April 2006 Archive
The Gospel Ministry (04/30/06 - 2 Comments)
Last year I had the great privilege of attending the Shepherd's Conference held at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. I was blessed to be able to sit under the teaching of such well known teachers as John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, Al Mohler, J. Ligon Duncan and Mark Dever. I benefitted greatly from being challenged by the messages these men delivered. Yet I believe that the greatest blessing of the week spent in California...
T4G - The Together For The Gospel Statement (04/29/06 - 75 Comments)
Note - This is, apparently a transcription of the document and it contains a few typos and so on. The T4G guys will be releasing a final version soon. So take this one only as a guide while you wait for the real mccoy. We are brothers in Christ united in one great cause - to stand together for the Gospel. We are convinced that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been misrepresented, misunderstood, and...
Book Review - To Own A Dragon (04/29/06 - 3 Comments)
Donald Miller's popularity continues to grow. His mostly autobiographical book Blue Like Jazz put him on the map as a notable author and his subsequent books and speaking opportunities have served to increase this popularity. He is particularly well-liked by teens and young adults. It is to a portion of this audience that To Own A Dragon is addressed. Miller grew up without a father. He does not reveal exactly where his father went or...
T4G Session Seven - John MacArthur (04/28/06 - 47 Comments)
The final session of the conference will be led by none other than John MacArthur who will speak about "40 Years of Gospel Ministry" and who was introduced by Al Mohler. He had us stand and read for us the first two chapters of 1 Thessalonians (from our new MacArthur Study Bibles) and then proceeded to reflect on 40 years of gospel ministry. It was a biographical address, of sorts, and one that was very...
T4G Session Six - C.J. Mahaney (04/28/06 - 14 Comments)
We began this morning with a medly of sorts that combined "When I Survey The Wondrous Cross" with "The Gospel Song." Mark Dever than dispensed a few thank yous and introduced the final series of books we will receive at this conference. They are Sex, Romance and the Glory of God by C.J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney, Speaking the Truth in Love by David Powlison,Why One Way? by John MacArthur and a...
T4G Session Five - John Piper (04/27/06 - 37 Comments)
The conference is now already more than half finished. We have only three general sessions and two panel sessions remaining. We will still hear from John Piper, C.J. Mahaney and John MacArthur. I just shared a nice dinner with Josh Harris at that same restaurant I went to at lunch that most other people have not yet discovered. This is not to say that he and I shared a plate of food, but that he...
T4G Session Four - R.C. Sproul (04/27/06 - 36 Comments)
I just got back from a nice Italian lunch with my friend Chris whom I met at The Shepherd's Conference and a friend from his church who is attending this conference with him. We ate the meatiest pizza I've ever laid eyes upon. They don't make pizza like that back home in Canada! Of greater significance, we seem to have found a restaurant that has significantly less traffic than the other local hangouts. This may...
T4G - Panel Discussions (04/27/06 - 9 Comments)
Interspersed throughout this week's conference are panel sessions. There are five of them: two featuring the Together for the Gospel foursome and three others, each featuring one of the special guests (R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur and John Piper). These sessions are an opportunity for those in attendance, most of whom are pastors, to listen to these men chat amongst themselves in a somewhat informal context. It is an opportunity to see a group of men...
T4G Session Three - Al Mohler (04/27/06 - 21 Comments)
After a very short break and a brief video about Boyce College, Al Mohler took the pulpit to bring a message on "Preaching with the Culture in View." He is a bit nervous about the concept of preaching with culture in view, for he sees a polarity of dangers. There are some Christians who take the culture with no seriousness at all while others allow it to become dominant within their ministry. There are some...
T4G Session 2 - Ligon Duncan (04/27/06 - 18 Comments)
Day two of the Together for the Gospel conference began early. We left our hotel room at 7 and went searching for some breakfast. The lineup at Starbucks wrapped around the restaurant, so we sought out a small deli where the lineups were long, but not devastating. The conference began at 8 AM. It is set to continue through most of the day before wrapping up close to 10 PM. With most of the breaks...
