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Category: How-To

  • Building A Theological Library: The Latter Prophets

    Last week, we looked at my commentary recommendations on the Former Prophets. Today, we’ll move on in the Latter Prophets, which is basically Isaiah-Malachi minus Daniel and Lamentations. I’m treating the Minor Prophets under one heading mainly because most commentaries already combine books. If I were to list individual books, there would be a lot…

  • Building A Theological Library: The Former Prophets

    Last week, we looked at my commentary recommendations on the Pentateuch. Today, we’ll move on in the Former Prophets, which is basically the historical books minus Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, and Nehemiah. So, actually maybe it’s better to think it’s Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Just to reiterate, these are my preferences and what make…

  • How Seminary (Almost) Ruined My Reading Habits

    This was my view in the late afternoons in my spot in Turpin Library at Dallas Seminary. I’ve probably put it in a blog post before, but definitely not as many times as I looked up from reading and saw the gist of this picture. I’m a natural lighting kind of guy, so library carrels…

  • My 90 Day Challenge For Winter 2013

    Rather than shoot for year long plans, I’m doing quarterly goals this year. This means using a 90-day challenge, and within that having clear action items. And as the comic above illustrates, while survival is much more achievable (and concrete) over the course of a year, it’s not really a resolution in any meaningful sense. In my list…

  • Navigating New Years With A 90-Day Challenge

    Last year, and by last year I mean yesterday, I posted my 13 (abstract) resolutions for 2013. I pointed out that resolutions without an action plan don’t really work. Resolving just do things differently leads to the above comic becoming incarnate in your own life. So, making resolutions concrete involves two steps: Brainstorm concrete actions…

  • How To Pick Up Commentaries For Cheap

    Part of building a theological library is trying to get resources cheaply. It probably goes without saying that if you’re starting out in ministry or you’re currently a seminary student, you don’t have a lot of disposable cash for buying books. Or, we could say you definitely do not have as much money in your…

  • 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer

  • How To Build A Theological Library

    There comes a point when you shift from randomly collecting books that catch your eye to intentionally gathering resources to form a working library. For me, this point came during my last semester of seminary. Partly because I didn’t know where I was moving when I graduated, and partly because I knew that being a…

  • How To Be More Productive in College

    This past Friday, I had the opportunity to talk at the weekly meeting of Shift, an on campus ministry at UCF. The event was called College Planning 101, and I think overall it went really well. While they were all brainstorming to gather everyone’s concerns onto the board, I noticed they could easily be split…

  • Learning How To Pray With Nehemiah

    As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, we’re going through Nehemiah at Crosspointe. Back in the day, I took a class on Nehemiah during my sophomore year of college. With my attention focused back on this book, I thought I’d go back and revisit my notes since I remembered it being a pretty good…