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Showing posts from December, 2010

Mormon America

I 've been doing a little light Christmas reading, so as part of this I picked up a book that reads quickly called Mormon America . The work is by authors Richard Ostling and Joan Ostling. Richard spent three decades with Time Magazine in various key roles and was working with the Associated Press as a religion writer according to the back cover. Joan was an editor and writer with the US Information Agency in Wash., DC and a reporter with Press Publications in Chicago. Their goal is to provide a nonpolemical overview of Mormonism as it grows rapidly around the world and to some extent in the US (though from the book one may assume not as quickly as overseas). The book covers everything from what a Celestial Room is in a Mormon temple (page 190) to the fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon bishop who was invited to speak at Pat Robertson's school in a surprising situation. I have to admit coming from a Methodist-Baptist-Community church background that the book was fascinating. I&#

Communicating for a Change

A ndy Stanley and Lane Jones have written a book with the above name, that compares preaching to truck driving, literally. The book is also written in a conversational format. Those two things alone may cause you to doubt its usefulness to you thinking through communication theory. Perhaps they went too basic. The redeeming quality though, because it is a great teaching book, is a series of gold nuggets throughout the long dialogues between an alleged pastor and the truck driving individual. If you can press ahead, you will find useful speaking tips and principles for the Christian communicator. The book really can only be appreciated by a veteran preacher in whatever area they happen to be of church life or speaking engagements. The backing for points about the one idea sermon depend upon this. In addition, one may get glazed eyes reading it if there was not a strong felt need of the speaking reader to communicate better than an informational session about a Bible passage. If you spea

Roger Nicole Passing

I heard tonight that famous 20th century Christian theologian Roger Nicole has passed away at 95 years old. He was a past evangelical leader, being president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and having taught at Reformed Theological Seminary. He wrote over 100 articles, and contributed to 50 plus books, and helped set up the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (inerrancy generally meaning each word of Scripture is inspired of God). It is sad to hear about this figure passing as he has influenced so many of us in evangelical church life when it comes to theology. I know that I personally benefited from his work on inerrancy and how that influences the rest of theology. One person on twitter put it rightly, at least now he is beholding the face of Jesus Christ. As far as I can see, he ran the race, fought the fight, and persevered by faith. Well done. For brief info about his life's work you may look at these links current when this blog was posted: Here. Here.