Here’s for a little weekend laughter. I can’t wait to get a dog! I thought I was going to die laughing at 0:20.
(HT: Best of Youtube)
Archive for February, 2009
Get a quick peek into the lives of these men. C.J. Mahaney asks them some of the following questions and more…
- Please describe your morning devotions. What time do you wake up in the morning? How much time do you spend reading, meditating, praying, etc.? What are you presently reading?
- What book(s) are you currently reading in these three categories: (a) for your soul, (b) for pastoral ministry, or (c) for personal enjoyment?
- Apart from Scripture, what book do you most frequently re-read and why?
- When you finish a book, what system have you developed in order to remember and reference that book in the future?
25
Feb
09
Resolved Conference 2009: SIN
I wish I could afford to go to this conference. Here are the list of speakers.
Congratulations to Slumdog Millionaire for winning eight academy awards including Best Picture!
more about “Slumdog Millionaire“, posted with vodpod
World Net Daily reports:
Ray Comfort, author of the new book, “You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think,” is challenging celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins to a debate – and sweetening the offer by offering him $10,000, win, lose or draw.
(HT: Ray Comfort)
Read these gracious and charitable letters from two professors at Southeastern Theological Seminary.
Nathan Finn – An Open Letter to My Non-Calvinist Friends in the SBC.
Alvin Reid – An Open Letter to My Calvinist Friends in the SBC.
I’m sure you might have heard the term “NeoReformed” by now and if you haven’t Scot McKnight who has been using this term for the last year or two defines what he means when he uses this word in a recent blog post of his. In this post he addresses these questions: “Are you seeing a rise of reformed folks? Do you see some militancy — whatever their strengths? What are your thoughts? Why do you think some youth are attracted to this new form of Reformed theology?”
You might be surprised to find out that I actually agree to some extent with McKnight when he equates the neoreformed with neofundamentalists. Be sure to read his whole post. I pasted an excerpt below…
In effect, the NeoReformed are a new form of Fundamentalism, so one might describe them accurately as the NeoFundamentalists. Which means they seem to need a trend or an opponent upon whom they can vent their frustrations (see Rene Girard). This results in two clear traits: the exaltation of some peripheral doctrine to central status and the demonization of a person. The goal in such cases seems to be to win at all costs.
I’ve always been told that the best way to memorize something is to use as many of your senses as you can. The ESV Blog has pointed out an excellent resource for memorizing scripture using your ipod or mp3 player that blogger B.C. McWhite has put together. Below are the instuctions.
- Open another browser tab so that you can refer back to these instructions as you do what I tell you to do.
- Go to the ESV Online site.
- In the top right corner, click on the “Options” tab.
- Under “Audio Options,” click in one of the buttons for MP3 (I use David Cochran Heath because he has the most “normal” sounding voice).
- At the bottom left of the page, click the “Save” button (that should open a page that says, “Your preferences have been saved” at the top).
- Type the passage you want (e.g. Ephesians 4:29 or Matthew 6:25-34) into the search bar and click “search.”
- When the passage comes up, you should see a link that says “Listen” next to the passage reference. Control-click (silly PC users right-click) on the “Listen” tab. A menu box should come up. Click on “Save Link As…”
- When the box pops up, you will have to add an extension name on the end of the title if it doesn’t have one. So, for example, if the title of your selection is “49004029″ then you need to add .mp3 on the end, so that it reads “49004029.mp3″. Save the file to your Desktop.
- Find the file on your desktop and open it with iTunes or Windows Media Player, or whatever you use. You can then load it onto your iPod, MP3 player, or burn it onto a CD for your car.
Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Highland Village, TX gives his thoughts on going to seminary.
I have been asked recently about what my thoughts are concerning seminary and why I never finished. I have found this to be a very polarizing subject where people put me in the camp of those who think that seminary is unnecessary or put me into the other camp that thinks scholarship isn’t important for the pastorate. The truth is I think most men need to go to seminary and scholarship is extremely important. I want to address it as a Pastor, though, and talk to Pastors about seminary. If you are looking to become a professor or scholar these thoughts wouldn’t apply to you.
16
Feb
09
On The Use of Gospel Tracts
Seth McBee gives his thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of using Gospel tracts.
Here is yet another popular method used today in evangelism, which is tract bombing. What happens is that you choose a place to go, hand out a bunch of tracts to people, put them on park benches, next to a toilet, in condemn dispensers or in the hands of unsuspecting passer-byers. Boom…tract bombing at its best. Like most forms of evangelism, tracts have their positive and negative effects. I have used them in the past and still have some sitting in the corner of my office awaiting their next victim.
