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Category: Practical Theology

  • Think: The Life of The Mind and The Love of God

    John Piper, Think: The Life of The Mind and The Love of God. Wheaton: Crossway, September 2010. 224 pp. Paperback, $15.99. Buy it: Amazon | Westminster Read an excerpt Visit the publisher’s page There are a handful books I’ve read recently that I wish I would have had the privilege to read before starting seminary. John Frame’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God is…

  • The Qualifications of a Real Theologian

    Over the weekend I read another book by Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. I would highly recommend his more recent book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us as well. Both books actually go well together and complement each other. In A Whole New Mind, Pink (not to…

  • The Diminished Chord of the Christian Life

    [This post is part of the Reshaping Christian Habits series] My old percussion teacher used to joke that in a performance situation, if you made several audible mistakes, you could always claim you were doing afterward that you “were just playing jazz.” I have since passed this insight on to my students when prepping them…

  • Understanding A Car Crash

    Let’s start with a question: Should we start a parent murdering ministry? This may seem like an extremely odd, severely misguided question. So, let’s fill it out with some context… It comes from a point in yesterday’s sermon at The Village Church that Matt Chandler was illustrating. The point being that arguing from pure pragmatics is…

  • Like Playing the Piano with an Oven Mitt

    My interest in preaching over the course of my first three years could be described in one word: Non-existent. Ok, so it’s a hyphenated word, but you get the idea. However, I can’t graduate without 2 semesters of preaching, so with only 2 semesters left to go, I had to dive into the world of homiletics…

  • Atonement: Calvin

    [This post is part of the Atonement series] It should be a rule, and I say this in all seriousness, that you cannot call yourself a Calvinist until you have read the Institutes of the Christian Religion in its entirety (or at least a good bulk of it). I say this of course condemning myself, since I would…

  • The 3rd Word

    It is interesting to note that in the Old Testament, what we call the 10 Commandments, are not ever referred to as such. In the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT) they are referred to as the Decalogue, which in Greek would mean the 10 words. The Hebrew comes out meaning “the 10 pronouncements,” so…

  • Divine Aseity and Prayer

    Yesterday, it was announced that the pastor of our church here in Dallas, Matt Chandler, would be having surgery on Friday to remove a brain tumor in his frontal lobe. No word was available yet on whether or not the tumor was malignant, they would find out when they got in there. New traveled quickly on Thanksgiving…

  • Some Things Needed to be Said: Rethinking Velvet Elvis (B)

    I had said in the last post that Rob Bell is rather adept at dropping half truths. This much is true, so accordingly, he does have many insightful things to say in the book. I think in some measure, evangelicals are quick to jump on the bad springs (doctrine) Bell has in his trampoline (both…

  • Some False Teaching Never Gets Old: Repainting Velvet Elvis (A)

    Honestly, at this point, another review of Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith might not be needed. I’ve seen several myself, and heard Mark Driscoll address some issues both in a sermon and in his book Vintage Jesus. That being said, the reason for what you are about to read is more or…