T4G - Session One - Mark Dever (04/26/06 - 11 Comments)
The first session features Dr. Mark Dever, pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C. The message, which has the theme of "The Pastor's Understanding of His Own Role" is titled "Three Marks of a Faithful Pastor." It is drawn from 1 Corinthians 4 which contains a striking contrast between the real ministers of Christ and the imposters. This passage shows us three marks of a real minister. A cross-centered message (verses 1-7) -...
T4G - Introduction (04/26/06 - 27 Comments)
We are packed in to the Grand Ballroom of the Galt House Hotel, a huge hotel in the downtown core of Louisville, Kentucky. We're shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. The room is packed from back to front with men who have come to hear about the gospel. The room is filled to overflowing and the organizers had to turn away hundreds more. What a beautiful thing it is to be together for the gospel....
Together For The Gospel (04/26/06 - 14 Comments)
I have been given the great honor of liveblogging the first ever Together for the Gospel Conference. This is a conference dedicated to one thing: the centrality of the good news of Jesus Christ. "Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, and Albert Mohler minister in diverse contexts, but they are united in this: the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ, preached clearly and lived faithfully. Now they are coming together in a unique conference...
Announcement: Discerning Reader (04/25/06 - 34 Comments)
I promised yesterday that today I would have a big announcement. Well here it is. I am announcing the launch of a new web site. Well, a new/old web site. You may remember a site called Discerning Reader. Once a very popular and well-regarded site, it ran into all sorts of trouble, the details of which I do not care to expound upon. Suffice it to say that the site shut down and the domain...
A Clean Bill of Health (04/25/06 - 6 Comments)
Thanks to all of you who have been praying for Aileen. She went to the midwife today and received a clean bill of health. Her blood pressure, which had been trending up through the past three or four visits, suddenly fell precipitously back down to where it was a couple of months ago. It is now at a near-perfect level, actually. So I guess the combination of lots of prayer and lots of rest did...
Monday Ramblings (04/24/06 - 10 Comments)
Some of the people who read this site love the book reviews. Other people hate them. Those poor souls must be frustrated as I have posted an awful lot of reviews over the past few days. I can't bring myself to apologize for this. I have had a long and strange week and somehow found myself reading even more than usual. That has resulted in a large number of book reviews (including a few that...
Book Review - Freakonomics (04/24/06 - 0 Comments)
I elected to read Freakonomics as part of my ongoing effort to engage with books that have become fixtures on the New York Times list of bestsellers. This title has spent many weeks on that list and has sold millions of copies. This is a bit surprising for a book dealing with the decidedly unsexy discipline of economics. Still, the subtitle, "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" hints at a level of...
Book Review - 90 Minutes in Heaven (04/23/06 - 27 Comments)
We know of three people, from Scripture, who were privileged to see heaven. All of these men, Stephen and the Apostles Paul and John, were alive when they were given a glimpse of the wonders of heaven. Don Piper, a Baptist pastor, claims to be a fourth, though unlike the other three, he first had to die. Returning home from a conference, Piper's car was crushed under the wheels of a truck. Medical personnel declared...
Book Review - The Da Vinci Code: A Quest For Answers (04/22/06 - 8 Comments)
The Da Vinci Code, having already sold some 40 million copies in book format, will soon be hitting the silver screen. Starring none other than Tom Hanks, the film promises to introduce the book's claims to countless millions who have not already read the book. As we might expect, evangelicals are gearing up to defend the truth against many of the film's spurious claims. It seems that every Christian publisher has released at least one...
Evangelical Hypocrisy (04/21/06 - 70 Comments)
Christians are anticipating The Da Vinci Code movie with a mix of expectation and dread. The expectation is based on knowing that Jesus' name will be, at least for a short time, on many tongues. This may create opportunities to discuss Him with friends, family neighbors and co-workers. The dread is based on the knowledge that Dan Brown, in his book, and thus in the film, took great liberties with history, presenting as factual a...
