What Happened to My CCM? – “The 1990s saw an unprecedented explosion of Christian rock. Jars of Clay, Sixpence None the Richer, P.O.D., and Switchfoot were hot on Christian radio and on MTV. Christian rock festivals multiplied and expanded. CCM labels sold millions of records. It was a pretty great time to be a Christian…
The house keys have been passed to our house-sitters, the dog has been sent to a pet penitentiary, and I am on vacation. I have fled the city (and the country, for that) with the wife and kids so we can spend a week with my parents, brother, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews and miscellaneous others.…
Why Disabilities? – David Murray offers answers to good questions. “There are 600 million people with disabilities in the world? Why so many? What’s God’s purpose in this?” Biblical Theology of Motherhood – Here’s one to print off and read when you’ve got a few minutes to take it slowly and read carefully. Summer Fellowship…
What Is the Rapture? – R.C. Sproul answers the question. “1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 is Paul’s teaching about what is popularly called the rapture. The rapture is the miraculous transportation of all living Christians to heaven at the return of Jesus. There is a lot of misinformation about this event, but this passage gives us some…
John Piper does not do a lot of interviews, so it’s rather a thrill for me to be able to do just that. Since I have this opportunity, I thought it might be fun to open it up to the readers of this site (as I did recently with R.C. Sproul–that interview will be ready…
How Do Plants Know Which Way Is Up? – It’s a good question, isn’t it? “It’s dark down there in the potting soil. There’s no light, no sunshine. So how does it know which way is up and which way is down? It does know. Seeds routinely send shoots up toward the sky, and roots…
St. Andrews Hymns – I’ve been enjoying this new album of reimagined hymns. You can listen to the whole thing at the site. There are a few well-known ones, and a few that you may not have sung before. (lyrics are here) Is Obama a Christian? – Owen Strachan writes about how Christians might think…
Why I Love Marilynne Robinson – In The New Yorker, Mark O’Connell writes about his love for Marilynne Robinson’s novels. “When I say that I love Marilynne Robinson’s work, I’m not talking about half of it; I’m talking about every word of it.” (Here’s my review of Gilead) McDonald’s Photo Shoot – Why does the…
Dispatches from the Front – The excellent Dispatches from the Front DVDs are on sale at Westminster Books for just 72 hours. You can get episode 2 for just $5 and the whole series of 5 for $30 (60% off). You ought to buy a set and donate it to your church library. Raising Gospel-Centered…
The Friends of the Blog program is well underway. Already many of you have chosen to join and to take advantage of the deals. Friends of the Blog is a subscription program that allows readers to help offset the costs associated with this site while gaining some great benefits. Among the items available through the…
In a couple of weeks I am going to have an opportunity to interview R.C. Sproul. This isn’t something that comes along every day! I thought it would be interesting to have an open mic, so to speak, allowing those of you who read this site to suggest questions I may like to ask him.…
As Christians we make a big deal of the death of Jesus and rightly so because it is only through his death that we can be saved from our sin. But if all Jesus needed to accomplish before God was his death on the cross, he could have come to earth as an adult on…
3 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor – R.C. Sproul Jr. offers up three really good ways to encourage your pastor. As I read these, I realized that though I am a pastor, I ought to be more deliberate in encouraging the other pastors at my church! Building Healthy Churches – 9Marks has just released a…
I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon and I don’t mean to be insensitive, truly. Perhaps there are rules that govern these things, and I am violating them, or maybe I am just missing some vital piece of information. I don’t know. But I have been to a wide variety of Christian blogs and news…
Today I’ve got another batch of books that I didn’t review. Life is such that there are lots of great books that I just cannot find the time to read and many other books I’m simply not qualified to review. These books tend to find their way into these round-ups of the ones I received…
One of the great privileges of pastoral ministry is pronouncing a benediction before the congregation. The benediction is not a mystical performance in which a pastor invokes his own authority or his own position to bless the people, but a time in which he stands before the congregation and brings them a blessing from the…
A Prayer for Cuba – Carolyn McCulley: “Few Americans have traveled to modern Cuba. But I had the privilege of visiting there in August 2011, right before some of the travel restrictions for Americans were lifted. Because we did not travel with a tour group, we had a credible view of real Cuban life.” Meet…
Treasure In, Treasure Out – R.C. Sproul Jr reflects on how his wife beautified his home and his life. “My beautiful wife loved nothing more than to beautify. She devoted herself to creating a beautiful home. She planted flowers, bushes and trees outside. Inside she hung, placed, painted and etched. Even when she was not…
True Grit – I just finished listening to Donna Tartt’s amazing narration of the novel True Grit. Then I found that she had written this fantastic essay on the book. Romance Novels – Speaking of novels, I found this an interesting article on romance novels (Note: there’s one part that goes a bit awry when…
You never want to waste a good crisis. That is true in politics and religion and any other field that values ideology, that values one thing over another or one thing in place of another. As Christians we know that the Lord often uses times of crisis to call people to himself, that when people…