designing a Bible study

When I browse the shelves at Family Christian, Lifeway, or even Barnes & Noble, I see various and sundry Bible studies by all kinds of authors: for the ladies, Kay Arthur, Beth Moore, & Priscilla Shirer; for the gents (or coed), there’s John MacArthur, David Platt, Dr David Jeremiah, and many many more. What I’ve […]

church happens

Jesus did not say go make churches. He said go make disciples. If you are not making disciples, are your failing your Christ? Church is natural when disciples are made. It’s not a place – it’s body. Bodies don’t get made – they are crafted, built, nurtured, fed, and grown. If you think people get saved in church, you’re […]

What’s your Weltanschauung?

There is probably no more fundamental aspect of a person’s life, outlook, and opinion base than his weltanschauung – his worldview. For the Christian, it is vital that your worldview be based on – indeed spring from – the Bible. If your view of the world – your opinion-former, your interpretive framework for reality – […]

Christian apocalyptic fiction

Stories like the popular Left Behind series, or really any eschatalogical – other than Jerusalem Countdown – story always has a rapture event in it somewhere. Excepting the aforementioned movie (which was very good, in my opinion), I think there is a simple reason for this: if Jesus’ second coming is not presaged by a […]

consistency – pro-life or pro-death

Recently I wrote a post about how you are either pro-life or pro-death. I’ve since referenced that blog post a couple places, and have been attacked for it. I stand by my previous writing, but here extend the logic just a little. When I talked about this on a facebook post last week, I was […]

the gospel according to hashtags

For the past many months I have been meeting almost bi-weekly with a small group to study the book of Matthew. We started in Jan 2012, and as of the end of May of 2013, we’ve made it through chapter 21. At our last meeting, I had an epiphany: if the gospels were written today, […]

church planting

Jesus called us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” [Mark 6:15] and to “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” [Matthew 28:19-20a]. The first church in Jerusalem grew huge […]

why are Bibles so expensive?

I understand that printing a physical book entails some cost, but what makes Bibles so darn expensive? As an example, Lifeway has a KJV Study Bible that costs $99.99! Seriously? The book is hundreds of years past copyright – why is it [nearly] one hundred dollars? It CAN’T cost that much to print it – so […]

biased teaching

Sadly too often preachers and teachers give lopsided presentations of their subject matter to align with personal, political, or perhaps unknown biases. This occurred recently at the church my wife and I are members of in an evening topic related to alcohol. For some reason, this (along with music styles) seems to be the biggest dividing point […]