Category: Practical Theology
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When the Style Rubs You the Wrong Way
[This post is part of the Revamping Christian Worship series] In continuing the discussion that started with How to Worship When You Think the Songs Suck, we’ve now come to another issue. Last week, we looked at the difference between objective quality and subjective appeal. I though we were ready to distinguish between the quality of a song’s…
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10 Books on Marriage
[This post is part of the 10 Books On… series] <A HREF=”http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?rt=tf_cw&ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fmarturo-20%2F8010%2F00d3cf0c-9128-4cf5-a895-a464d2be951e&Operation=NoScript”>Amazon.com Widgets</A>Consider this post a kind of appendix to yesterday’s non-recommendation of Real Marriage. While I wasn’t overly optimistic about the value of Real Marriage, I don’t mean to imply that no one should ever read the book. Certainly people in my position should (to evaluate…
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Why I Don’t Recommend Real Marriage
When it comes to Mark Driscoll, the internet is never short on things to say. Plenty of reviewers have taken the time to present a thorough overview of Mark and Grace Driscoll’s Real Marriage (e.g. Challies, Burk, and Anderson Pt. 1 and Pt. 2). That being the case, I thought it might be helpful to just explain…
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Quality Vs. Appeal in Worship Music
[This post is part of the Revamping Christian Worship series] Consider this an appendix, or better, clarification, on an important aspect of How to Worship When You Think the Songs Suck. Based on the feedback, it seemed like many people didn’t like my criteria for determine a song’s “suck” factor. To quote myself for some context:…
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Why I Dropped the Horner Bible Reading Plan
[UPDATE: See my re-engagement with the Horner Plan in 2014] A while back, I told you about a Bible reading plan that was developed by Prof. Grant Horner. Thanks to Tim Challies I was introduced to this plan and decided to start it at the beginning of this year. It was part of a 3650 challenge…
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My Personal Reading Schedule
Or, how do I plan to getting all those books read? Some of you have asked this, either in the comments or via Twitter, so here’s what the reading schedule looks like. I haven’t assimilated everything into an Excel spreadsheet at this point, so I’m really giving you the philosophy behind the scheduling. Basically, books…
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My Ministry Internship
[This post is part of the What Are We Up To In Ministry? series] When Ali and I first knew we were going to move back to Florida, we were faced with a decision. I had gone to Dallas Seminary, not so much with the intention of being a lead pastor of a church, but with the…
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Spoken Word: Sex, Marriage, and Fairytales
You might have seen Jefferson Bethke’s original video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” at some point over the last couple of weeks (for an interview on the background context, read this). It generated its fair share of buzz, which eventually led him to CBS Morning Show. Here is his follow up video: (For some background…
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Rental Christianity
As I mentioned earlier, one of the Big 12 books I’m working through this year is William Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology. So far, it’s been enjoyable, but I really haven’t gotten into much of Shedd’s actual thought. I did however run across this anecdote about David Hume in the reading this week: According to Johnson (Boswell’s…
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John Frame’s Advice For Young Theologians #21-30
As I explained in the original post, these pieces of advice come from “Reflections of a Lifetime Theologian” in Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame. Reflecting back on his career in teaching and his life of ministry, he offers off the cuff in an interview 30 nuggets of advice. Here’s…