Book Review: Subversive Jesus

I was almost immediately turned off by this book when one of the first things I saw was a quote by Shane Claiborne. I pressed on because that's the deal and eventually arrived at page 24-25. What I read on those two pages inspired me to press on further: From the time of the murder…

Matthew 13: Kingdom of God (a sermon text)

I preached a couple of weeks ago (again!) and I decided to use Matthew 13 as my text. I had been doing some light research on the chapter and taught a little of it in my Sunday school class so I took the next logical step and went ahead with a full blown manuscript. It…

Some Thoughts on Mark 1, The Church, and Power

Part 3: What the Church Needs. Now. We've been taking the last Sunday of each month the past couple of months to visit other churches in our area. This, in conjunction with our travels to preach in various churches, gives us the opportunity to see how the Lord is working in our part of the…

Some Thoughts on Mark 1, The Church, and Preaching

Part 2 of 3: What the Church Needs to be Preaching. Now. In part one of this short series of posts, I talked about what I think the church needs to be doing now, namely, preparing the way for the coming of Jesus. By preparing the way, I mean: calling people to repentance. It may…

Book Review: Surprise the World

Me and a friend have been working our way through some pretty good books. I'm just a little more ahead of him, but he is plowing his way through slowly and making some amazing discoveries in the works of Scott McKnight and NT Wright among others. We have both had our theological worlds shredded–and for…

Advent Day 10: Matthew 10: Following Jesus is an Upside Down Business

Eugene Peterson wrote, in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, "Jesus' imagery, to be followed soon by his sacrifice, is totally counter to our culture of more, more. Could Jesus have made it any clearer? We don't become more, we become less. Instead of grasping more tightly to whatever we value, we let…

Advent Day 6: Matthew 6: Continuing to be Different

Read: Matthew 6 Let's be short today. Maybe. Matthew six is a chapter that has been abused and misused by preachers throughout the ages. And by pew-sitters too. I'll be honest when I say that it is not a terribly complicated passage of Scripture to understand, but it's not necessarily easy to understand either. It's…

Advent Day 4: Matthew 4: Jesus Preached the Kingdom

Read: Matthew 4; Daniel 7; Isaiah 52-53; Romans 10 "Nowhere in scripture is it set out more clearly that the kingdom of the one true God stands over against the kingdoms of the world, judging them, calling them to account, condemning them, and vindicating God's people" than in the Book of Daniel. (NT Wright, Simply…

Advent Day 3: Matthew 3: Things to Come

Read: Matthew 3; Psalm 2; Isaiah 42; Genesis 22; 1 Peter 1:1-12 It is quite impossible for me to overstate how important it is for us to see the big picture in the Bible. We are so accustomed to reading the Bible to find either how to be saved (in some way that we usually…

Book Review: Kingdom Conspiracy

Title: Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church Author: Scot McKnight Publisher: Brazos Press Year: 2014 Pages: 289 Kingdom Conspiracy I read a lot of books and I write reviews for most of the books I read. Most of the books I read are kind of popular level books written for…

The Unshakable Kingdom of God

Grounding Text: Daniel 2:44-45; Hebrews 12:28-29   Download The Church in Exile 3 February 4 2007 Daniel 2 1 49 This is part of a sermon I preached from Daniel 2. I think it is still relevant and still carries some weight. If you would like to read the text of the entire sermon, click…

Reflections on a World Afire, Lenten Reflections #1

One of the last acts I performed as a member of Facebook was to follow a link to a blog post and read the blog post. It had something to do with Daniel 11 so I thought this would be a good thing–given that I am currently neck deep in a study of Daniel in…

Book Review: Simply Jesus

Title: Simply Jesus:  A New Vision of Who He was, What He Did, and Why He Matters Author: N.T. Wright Publisher: HarperOne Year: 2011 Pages: 240 I am typically disinclined to give an N.T.Wright book a poor review. I'm not going to start doing so here. That's not to say I have no criticisms; I…

Being a Christian Means…

I went to Sunday School this past Sunday for the first time in a long, long time. I also stayed for worship and was delighted that at the end of the two hours or so I was in the building the roof managed to stay attached to whatever the roof is attached to. In other…

Meditations on Hebrews, pt 2

I think this means that we need to constantly be evaluating what we hear. Too many Christians are content to take in everything they hear unfiltered.