Book Review - Out of Control (04/21/06 - 0 Comments)
"When was the last time you felt rested and peaceful in this fast-paced, go-to-go culture? It's a world of instant message, speed dialing, and express lanes that often create a sense of mania and fragmentation. Has your life become like a 24-hour convenience store that is up and running 365 days a year?" We all feel like that at times, don't we? Our society values few things higher than action. We are to be busy...
Wading In (04/20/06 - 47 Comments)
On the thirteenth of April, one week ago, John MacArthur was invited to be a guest on Larry King Live. I have lost track of the number of times that MacArthur has been asked to participate in King's show, but it seems that when King needs a person to defend traditional, biblical Protestantism, he calls MacArthur. It is always a good choice. When MacArthur appears on Larry King Live he usually appears as part of...
Training For The Ministry (04/20/06 - 18 Comments)
The first job I ever had was delivering the Markham Economist & Sun, a small newspaper headquartered in a suburb of Toronto. I received no training, nor did I need any. On the day I began the job I was given a canvas bag, a large stack of newspapers and a list of houses that subscribed to the paper. I put the papers in the sack, consulted the list and left one newspaper in the...
The Benefits of the Catechisms (04/19/06 - 40 Comments)
Catechisms were an important part of my life when I was a child. I grew up in a Reformed tradition that placed great value in the Catechisms. Some would argue they placed too great an emphasis on catechetical instruction. From a young age I was able to recite large portions of the Heidelberg Catechism and eventually learned every one of the questions and answers. Many of them are still fresh in my mind while others...
The Psychology of Pain (04/18/06 - 19 Comments)
Stuart Derbyshire, a senior psychologist at Britain's University of Birmingham says that pain is subjective. "Pain is something that comes from our experiences and develops due to stimulation and human interaction. It involves concepts such as location, feelings of unpleasantness and having the sensation of pain. Pain becomes possible because of a psychological development that begins at birth when the baby is separated from the protected atmosphere of the womb and is stimulated into wakeful...
T4G - Band of Bloggers Panel (04/17/06 - 18 Comments)
As you may know, immediately prior to the Together for the Gospel Conference, there will be a meeting by and for bloggers. Timmy Brister, who has served as the organizer for this event, has called it "T4G: Band of Bloggers." While the topic has not yet been finalized, it will be revolve around blogging, the gospel, and the intersection of the two. The formal part of the meeting, which will be followed by a time...
Routine (04/17/06 - 6 Comments)
I am a routine-based person. This has really only become clear to me over the past few weeks. I operate best when I am a routine. I have patterns and habits in life and, within these, I function quite well. When these patterns are disrupted, I tend to struggle. I would not have believed this about myself had it not been made obvious to me in the last few days and weeks. Case in point:...
Book Review - Faithful God (04/16/06 - 3 Comments)
It was only through the providence of God that Sinclair Ferguson's new book Faithful God came to be. The chapters of the book were originally written as a series of messages delivered at the conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales in Aberystwyth in August 1996. But the spoken word and the written word are sufficiently different that, when asked if he would consider turning the messages into a book, Ferguson, who serves as Professor...
Book Review - Eat This Book (04/15/06 - 8 Comments)
Eugene Peterson believes that the way we read the Bible is as important as the very fact that we read the Bible. "Do we read the Bible for information about God and salvation, for principles and 'truths' that we can use to live better? Or do we read it in order to listen to God and respond in prayer and obedience?" To address these questions, Peterson brings us Eat This Book: A Conversation in the...
An Audience of One (04/14/06 - 11 Comments)
Every Friday morning, before the sun rises, I get together with a couple of friends for a time of fellowship. We have been reading through and discussing Os Guinness' book The Call. We are currently nine chapters in and are finding that, even if the book is a little frustrating at times as it seems to take a long time to develop, it has given us much food for thought. In the chapter we discussed...
