Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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”…
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…
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Isaiah 66 includes a terrifying warning to Israel: Yahweh is coming in fire, nose burning in anger, riding on the whirlwind that drives away the wicked like chaff. He’s coming with sword and fire to bring judgment (vv. 15-16). Sword and fire. That’s familiar. There’s the fiery sword of the…
One of the intriguing ideas in Deep Church Rising , written by Andrew G. Walker and Robin Parry, is that the church is currently suffering its “third schism.” The first two are familiar: The schism of East and West during the eleventh century, and the Protestant-Catholic division of the sixteenth.…
The Hebrew word chul means whirl, twist, or writhe, and in some contexts “dance.” In certain settings, it takes on the sense of “travail in labor,” describing a woman who writhes to bring forth a child (cf. Isaiah 26:27-28; 45:10; 51:2; 54:1). The world itself writhes in Yahweh’s presence (1…
“I will extend peace to her like a river,” Yahweh promises Jerusalem (66:12a). How is peace like a river? The parallel line that follows helps explain: “And the glory of nations like an overflowing stream.” Once, the glory of Jerusalem flowed out of Jerusalem to Babylon - the glory of…
Lawrence Buell’s The Dream of the Great American Novel addresses a long-standing question in American letters: Is there such a thing as a GAN, and if so, what is it? In her TLS review , Sarah Graham writes, “Introduced in print by John W. De Forest in January 1868, the…
Martin Bernal ( Black Athena , 1.128) points out the novelty of Christian association with the sign of the fish, which had no purchase in the Old Testament: “Key disciples were fishermen, and fishing images abound. There is the miracle of the two fishes and the five loaves of bread.…
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