The question has to be, What place do tracts have in evangelism? Do they have a place? Are they outdated? Let’s take a quick look at some positive aspects of tracts and then also some negative aspects.
(HT: Daily Scroll)
Here are the three main reasons why I believe songwriting for church use is a unique challenge:
1. Catchy Yet Simple Melodies: Writing melodies that are easily accessible to a large group of mostly non-musicians is very difficult, especially when most of our churches don’t use musical notes on a page. If I were your average artist on the radio, I would just write melodies that are really catchy and sound good when I sing them. The worship songwriter cannot approach his craft so selfishly. The worship songwriter has unique constaints: Is this too high for the average non-singer? Is this melody too rhythmically challenging? Can this melody be quickly remembered? Is the range of the melody too extreme (like Silent Night or The Star Spangled Banner)? Writing for a large group of mainly non-musicians is not easy.
2. Unique But Not New: Writing songs that have lyrics beyond “grace, place, see your face, run the race” is difficult as well. Expressing great theological truth without sounding awkward is very challenging. We have a fixed message. Our Biblical content is unchanging. Within these fixed theological boundaries, saying something in a unique way (being creative) without saying something new (this would potentially be heresy) is quite daunting for the worship songwriter.
3. Creative and Clear: If I were a typical artist that was just looking to sell some records I could be artistically creative and to some degree could care less if my audience totally understood all my metaphors. They might just write me off as “arty” and that would be a good thing. For example, I love Radiohead and I seriously could not tell you what one of their songs is about. The worship songwriter does not have this luxury. They have to be creative enough to be respectable as an artist, but clear enough to have the mind quickly engaged in the truth that is sung. This again, is no small feat.
I write this so you can truly appreciate great songs for corporate worship singing. Believe me when I tell you that songs like, In Christ Alone, How Deep The Fathers Love For Us, Our Great God and Psalm 62 are very hard to come by. Thank your music leader when you sing them and pray that God would give songwriters inspiration to craft new songs for the Lord and for his people.
I would encourage you to read the rest of this post and listen to these messages.
…Recently I’ve been working on a series of posts summarizing some messages I’ve done in the past few years on the topic of relationships. Unfortunately, because of my work on my new book, I haven’t had time to go into the depth I was hoping to for this series. Hopefully I’ll get to do that in the future, for now I wanted to share the links to the three messages for anyone interested. These messages all reflect, in one way or another, things that I’ve learned since I wrote the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye twelve years ago. I still stand by the message of that book that premature, short-term romantic attachments can be a big distraction from serving God—especially for teenagers. But in the years since I’ve also seen that a legalistic application of these ideas can be unhelpful, too. One of my main concerns in my church or any other church is that there be no disunity among Christians over issues of dating and courtship. We need to learn to hold our own convictions on this matter with charity. Most importantly we need to make sure that our convictions are shaped by scripture—not culture, church culture or my books…
16
Feb
09
Abort73: An Overview of Abortion
(HT: Lawn Gospel)
I know there have been a lot of people hating on Driscoll and the way he’s been conducting his interviews on mainstream media. I think Driscoll has been doing a fabulous job handling himself and representing evangelicalism. I am glad to have Driscoll as a spokesman. One thing I do want to note about this particular interview is I think Driscoll could have went deeper past “digging” Jesus other than that I enjoyed this interview. Check out the video here.
(HT: Purgatorio)
I am reposting a link from a while back. Derek Brown has written a list of 45 “how to’s” that I have found as a useful warning during my seminary education. I think all seminary students need to print this out.
1. Cultivate pride by writing only to impress your professors instead of writing to better understand and more clearly communicate truth.
2. Perfect the fine art of corner-cutting by not really researching for a paper but instead writing your uneducated and unsubstantiated opinions and filling them in with strategically placed footnotes.
3. Mistake the amount of education you receive with the actual knowledge you obtain. Keep telling yourself, “I’ll really start learning this stuff when I do my Th.M or my Ph.D.”
4. Nurture an attitude of superiority, competition, and condescension toward fellow seminary students. Secretly speak ill of them with friends and with your spouse.
5. Regularly question the wisdom and competency of your professors. Find ways to disrespect your professors by questioning them publicly in class and by trying to make them look foolish.
6. Neglect personal worship, Bible reading and prayer.
7. Don’t evangelize your neighbors.
8. Practice misquoting and misrepresenting positions and ideas you don’t agree with. Be lazy and don’t attempt to understand opposing views; instead, nurse your prejudices and exalt your opinions by superficial reading and listening.
