis by New Testament Professor Robert A. Gagnon, showing that "a child's social environment greatly increases or decreases his or her chances of developing same-sex desires."
"The queering of the SBC--and all of conservative American Christianity--is a major problem. It appears that in a misguided effort to be winsome to the world, we have allowed leaders and ministries to advance unbiblical teaching that undermines God's good plan for human sexuality and even celebrates the embrace of sexual immorality in the lives of professing Christians and the church. In our sexually confused and sinful day and age, what the lost need most is courage and clarity, not compromise."
Song Review Index | The Berean Test
Vince Wright analyzes popular songs used in Christian worship to see whether they reflect the teaching of Scripture and properly focus attention on God and His glory. Some of his guiding principles are idiosyncratic -- he rates doctrinally sound hymns like "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" as "PERHAPS" for use in corporate worship because their poetic language might be off-putting to visitors -- but he invites respectful debate about the conclusions he reaches. In his review of "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord, O My Soul)," Wright overlooks the most annoying thing about the song, which you can find discussed here by Christopher Malapati: The constant shifting of referents for 2nd and 3rd persons, sometimes within a single line. (Is "your" referring to God or my soul?) Malapati proposes a fix, which is close to what I sing.
O. Palmer Robertson in 1988, regarding the importance of lay leadership in maintaining the orthodox direction of a denomination:
"The ruling elder gave birth to the Presbyterian Church in America. Not the preachers but the ruling elders. When the ministers were too cautious to take decisive action, the ruling elders took the lead. They formed the organizations and called the meetings that eventually led to the formation of the PCA.
"Now the ruling elder must devote himself to diligence in maintaining this great church. If the PCA is to realize fully its unique opportunities in the needy world today, ruling elders must show their commitment and concern by consistent involvement at every level of the church's life. Particularly at the General Assembly, the ruling elder must be present, and he must be heard. He who rules must do so with diligence. The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
Articles - Sufficient Sleep - Din - Ask the Rabbi
"It is related that the Chozeh of Lublin would instruct his students not to sleep too little. R' Yitzchak Isaac of Kamarna would say that it is better to add an hour of sleep and the rest of the day be a mentch than to limit your sleep by an hour and the rest of the day be a chaya ra'ah."
"Sin Boldly!" - The Scriptorium Daily
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Martin Luther's statement to Philip Melanchthon, pecca fortiter sed fortius fide: "To understand this, everything depends on how the difference between result and presupposition is applied. If Luther's statement is used as a presupposition for a theology of grace, then it proclaims cheap grace. But Luther's statement is to be understood correctly not as a beginning, but exclusively as an end, a conclusion, a last stone, as the very last word. ...'Sin boldly' -that could be for Luther only the very last bit of pastoral advice, of consolation for those who along the path of discipleship have come to know that they cannot become sin-free, who out of fear of sin despair of God's grace. For them, 'sin boldly' is not something like a fundamental affirmation of their disobedient lives. Rather, it is the gospel of God's grace, in the presence of which we are sinners always and at every place. This gospel seeks us and justifies us exactly as sinners. Admit your sin boldly; do not try to flee from it, but 'believe much more boldly.'"
SCHAEFFER COLLECTION | Ideaslibrary
A collection of sermon and lecture audio by Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith Schaeffer.
"Although Francis Schaeffer started out as a Presbyterian pastor in the States, he came to wider attention in the late 1960s through the unusual ministry of L'Abri, which he and his wife, Edith, founded in Switzerland. By then he was in his late 40s and the work was barely 10 years old. Dozens of people visited their home in the Alps: they'd heard it was somewhere they could find 'honest answers to honest questions'. Without publicity of any kind the trickle turned into a stream and the stream into a flood, especially after his first books in 1968 ('Escape from Reason' and 'The God who is There').
"This led to many more books and to an illustrious and much-appreciated international ministry. Many of his readers likened him to C S Lewis, not because of any similarity in style (they couldn't have been more different), but because his ideas were similarly powerful. Each in his own way knew how to expose the weaknesses of the dominant humanistic worldview, indeed, the weaknesses of all other worldviews. Without a doubt, Schaeffer became one of the greatest apologists of the 20th-century.
"However, Schaeffer's central concern was neither philosophy nor culture. His most fundamental concern was always the truth of the Bible. He read it first as a mature teenager - without any outside help, interestingly - and he came to understand that Christianity is more than just a set of superstitious beliefs, rather, an objectively true account of what reality actually is. In fact, nearly two-thirds of his recorded work is a sustained eulogy of the glories of God's written Word!
