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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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History

Chromosomes or Culture?

Stanford’s Carl N. Degler’s In Search of Human Nature tells the story of the contest between biological and cultural determinists in the social sciences. Much of late 19th-century social science was shaped by a crude Darwinian paradigm. Biological factors like race and sex were considered to be the chief determinants…

December 28, 2005
History

Malthus and Conservatism

One of the many ironies of contemporary political discourse is the co-option of Malthus by the political left, for the Rev. Thomas Malthus was undoubtedly a man of the right. His Essay on the Principle of Population was an anti-utopian tract designed to refute what Malthus called, in his original…

December 28, 2005
Theology

Aesthetic apologetics

Christian apologetics tends to focus on ethical or rational arguments. Questions such as “Can we be good without God?” and “Does that being exist than which nothing greater can be conceived?” and “What are the transcendental conditions of knowledge?” have dominated the field. A good historical argument can be made,…

December 28, 2005
History

Medieval Technology

A number of years ago, Stanley Jaki, a Roman Catholic historian of science, published an article in Modern Age defending the technological acumen of medievals. He cited three medieval inventions that provide evidence “of the striking modernity ofthe Middle Ages.” So many innovations came from the Middle Ages that “as…

December 27, 2005

Sermon Outline, Sunday After Christmas

Much of the following is borrowed from James Jordan’s lectures on Ecclesiastes given at the 2005 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. INTRODUCTION Life in the twenty-first century is frantic and ever-changing. Today’s styles quickly become passé, old skills are soon useless, nothing holds still long enough to harden into habit. Ecclesiastes…

December 27, 2005

Change and Permanence

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon offers intriguing, somewhat paradoxical reflections on the problems of change and permanence. On the one hand, the reality that provokes his opening lament that the world is “vapor” is the apparently unchanging permanence: The sun rises and sets day after day, the rivers flow into the seas…

December 27, 2005

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