Pastor David Keuss - Hope without Compromise

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...

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...

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.

I was at an apartment complex today where they had someone go around to all of the buildings to inspect their foundations. They were built in the late 1980's, so that the buildings could have been structurally sound still. However, they did not have initial piers attached to the concrete slab to prevent movement (which would have been relatively less expensive than adding them later). To make matters worse, the management (not sure who it was then) years and years ago, had a cheapo pier company come out and work around the buildings. The pier company told them nice things, but sold them an inadequate product. You can see these later concrete cut outs along the side and in other places. These cheapo piers are poured concrete and eventually shift easily. Several of these apartment buildings are on a downward slope, which means the building moves over time. This little fix makes the problem worse, because the ineffective piers are in the places where an effective one should be. At ...

H ave you ever wondered what the point of allergies is? They drag a lot of people into a fog in Texas during the Fall. Allergies would seem to fit into the category of Genesis 3:17-19. What do you think, are allergens part of the Genesis three curse? The affliction of allergies then would be a sign of God's glory in that His absence from keeping things smoothly running as well as they could because the Fall has effects in the present. However, the thorns and thistles idea in Genesis is very much tied to work. This is an interesting concept, since allergies affect more than those working. Perhaps then they are not involved with hardship in work as much as they are situated in the fallenness of the world, not working as it should, before the restoration of all things later in history.

E d Stetzer has an article challenging the focus on relevance to the exclusion of gospel theology. This is probably a good warning for many on the edge of planting. However, on the other hand, there are many who are not very relevant to the culture. In fact, if I had to guess most churches, and church starts, probably are far from relevant in either music style, music language, language of the sermons, and presentation (of gospel, order of service, etc). Still because the enemy works cleverly to deceive all of us, we must stick with the gospel's whole content (such as Jesus' substitionary death, in our place on the cross for our sins) in every planting effort around the country. We must as planters not forget to challenge persons to believe the gospel in a personal decision. Thank you for the good warning for all of us Stetzer.

I n a major book on church planting in evangelical life, there is this objection to forming churches in an area in the US: 'another church ... will impede the growth of our church.' This is simply false the authors say, as "when Jesus said "I will build my church," he was not referring to the numerical growth of a particular congregation." In other words, reproduction of congregations following Jesus is the way that the church universal leads more -individuals- "to spiritual maturation." In addition, new churches are not competition but rather instruments to extend the "rule and reign of God" among a people group or city. It is nearly impossible for one church or even several really good churches to reach a whole city, let alone a corridor (several cities). Simply put: people are not doing the same things, they are not in the same place at the same time. This means new churches have an opportunity to branch out into those arenas. Another ...