"Most people associate Dr. Schaeffer with the word 'apologetics', but this is only partially correct. A failure to understand his devotion to the Bible is to miss the whole point of Schaeffer's life and work. The last thing he wanted to do was to establish a 'school of apologetics'. For him, the issue was quite simply this: does what God has said in his (written) Word merit attention, and will we obey it? In short, all that he taught was pointed to this end: that we read the Bible for ourselves, just as he did as a young man, and thus find the only adequate resolution of all our questions and difficulties, just as he did. Jesus called that 'having life and having it more abundantly'."
American megachurches are thriving by poaching flocks - The Economist
"Welcome to Life.Church, one of America's largest megachurches, headquartered near Oklahoma City. Really it is a chain of churches, with 44 sites across 12 states. Every weekend around 80,000 people attend one of 170 services in person. Most watch a pre-recorded sermon by a senior pastor, Craig Groeschel; a junior pastor acts as an in-person MC and a worship band plays live. The whole thing blends seamlessly, and it is streamed online, too.
"Churches have closed as the proportion of Americans who call themselves Christian has fallen from 76% in 2010 to 64% in 2020. But most of America's 1,750 megachurches--all Protestant and mostly evangelical churches with at least 2,000 worshippers--are thriving. Between 2015 and 2020 their congregations grew by a third on average, turning younger and more multi-racial, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, a think-tank in Connecticut....
"Two-fifths of megachurches are non-denominational. The rest tend to downplay theirs and emphasise their own brand. Life.Church is affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church--but few congregants realise that."
Eternity 1950-1989 : Free Texts : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Internet Archive has borrowable grayscale scans of the full 1950-1989 run of Eternity, a monthly Christian magazine founded by Donald Barnhouse, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis writes: "I am taken by the earnestness of the topics addressed and the quality of the writers, such as John Stott, Bernard Ramm, Billy Graham, G. Elton Ladd, and others. It was a magazine of serious evangelical commentary. I found articles on the God is dead theory, race relations, various political issues, LSD, youth culture, television (note the cover I posted from 1976), and other issues of moment.... I wrote a few articles for them [in the mid '80s], one rather long piece on New Age politics. By combing through these old issues, I see that Eternity gave us solid evangelical commentary and Bible study back in the day and for many years. For this, I am grateful and look forward to working my way through the years of their magazine." Because the magazines are still under copyright, you must have an Internet Archive account to check out a copy for viewing one hour at a time. The final issue dated January 1989 has cover stories by Brian Frickle regarding the moral content of architecture and by Thomas L. Kerns on architecture and creating a place of worship.
How Big is the United Methodist Split So Far? - Juicy Ecumenism
"In reviewing the official list of the 100 top-largest American United Methodist congregations in 2020, based on membership, I note that 26 have left since then. [Four of the top 100 are in Tulsa: Boston Avenue, 7,641; Asbury, 6,926; First Methodist, 5,824; and Christ Church, 5,086.]
"In 2019, the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, Len Wilson produced a list of the 25 fastest-growing large congregations in American United Methodism, measured by worship attendance. Since then, 11 of these 25 have successfully disaffiliated from the UMC.
"So while some 21 percent of American United Methodist congregations have disaffiliated, 26 percent of the largest-membership congregations and 44 percent of the fastest-growing large congregations have disaffiliated."
Ten Reasons Why I Believe the Bible Is the Word of God by R. A. Torrey | Tony Cooke Ministries
"I found myself face to face with the question, Why do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? I had no satisfactory answer. I determined to go to the bottom of this question. If satisfactory proof could not be found that the Bible was God's Word I would give the whole thing up, cost what it might. If satisfactory proof could be found that the Bible was God's Word I would take my stand upon it, cost what it might. I doubtless had many friends who could have answered the question satisfactorily, but I was unwilling to confide to them the struggle that was going on in my own heart; so I sought help from God and from books, and after much painful study and thought came out of the darkness of scepticism into the broad daylight of faith and certainty that the Bible from beginning to end is God's Word. The following pages are largely the outcome of that experience of conflict and final victory. I will give Ten Reasons why I believe the Bible is the Word of God."
MORE: Charles Leach, Our Bible: How We Got It, published in 1898.
