Summer is over and publishers are now preparing to roll out a whole new season of books. Many publishers wait until the fall to release their best books, hoping that the coming Christmas season will lead to increased sales. In the general publishing world this means that we will see new titles by Tom Clancy,…
Occasionally I attempt to think back to all of the questions I receive from readers of this site. I try to think of things I have been asked many times but have never written about. One that came to mind recently is rather a simple question: Under what circumstances may I leave my church? Quite…
It’s an early morning today as I head for a meeting. And now that it’s September I have to leave early so as to contend with traffic. Bummer. CVBBS Sale – Today and tomorrow Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is offering great deals on their books. I believe you’ll get a blanket 10% off your…
Last year I wrote a series of articles I titled Sexual Detox (which was subsequently made available in e-book and then printed book format). It was a series that dealt with the effects of pornography and which encouraged men to go through a kind of detox that would rid their minds and hearts of all…
I have received quite a few books about church planting over the past few months. Among the more interesting have been Church Planting Is for Wimps by Mike McKinley and Discovering Church Planting by J.D. Payne. Fresh off the press is Darrin Patrick’s Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission. Patrick is vice president…
Labor Day has passed and today our children return to school after a long summer break. They headed off just a few minutes ago with their new backpacks and binders and pencils and bottles of hand sanitizer (how come I didn’t have hand sanitizer when I was in school?). This year our youngest begins her…
A few years ago there was a strike at a juvenile detention center that is near my house. The institution lies directly between my house and pretty much every place I ever drive to, so I had to go by it just about every time I set out. Every day the strikers would update a…
Last week I shared a prayer by Matthew Henry–one that was drawn from A Method for Prayer. This week I want to share another, this time one that is a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. Do you find that you pray the Lord’s Prayer by rote, without thinking about the familiar words? Then try praying…
I have been reading a lot of R.C. Sproul lately, partly for work and partly for pleasure. This week I made my way through Reason to Believe, “a response to common objections to Christianity.” One of the common objections to the faith is that Christians are a bunch of lousy hypocrites, people who call out…
A few weeks ago I received an ESV Bible Atlas, a brand new product from Crossway. I had meant to review it, but for some reason found it difficult to do so. The reason may be that I’ve never spent any significant amount of time reading a Bible atlas before and this means that I’ve…
This week’s Free Stuff Fridays sponsor is Moody Publishers. That is a name well-known around these parts as they regularly sponsor these giveaways. This week they are offering a prize package that contains four new books. Five winners will each be sent these four titles: Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church — Soong-Chan…
Sometimes people ask me what A La Carte really is. The truth is pretty simple: it’s a round-up of things I noticed the day before (or sometimes that morning). It represents those few things that caught my eye as I went about my day. Sometimes they are profound things, sometimes they are funny things and…
Today we come to our final reading on the life of Spurgeon. This book has been a quick read, but an enjoyable one, I think. This week’s chapters focused on the final days of Spurgeon’s life. Much of the content consisted in tributes to the man penned after his death. This is a good way…
It was interesting to watch the big Apple event yesterday (where they unveiled new iPods, a new AppleTV and a new iTunes). It seemed to me that if you didn’t know the context of the event, it would be very difficult to distinguish it from religion. Steve Jobs has done an amazing job of building…
Yesterday I finished up Nancy Pearcey’s new book Saving Leonardo. Nancy doesn’t write a lot of books, but when she does, they are worth reading. She’s a unique thinker and one who puts into words what for so many of us are just ideas flitting around the edges of our minds. This new book is…
Happy September, blog readers. If anyone can explain to me how it got to be September so quickly, I’d love to hear an explanation. We’re six days away from my kids heading back to school (including my youngest who begins this year!). And it seems like it was just yesterday that the last school year…