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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Pastoral Ministry

Rural Church Growth

I've pastored a very rural church for well over a decade. Our town has about 1,000 people and will never grow until Jesus returns. 38 people attend our worship on Sundays. Here's a quick list of what we’ve done to grow our church, and what I’ve done to survive pastorally.…

by TheopolisAugust 10, 2017
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Art

Letter to a Young Artist

Thanks for sharing so honestly about your current crisis of creativity. I totally understand and relate to that; it’s happened many times in my musical life thus far, and I’ve begun to accept it as a normal rhythm of the creative process. I actually went through a serious dry spell…

by Joel ClarksonAugust 8, 2017
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Biblical Theology

Stones and Fruit: Divination and Procreation – (Part 3)

The Broken Stones of Israel At Sinai, the tablets of the Law of Moses were broken and restored. The Old Testament is a history of “new covenants,” including that promised in Jeremiah and fulfilled in Zechariah. Ultimately, the vertical Oath and the horizontal Sanctions met in the death of Jesus…

by Mike BullAugust 3, 2017
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Isaiah

God's Market, the Church

Woe to the sinful nation. Woe to those who enlarge their estates and build their portfolios. Woe to the drunks. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Woe to the proud who are wise in their own eyes. Woe to Congressmen who pass unjust laws and to…

by Peter LeithartAugust 1, 2017
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Romans

In the Flesh: Then and Now

The interpretation of Romans 7:7-25 is notoriously difficult. Good scholars disagree on many aspects of the passage, but the central interpretative difficulty concerns the identity of the “I.” Is Paul referring to himself? Is Paul referring to himself pre- or post-conversion? Does the “I” refer to Adam? Is the “I”…

by Bill SmithJuly 27, 2017
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How to Worship

The Minister's Uniform

You board the Metra train at Arlington Heights station one afternoon, heading to downtown Chicago for some sight-seeing. As the train departs from the station, a man in jeans, a striped t-shirt, and a Kansas City Royals baseball cap enters your train car, and begins asking to see each passenger’s…

by Jon HerrJuly 25, 2017

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Evangelical Alternative Medicine

C andy Gunther Brown's The Healing Gods is an effort to explain how Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) “entered the American cultural mainstream,” and especially how it achieved “a niche among evangelical and other theologically conservative Christians, although much of CAM is religious but not distinctively Christian and lacks scientific…

March 3, 2017

Spiritual Healing

I n her editor's introduction to Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing , Candy Gunther Brown observes: “According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals (2006), more than a quarter—and in many countries two-thirds—of the world’s 2 billion Christians identify themselves…

March 3, 2017

Tolerant Calvinism

I n an essay on the Brandenburg Calvinist pastor John Bergius, Bodo Nischan observes that “ Unlike most Protestants and Catholics at the time, Bergius did not think that a ruler should impose his religion on his subjects. True faith, he argued, could never be forced on people,” and he…

March 3, 2017

What Might Have Been

R obert Carle suggests that “sensible refugee policy will balance two competing realities: first, it is a moral duty for a wealthy country like the United States to help displaced and suffering people; and second, not everyone who wants to immigrate to the United States can come to live here.”…

March 3, 2017

Sub Species Aeternitatis

J ohn Milbank writes, “ Since life passes and is only mediated through memory and desire, every concrete instance of life is always also something other than itself, part of a larger, dimly-imagined reality, disclosed only partially.” Thus, “a ceaseless passing and a ceaseless dying is the very condition of…

March 3, 2017

Universal v. Universal

“W estern history is not, John Milbank argues, an evolutionary progress away from religion and toward human freedom and control.” It should instead be seen as “the history of a tremendous revolt against either particularism or the cult of universalizable power, in the name of the transcendent Good.” This revolt…

March 3, 2017

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