It can be discouraging to see Christian leaders sometimes falter and sometimes fall. We feel residual shame when yet another well-known pastor is caught in scandal, when yet another Christian celebrity succumbs to a web of his own weaving. Yet we need to be careful that we do not make the extent of the problem…
There are many passages in the Bible we could go to to learn of the calling, the preparation, and the character of the elder. But it has often struck me that one of the most obvious also seems to be one of the most overlooked—Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders in the twentieth chapter…
A book about a Christian perspective on manhood and womanhood faces an immediate challenge: Do we really need another one? There are, after all, any number of titles that deal with the subject and do so with skill. Could there really be a place for one more? Kevin DeYoung believes there is and, for that…
There are some topics that are relevant to only some Christians and a few topics that are relevant to all. One of those universal topics is finances, for each of us is entrusted with money and needs to learn to steward it well. Each of us is responsible for the ways we handle our money…
I used to say that no living theologian had impacted my faith more than R.C. Sproul. His books changed me, formed me, strengthened me. His sermons and conference talks never failed to grip my heart and thrill my soul. His teaching series fed my mind and taught me how to live out my faith. In…
Whatever else we might say about the contemporary church, we must say this: We are well resourced. When a new challenge presents itself, when a new teaching arises, when a new heresy appears, it does not take long before we have access to books that address, confront, and correct it. One of the recent challenges…
“I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” While this is a phrase we have grown accustomed to hearing in recent years, it is a phrase that would have been incomprehensible to those who lived and died just a couple of generations in the past. While it is full of meaning today, it would…
Christians have always had to contend with false teaching and competing faiths. But what surely makes the current age unique is the sheer number and sheer diversity we may encounter in any given place. From my context in ultra-multicultural Toronto, it is not unusual to find myself in a setting where there are adherents of…
Do you remember the Emerging Church? Steeped in postmodernism and marked by more than a little progressivism, it rose to prominence in the early naughts and seemed as if it would present a formidable challenge to orthodox Christianity in the new millennium. Many viewed it as a severe threat to the gospel of Jesus Christ.…
I grew up in the era of the Cold War. From my youngest days I was taught that the West was the bastion of democratic freedom and the Soviet Union the stronghold of oppressive totalitarianism. We knew who the enemy was, and we knew he was across the ocean, behind the Wall. On our fridge…
We’ve all heard by now of the rise of the “Nones,” that growing demographic that, when filling out a census, marks their religious affiliation as “None.” While until recently they made up only the smallest minority in America (and the rest of the Western world) they may now come close to forming a majority, especially…
It is more than a little ironic, and more than a little disturbing, that some of the most prominent “Christian” scholars in the world are not Christian at all. At least, not by a definition that would require their assent to the doctrines outlined in the historic creeds and confessions. To the contrary, many of…
You can’t read the news, you can’t scroll through Twitter, you can’t browse a bookstore, you probably can’t even talk to a neighbor without realizing that somehow everything has become about race, gender, and identity. In a short period of time we’ve been introduced to a whole new vocabulary that conveys a whole new set…
Books often arrive in topical waves as an event or emphasis within the church or within wider society sparks many writers to address a common concern. This is the case right now with a whole crop of new books that have significant thematic overlap: Scott Saul’s A Gentle Answer: Our ‘Secret Weapon’ in an Age…
For the past couple of weeks I have been laboring to write the third and final part of my review of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. The first two parts took an unusually long time to prepare, but in the end I was pleased with the results. In the first article my goal was to summarize…
When historians look back on the twenty-first century Western world, surely few things will strike them as being more deranged and more sinister than its insistence that biology has no bearing on an individual’s gender. While society has long acknowledged the rare existence of gender dysphoria, a psychological condition marked by discomfort with one’s biological…
The gospel of Jesus Christ is fixed, unchanging, and unchangeable. Just as God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so, too, is the good news of what Jesus Christ has done. But the methods and strategies Christians use to explain and defend that gospel can vary as much as humanity does. While there have…
Christians are well-resourced when it comes to books on suffering. Such books can typically be divided into two types: Those that are structured around theological themes and those that are structured around lived experiences. So some people begin with an examination of what the Bible has to say about suffering while other people begin with…
If you know much of anything about Albert Mohler, you’ll probably be quick to understand the title of his new book, The Gathering Storm. Mohler is a lifelong student of Winston Churchill and has borrowed the title from the first volume of Churchill’s massive work on the Second World War. However, he hasn’t merely borrowed…
Andrew T. Le Peau has had a significant influence on Christian writing not first through his own books, but through his long career as an editor. While he has authored a number of popular books and Bible studies, his greater work has been influencing a generation of writers as an associate publisher for editorial at…