Ed Stetzer reminds Sunday School teachers to make sure that children know the story instead of just a bunch of Bible stories. He’s right, and that’s something the preacher needs to be concerned about too.
Tagged with education …
The Seminary Bubble
From the Aquila Report, but I heard a UMC Bishop making essentially the same point 10 days ago: Imagine an institution that requires its leaders to attend not only college, but graduate school. Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid, that it typically requires three … Continue reading »
Pray for Yousef Nadarkhani
Have you heard about Yousef Nadarkhani? He’s a Christian pastor in Iran who is facing state-approved murder for the “crime” of apostasy. Apostasy is turning away from a belief, either to another faith or to atheism. It’s a crime punishable by death in some (all?) countries with Islamic legal systems. In civilized places, it’s a … Continue reading »
Pat Robertson and Alzheimer’s Ethics
Well. Pat Robertson says it’s okay to get a divorce when your spouse has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. (To be fair, he does say there is an obligation to ensure that custodial care is provided.) Now here’s the thing: I appreciate he isn’t just responding with a knee-jerk “God said it / I believe it / … Continue reading »
The Church and Working Class Americans
Here’s an interesting finding, reported by LiveScience today: In the 1980s, the researchers found, there was little difference in religious participation between high school- and college-educated whites. But by the 2000s, a gap appeared. Today, 46 percent of college-educated whites go to a church, synagogue or equivalent institution at least once a month, compared with … Continue reading »
Pew Religious Knowledge Survey
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life just published the results of a survey they conducted to gauge people’s level of general religious knowledge. I’ll post more about the survey later, but first, let me invite you to take the survey yourself. P.S.: the question I missed was about an eastern religion, and I … Continue reading »
Home From My Retreat
What do you call it when you come back from a retreat? — an attack? Well, technically, I wasn’t on a retreat. I was at the 2010 Academy of Missional Preaching (Southwest). But it was held at the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, and there were retreat-ish aspects to it. If you needed to work … Continue reading »
Checking Our Heads
Yesterday, I enthused about the PC(USA) website’s makeover, and one of my Facebook friends went to see it. He’s a Southern Baptist, and he wasn’t impressed with this quote on the home page: The pull quote you see here isn’t quite a quote; if you watch the video you’ll see they “punched it up” a … Continue reading »
Robes
“Pastor, when are you going to start wearing your robes again?” Several of you have asked me that question. As you know, I’ve worn a minister’s robe in worship since arriving at Desert Hills. But I quit this summer. Now fall has come, and soon winter will be here, and I haven’t resumed wearing the … Continue reading »
Codex Sinaiticus is online
If you’d like to see what a manuscript of the New Testament looks like, you can now see the entire Codex Sinaiticus here. For more information about Sinaiticus, more information is here and (always) Wikipedia.