Here is a list of criticisms and conflicts that churches have experienced. It will be good for us to read about the criticisms and conflicts other churches have endured. I am sure you will identify with some of these. In this post, we learn how to handle criticisms and conflicts:
Read moreFour Different Views on the Sign Gifts for Today
“When we speak of the biblical sign gifts, we are referring to miracles like speaking in tongues, visions, healing, raising the dead, and prophesying” (Got Questions) (click to open). There are three major periods of sign gifts or sign miracles. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:22 noted that “the Jews require a sign.” This has been the history of unbelieving Israel.utterance" (Constitution of Assemblies of God [the largest Pentecostal denomination]).
Read moreThe Three Imputations
L.S. Chafer in his 1948 Systematic Theology said that “thirty-three stupendous works of God” took place the moment we trusted Christ as Savior (Volume 3, 234-265). Justification and imputation are two of these supernatural works. Justification is a legal courtroom word where the judge declares the person either guilty or innocent whereas imputation is a business word.
Read moreWe must accept God’s righteous dealings with His people
Warren Wiersbe recalled sharing in a street meeting in Chicago and passing out tracts at the corner of Madison and Kedzie. Most of the people graciously accepted the tracts, but one man took the tract and with a snarl crumpled it up and threw it in the gutter. The name of the tract was “Four Things God Wants You to Know.”
“There are a few things I would like God to know!” the man said. “Why is there so much sorrow and tragedy in this world? Why do the innocent suffer while the rich go free? Bah! Don’t tell me there’s a God! If there is, then God is the biggest sinner that ever lived!” And he turned away with a sneer and was lost in the crowd.
Read moreNEW “Factual Data” sheet for Romans
On May 24, 1738, a discouraged missionary went “very unwillingly” to a religious meeting in London. There a miracle took place. “About a quarter before nine,” he wrote in his journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
That missionary was John Wesley. The message he heard that evening was the preface to Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans. Just a few months before, John Wesley had written in his journal: “I went to America to convert the Indians; but Oh! who shall convert me?” That evening in Aldersgate Street, his question was answered. And the result was the great Wesleyan Revival that swept England and transformed the nation.[1]
Our focus is on the life-changing book of Romans. Why was Romans placed first in the canon when Romans was Paul’s sixth letter?
Read moreThe “Factual Data” sheet for Sermon Preparation for Pauline Epistles
In 1891, James Naismith [click to open], an ordained minister and worker for the YMCA, attached a peach basket to a wall, crafted thirteen rules, and launched the game of basketball. Originally, basketball was two words basket ball for obvious reasons. His stated purpose for inventing the game was to give young men the Gospel of Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote Romans also to win people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul’s theme for Romans is The Righteousness of God through the Gospel (Rom 1:16-17). Romans is Paul’s exhaustive explanation of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Read moreThe Problem of Suffering and Evil, Part Two
Bart Ehrman, one of the most influential atheists/agnostics today admitted: The problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith. After many years of grappling with the problem, trying to explain it, thinking through the explanations that others have offered—some of them pat answers charming for their simplicity, others highly sophisticated and nuanced reflections of serious philosophers and theologians—after thinking about the alleged answers and continuing to wrestle with the problem, about nine or ten years ago I finally admitted defeat, came to realize that I could no longer believe in the God of my tradition, and acknowledged that I was an agnostic: I don’t “know” if there is a God; but I think that if there is one, he certainly isn’t the one proclaimed by the Judeo-Christian tradition, the one who is actively and powerfully involved in this world. And so I stopped going to church (Ehrman, Bart D., God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer, HarperCollins. Kindle Edition, 2009, 3-4).
Read moreThe Problem of Suffering and Evil, Part One
Chris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He was a good preacher. Chris was studying to be a pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church, and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C. I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a lifeguard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove into the pool just to swim across and go home. His friends noticed he stopped about halfway as he was swimming across the bottom. Chris drowned.
Read more“How do you do theology?”
Theological Method answers the question, “How do you do theology?”
This post will utilize the type of systematic theology described by Erickson, in his chapter “The Method of Theology” where Erickson discusses “the process of doing theology.”[1] That process generally moves from exegesis to biblical theology to systematic theology.[2] After discussing biblical theology, Erickson added that he places historical theology after biblical theology: “While the utilization of history may take place at any one of several stages in the methodological process, this seems to be a particularly appropriate point.”[3] Erickson instructed that the process of doing theology is to move from exegesis to biblical theology to historical theology to systemic theology.
Read moreWhen does the pastor say "Yes" to his church and when does he say "No"?
Two quotes from pastors came to my mind. Alexander MacLaren said when he was invited to lecture in the prestigious Yale Lecture series on preaching, that he turned it down. He turned it down because it would have taken him away from his preaching ministry at Union Chapel in Manchester. MacLaren put forty hours a week into the one sermon he preached. That means he said “No” frequently. Because of his dedication to preaching to his flock, we still read his sermons today in Expositions of Holy Scripture.
