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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

Prescient Belloc

Hillaire Belloc concluded a 1927 debate with George Bernard Shaw with this: Our civilization Is built upon coal, Let us chant in rotation Our civilization That lump of damnation Without any soul Our civilization Is built upon coal. In a very few years It will float upon oil.

May 10, 2008
History

Pugin and Foucault

In his 1836 book, Contrasts , architect, designer, and social critic A. W. Pugin contrasts Bentham’s “panopticon” (Foucaultian symbol of modern surveillance and the carceral society) with an idealized Gothic “Ancient Poor House.” In his recent book on medievalism in modern England, Michael Alexander notes that Pugin was one of…

May 10, 2008
Science

Intelligent design

Dispassionate he’s not. In his recent book on evolution and the “big questions,” David Stamos tried to show how evolution can answer all the big questions of existence, far better than ID, for sure. Intelligent design is not “genuine science” but instead “essentially mythological thinking masquerading in a lab coat.…

May 9, 2008
Art

Sacred and architecture

I have some reservations about what Philip Bess means by “the sacred” and “response to the sacred,” but his applications to architecture are very intriguing ( Till We Have Build Jerusalem ; ISI, 2006). When people encounter “the sacred,” he says, they respond with sacrifice, prohibition, obedience. Architecture is one…

May 9, 2008
Literature

Shakespeare and his plays

In his recent biography of Shakespeare, Bill Bryson quotes an anti-Stratfordian comment that contemporary documents never describe Shakespeare as an author. Bryson responds: “That is not even close to being so. In the Master of the Revels’ accounts for 1604-1605 - that is, the record of plays performed before the…

May 9, 2008
American Religion

American Enlightenment

Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my post on American priestcraft: [1] The dichotomy, “Enlightenment or evangelical” is a bit too pat for my taste, but then I tend to squint until I see shades of gray in what others see as the most black and white…

May 9, 2008

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