9. Give your opinion as often as possible – especially in class. Ask questions that show off your knowledge instead of questions that demonstrate a genuine inquiry.
10. Speak of heretical movements, teachers, and doctrine with an air of disdain and levity.
11. Find better things to do than serve in your local church.
12. Fill your life with questionable movies, television, internet, and music.
13. Set aside fellowship and accountability with fellow brothers in Christ.
14. Let your study of divine things become dull, boring, lifeless, and mundane.
15. Chip away at your integrity by signing your school’s covenant and then breaking it under the delusion that, “Those rules are legalistic anyway.”
16. Don’t read to learn; read only to refute what you believe is wrong.
17. Convince yourself that you already know all this stuff.
18. Just study. Don’t exercise, spend time with your family, or work.
19. Save major papers for the last possible moment so that you can ensure that you don’t really learn anything by writing them.
20. Don’t waste your time forming friendships with your professors and those older and wiser than you.
21. Make the mistake of thinking that your education guarantees your success in ministry.
22. Don’t study devotionally. You’ll never make it as a big time scholar if you do that. Scholars need to be cool, detached, and unbiased – certainly not Jesus freaks.
23. Day dream about future opportunities to the point that you get nothing out of your current opportunity to learn God’s Word.
24. Do other things while in class instead of listening – like homework, scheduling, letter-writing, and email.
25. Spend more time blogging than studying.
26. Avoid chapel and other opportunities for corporate worship.
27. Argue angrily with those who don’t see things your way. Whatever you do, don’t read and meditate on II Timothy 2:24-26 and James 3:13-18 as you prepare for ministry.
28. Set your hopes on an easy, cushy pastorate for when you graduate. Determine now not to obey God when he calls you to serve in a difficult church.
29. Look forward to the day when you won’t have to concern yourself with all this theology and when you will be able to just “preach Jesus.”
30. Forget that your primary responsibility is care for your family through provision, shepherding, and leadership.
31. Master Calvin, Owen, and Edwards, but not the Law, Prophets, and Apostles.
32. Gain knowledge in order to merely teach others. Don’t expend the effort it takes to deal with your own heart.
33. Pick apart your pastor’s sermons every week. Only point out his mistakes and his poor theological reasoning so you don’t have to be convicted by anything he says.
34. Protect yourself from real fellowship by only talking about theology and never about your personal spiritual issues, sin, and struggles.
35. Comfort yourself with the delusion that you will start seriously dealing with sin as soon as you become a pastor; right now it’s not really that big a deal.
36. Don’t serve the poor, visit the sick, or care for widows and orphans – save that stuff for the uneducated, non-seminary trained, lay Christians.
37. Keep telling yourself that you want to preach, but don’t ever seek opportunities to preach, especially at local rescue missions and nursing homes. Wait until your church candidacy to preach your first sermon.
38. Let envy keep you from profiting from sermons preached by fellow students.
39. Resent behind-the-scenes, unrecognized service. Only serve in areas where you are sure you will receive praise and accolades.
40. Appear spiritual and knowledgeable at all costs. Don’t let others see your imperfections and ignorance, even if it means you have to lie.
41. Love books and theology and ministry more than the Lord Jesus Christ.
42. Let your passion for the gospel be replaced by passion for complex doctrinal speculation.
43. Become angry, resentful and devastated when you receive something less than an A.
44. Let your excitement for ministry increase or decrease in direct proportion to the accolades or criticisms you receive from your professors.
45. Don’t really try to learn the languages – let Bible Works do all the work for you.
12
Feb
09
Logic Resources (Audio)
Deductive Logic, by George William Joseph Stock by Lit2Go on iTunes
(the ebook can be found here)
Basic Sentential Logic and Informal Fallacies
Audio with PDFs. by Rick Grush, UCSD – podcast on iTunes
LOGIC MP3 Audio by John Robbins
1. Introduction to Logic
2. Definition of Terms
3. Logic and Theology: The Westminster Confession
4. Informal Fallacies, Part 1
5. Informal Fallacies, Part 2
6. Logic and Theology: Christ’s Use of Logic
7. Definitions
8. Formal Logic
9. Logic and Theology: Paul’s Use of Logic
10. Categorical Forms
11. Immediate Inference, Validity, Euler Circles
12. Logic and Theology: Empirical Apologetics
13. Homework Review
14. The Syllogism
15. Logic and Theology: Why Science Is Always False
16. Homework Review
17. Conclusion
18. Logic and Theology: Vantillian Apologetics
09
Feb
09
Consumer Monster
(HT: SkyeBox)
Bradley Cochran has started posting a podcast series on academics and the local church with Gerald Hiestand. An timely and relevant discussion that many training in/for the ministry (like myself) would benefit from. Click here to listen to the first part.