Book Review - What The Bible Teaches About Angels (04/13/06 - 1 Comments)
Time magazine got it right, "For those who choke too easily on God and his rules...angels are the handy compromise, all fluff and meringue, kind, nonjudgemental. They are available to everyone, like aspirin. Only in the New Age would it be possible to invent an angel so mellow that it can be ignored." My local newspaper contains constant advertisements for guides who can help any sufficiently gullible person to get in touch with angels. A...
T4G: Band of Bloggers Fellowship (04/13/06 - 11 Comments)
Timmy Brister, he of Provocations and Pantings fame, has been hard at work putting together a time of fellowship for bloggers who will be attending the upcoming Together For The Gospel Conference. The fellowship will take place immediately before the conference begins--on Wednesday, April 26 at 3:00 p.m. in the Heritage Hall of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Registration begins earlier that afternoon, and the bloggers event will end with sufficient time to grab a...
Technology: An Evil Master (04/12/06 - 23 Comments)
Why is it that when a person is looking for a house, driving slowly down a darkened street straining to see the numbers on the fronts of the homes or on the mailboxes at the end of the driveways, he automatically turns down the car radio? He does so because he instinctively knows that music or voices are a distraction. A person cannot focus as well on the task at-hand when there is noise in...
Eugene Peterson's Philosophy of Bible Translation (04/11/06 - 28 Comments)
Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading is the second of a five-part series of books being written by Eugene Peterson who is best known as the translator of The Message. This series of books comes in the twilight years of Peterson's career as author, pastor and translator, and it allows him to reflect on his many years of ministry. It is a rather strange and wandering book in which Peterson...
Boldness Is Our Birthright (04/10/06 - 120 Comments)
Yesterday morning in church we sang a song I knew from the album "Songs For The Cross Centered Life" but had never had the privilege of singing during a worship service. The song was "I Come By The Blood" by Steve and Vikki Cook. It is quite a recent song, but one whose expression of theology is easily equal to many of the old hymns. It proves, as do many of the songs recorded on...
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (04/09/06 - 38 Comments)
When it comes to evangelism, it seems that Calvinists have quite a poor reputation in the church today. Most of the largest and seemingly most successful mission organizations were founded by Arminians and continue to be based around Arminian theology. Arminian churches seem to grow much faster than churches based on Calvinist principles. It seems that part of the reason for this is that Calvinists have such a high view of God’s sovereignty that it...
Book Review - Reckless Faith (04/08/06 - 3 Comments)
It seems unusual, does it not, that at a time when the church is in such dire need of discernment, there are few books to be found that address this critical issue. Or perhaps it is this dearth of books dealing with discernment that have contributed to the problem. Regardless, at a time when the shelves at Christian bookstores are groaning under the weight of the tens of thousands of books published each year, it...
Worship: From the Frying Pan Into the Fire (04/07/06 - 64 Comments)
Until yesterday it had been quite a while since I had written about worship. I had forgotten what a difficult and even contentious issue it is within the church. I guess, at least to some extent, it has always been this way. The issue of music brings out both the best and the worst in Christians. While I had another article ready for posting today, I thought I would put it off for a day...
Mr. Storms and Mr. Taylor, I Respectfully Disagree (04/06/06 - 72 Comments)
The most recent issue of Christianity Today features a short article by Chuck Colson entitled "Soothing Ourselves to Death" which, if you are so inclined, you could read by clicking here. Colson contends that "much of the music being written for the church today reflects an unfortunate trend--slipping across the line from worship to entertainment. Evangelicals are in danger of amusing ourselves to death, to borrow the title of the classic Neil Postman book." Colson...
King for a Week - Dr. Mohler's Blog (04/05/06 - 9 Comments)
King for a Week is an honor I bestow on blogs that I feel are making a valuable contribution to my faith and the faith of other believers. Every week (or so) I select a blog, link to it from my site, and add that site's most recent headlines to my left sidebar. While this is really not much, I do feel that it allows me to encourage and support other bloggers while making my...