Read moreThe Factual Data Sheet for Sermon Preparation for Hebrew Poetry (Psalms) Part Two
Be aware of Alphabetic acrostics as in Psalm 119. “The obvious structure of Psalm 119 is that it is an acrostic of twenty-two sections built upon the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. A pastor could give a sermon that reflects the meaning of the entire psalm but do a close exposition of only one of the twenty-two sections (one could focus, for example, on the beth section in verses 9-16)” (Duane A. Garrett, “Preaching from the Psalms and Proverbs” ed. Scott M. Gibson in Preaching the Old Testament, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006, 102).
Read moreThe Factual Data Sheet for Sermon Preparation for Hebrew Poetry (Psalms) Part One
I once said to a friend, “I’m reading the Psalms.” He replied, “I am living the Psalms.” My friend was a young preacher whose wife was divorcing him. He was going through deep waters and was finding comfort in the Psalms. David the main contributor to the Psalms wrote many of the Psalms out of great affliction, such as, when he was fleeing as a fugitive from jealous King Saul or dealing with the rebellion of his son Absalom.
Read moreFactual Data Sheet for Sermon Preparation for Hebrew Poetry (Proverbs) Part Two
There was a little shoe repair store in the town we live near for fifteen years which we drove past many times. The owners had a small sign hanging outside their front door that I read very often: "If the shoe fits, repair it." That is an example of the genre of Hebrew Poetry that we are studying in the book of Proverbs.
Read moreFactual Data Sheet for Sermon Preparation for Hebrew Poetry (Proverbs) Part One
I got the idea for “The Factual Data” sheet from reading that Warren W. Wiersbe’s homiletic teacher, Lloyd Perry used a generic “Factual Data” sheet for all sermon preparation. I have adapted “The Factual Data” sheet to the different genres of Scripture instead of one size fits all. I have a "The Factual Data" Sheet also for Pauline Epistles, Narratives (Genesis and Nehemiah), Gospels (Mark), and Hebrew Poetry (Psalms and Proverbs).
Read moreWhat is the greatest theological threat to evangelical churches today?
There is an array of answers to this question from pastors and theologians.
1) Pastors who present Christianity as therapy and self-help do not present Christianity. They are like the liberals that J. Gresham Machen denounced. Machen said that people who don’t believe the Bible should be honest and stop calling themselves Christians because they have in fact created a new religion that is not to be identified with Christianity. Similarly, the promoters of the American religion of self-help and therapeutic pop psychology ought to be honest: they don’t believe the Bible is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) (9Marks Click to open).
Read moreThe Problem of Suffering and Evil, Part 2
When Job proves Satan wrong, Satan is no longer mentioned in the book of Job. In chapters 1 and 2, Satan is persistent in attacking Job's faith. But when Job's Christian critics take over in the next section, they do such a good job of verbally pounding on Job, perhaps Satan felt he could leave Job in the hands of his ash heap critics and go destroy some other believer's faith
Read moreThe Problem of Suffering and Evil, Part 1
Chris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He also was a good preacher. Chris was studying to pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C.. I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a lifeguard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove into the pool just to swim across and go home. As he was swimming across the bottom, his friends noticed he stopped about halfway. Chris drowned.
Chris studied for seven years, spent nearly $100,000 to prepare to pastor, and never got to pastor one day. I remember asking myself why did God lead him to go through the rigors of four years of undergraduate work and the even tougher studies of three years of seminary and then allow this tragedy to happen.
Read moreN. T. Wright's Denial of the Rapture
Kurt Willems writes a post entitled “Why the Rapture isn’t Biblical … And Why it Matters at Patheos.” He has adamantly repudiated what he was taught at church as a child and is also disturbed by the success of the Left Behind series (65 million have been sold). I’m sure the new 2023 Left Behind movie only adds to his frustration.
Read moreDo All Religious Roads Lead to Heaven? (Part two)
Madonna stated in an interview, “I do believe that all paths lead to God. It’s a shame that we end up having religious wars because so many of the messages are the same.”[12] In other words, there are many religious roads up the mountain to God. In Do All Religious Roads Lead to Heaven, Part One, we discussed resortationaism, universalism, and annihilationism. In Part Two, we continue to move to the theological right.
Read moreDo All Religous Roads Lead to Heaven? (Part One)
You have probably had a conversation with someone who believed that there are many ways of salvation and that there are many religious roads to heaven. I have had discussions with people who have strongly expressed this view. I was eating out with members of my extended family on this very subject. They described me as arrogant for believing that only my religion out of all the religions in the world today is the only correct way to heaven.
Read more