I am typically pretty disciplined in avoiding memes as they make their way around the Internet. Today, though, I made an exception when I saw the hashtag #AddaWordRuinaChristianBook showing up all over my Twitter feed. (After all, it’s my day off.) It’s simple: you add one word to a book and see how badly you…
I love writing book reviews and I love reading them. Since I cannot possibly read and review all of the interesting books out there, I publish occasional round-ups of reviews written by other writers. Or even if I am able to review the book, it’s always good to get a second opinion. So here are…
Pastors Who Write Books – Here is some good advice from Barnabas Piper for pastors who want to write books of the sermon series. “When I receive proposals for books or book ideas from pastors I often get something like this as an accompanying comment: “I am the pastor of a X,000-person church, and based…
Last year I posted a few pictures from the old 70’s classic Soul Winning Made Easy by C.S. Lovett. Recently I came across another of his books, one titled Help Lord–The Devil Wants Me Fat! The book teaches how the devil is able to influence your eating, how to deal with your appetite and how…
The other day I ate some rather extraordinary Thai food for lunch and, on my way out, grabbed a fortune cookie. I cracked it open and read a silly little proverb meant to inspire, I suppose. I wish it had said “A brisk uphill walk after all-you-can-eat Thai is a bad idea.” Never mind. As…
I am often asked for pointers on writing book reviews and recently realized that, to my recollection, I’ve never written on the topic. That may be because I consider myself quite a poor book reviewer. I got into writing reviews (over 500 book reviews ago now) by circumstance more than skill; I had a blog,…
My friends know of my strange affection for bizarre ChurchMerch. A while back I posted some photos of Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now board game. A little while ago we had some friends over to give it a shot. It was horrifying beyond all imagining. In fact, it was completely unplayable. It really made…
Some time ago a friend sent me a little gift she knew I would enjoy. It is a small book, published in 1959 titled Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method). It was written by C.S. Lovett who founded Baldwin Park Baptist Church (which, strangely enough, was later renamed Personal Christianity Chapel). This book…
As you well know, the school calendar is rapidly drawing to a close and a new class of rookies is set to graduate from the nation’s seminaries. As the annual rookie draft approaches, I’ve scoured the ranks of young men, have spoken to the scouts, have attended the combine and have interviewed many of the…
On Saturday I submitted the manuscript for my book. That evening we had some friends come over, and among these friends was Paul, our pastor, who took the opportunity to share a song he had written for the occasion. I do believe this marks the first, and probably the last, time anyone has written me…
Fantasy church is a game in which players moderate imaginary denominations based on the real-life performance of churches and pastors, and compete against one another using those churches’ statistics to score points. The most recent addition to the long list of fantasy activities (other fantasy games include fantasy baseball, fantasy football, fantasy hockey, and so…
Mark Heinrich has thrown down the gauntlet. It has hit the ground with a resounding pfffft and with all the force of feather colliding with the earth. My world has been shaken. The impact of this gauntlet was such that Marc not only posted a challenge on his blog, but felt obligated to email me…
This weekend, the blogosphere, or the small corner of it that exists in Oakville, Ontario, was rocked with the allegations that Tim Challies has retired from the blogosphere. It began with an article posted on Saturday by Pastor Shaun in which he announced Challies’ retirement: “In a move nearly as upsetting as the announcement of…
Before we get frivolous, Jeff Fuller has asked that I pass along an April Fool’s tract he is promoting called “Don’t Be An April Fool.” You can download it here. I am now firmly established in my new office, which I grow to enjoy more every day. At one point I had all the books…
First off, I’d like to apologize for the lighter-than-usual blogging over the past few days. As you may know, we are preparing to move this weekend. We signed the final papers yesterday morning, hope to be handed the key to the house early this afternoon, and will be actually moving tomorrow. We’ll be heading over…
It’s good to see Amy beginning to get back to posting her humble musings. She’s been a bit of a slacker lately! And speaking of Amy, my really-quite pregnant wife made the mistake of reading Amy’s birth story in which she describes the rather difficult time she had in giving birth to her latest bundle…
My friend Matthew sent me an interesting article today. It is the story of a Christian athiest. Yes, you read that correct: a Christian atheist. Isn’t postmodernism wonderful? The article begins like this: I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe Jesus Christ was the son of a God that I don’t believe in, nor…
I’m always reading statistics. And really I have no choice because our culture seems obsessed with them. I have a question for those of you out there who are more adept than I am with numbers (and, statistically-speaking, I’d guess that this includes over 99% of you). What does it mean when “survey results are…
First off, let’s do another giveaway. For some reason I keep getting copies of Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth in the mail so let’s go ahead and clear out a couple of those. It seems appropriate that in giving away Nancy’s book we’d have a contest somehow based on the Pearceys. So how’s this? The first…
I used to watch far too many episodes of The Simpsons. In fact, I’d be willing to entertain arguments that watching any episodes of The Simpsons is too many, but I digress. Several years ago, after my son began to develop some awareness of what was playing on the television screen I decided that it…