Is the academic theology of the seminary classroom insufficient for the daily pastoral grind? In this podcast, Gerald Hiestand, the President of the Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology, talks about his vision for this newly founded society and how the Pastor-Scholar model helps meet a desperate need in the local church.
09
Feb
09
A List of Reviews on “The Shack”
Here are six “non-sexual” ways to show love and care for your wife:
1. Touch her arm or knee when you talk with her. Your gentle touch communicates, “I’m here. You’re not alone. I enjoy you. I’ll take care of you.”
2. Make an effort to spend time alone together – go out for dinner, for a walk, or out for coffee. Show her (and others) that you enjoy the intimacy of being alone with her.
3. Grab her hand and hold it when you’re out in public.
4. Give her a kiss and a hug when you leave and return home.
5. Don’t see every complaint as an attack. Women think as long as they feel the marriage is working, they can talk about it. On the other hand, most men feel the relationship isn’t working if they have to talk about it. Allow her to express what’s on her mind.
6. Recognize her strong emotions as exclamation marks. When she is upset, angry, or frustrated, realize that these emotions are her way of letting you know how much the issue at hand matters to her.
(HT: titus2talk)
You can download each talk by clicking on the Desiring God link.
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors
February 2, 2009
Mark Dever
A Shepherd and His Unregenerate Sheep
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors
February 3, 2009
Matt Chandler
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors
February 3, 2009
Mark Dever
“I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher!”
The Life and Ministry of George Whitefield: Living and Preaching as Though God Were Real (Because He Is)
February 3, 2009
John Piper
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors
February 3, 2009
Mark Dever
The Forsaking of Things Present for the Global Exaltation of Christ
February 4, 2009
Michael Oh
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors
February 4, 2009
Various
09
Feb
09
DG: Q & A on Singleness
- How is singleness better than marriage?
- How can singles help foster a relational culture at church?
- How do I deal with the intense longing to be married?
- What are the trials unique to singleness, and how do you recommend combating them?
- What would you say to someone who thinks their sexual sin has disqualified them from ministry?
- What do you think about masturbation?
- Is it OK for a single woman to pursue a career?
Listen to John Piper address these questions.
(HT: titus2talk)
Valentines Day is soon approaching and I am curious to know what kind of “love themed” songs you enjoy or would recommend. I’m hoping to add some songs to my romantic arsenal or lack thereof. Seriously though…I’d really like to know some of the songs that you used to love or are currently listening to. I think others like myself could use the help.
I personally love some of the old school R&B from back in the day (i.e. Motown). I loved R&B so much that I would used to listen to it constantly when I was single but then again I’m strange like that. Drop me a comment 
Funny how Dr. Mohler puts up a post on social networking right after I delete my Facebook account. Yesterday was the fifth year anniversary of Facebook. If my memory serves me correctly I jumped in the Facebook community just after its one year mark. Dr. Mohler gives some counsel on the online community experience. Number 1 is especially important as Christians in the church.
Here are a few suggestions for safeguarding the social networking experience:
1. Never allow social networking to replace or rival personal contact and communication. God made us to be social creatures that crave community. We cannot permit ourselves to substitute social networking for the harder work of building and maintaining personal relationships that are face to face.
2. Set clear parameters for the time devoted to social networking. These services can be seductive and time consuming. Social networking (and the Internet in general) can become obsessive and destructive of other relationships and higher priorities for the Christian.
3. Never write or post anything on a social networking site that you would not want the world to see, or anything that would compromise your Christian witness. There are plenty of young people (perhaps older persons now, too) who are ruining future job prospects and opportunities by social networking misbehavior. The cost to Christian witness is often far greater.
4. Never allow children and teenagers to have independent social networking access (or Internet access, for that matter). Parents should monitor, manage, supervise, and control the Internet access of their children and teens. Watch what your child posts and what their friends post.
5. Do not allow children and teens to accept any “friend” unknown to you. The social networking world can be a dangerous place, and parental protection here is vital.
6. Encourage older friends and relatives to sign up and use the technology. Grandparents can enjoy keeping up with grandchildren and with friends and loved ones separated by distance or mobility.
7. Use the social networking technology to bear witness to the Gospel, but never think that this can replace the centrality of face-to-face evangelism, witness, and discipleship.
8. Do all things to the glory of God, and do not allow social networking to become an idol or a display of narcissism.
The fifth anniversary of Facebook is a milestone in American culture — and a good time for a reality check. We were made by our Creator to be social creatures, but made for far more than mere social media.
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