Four years seems long enough to wait before writing a critical review of a movie that the church for the most part praised. It was thought to be a great vehicle for evangelizing, a great way to bring the Passion of Christ alive. I called it at the time “spiritual pornography,” and I stand by that judgment. Read the rest of this entry »
All quotes are from the book I referenced in an earlier post: Sign of the Kingdom by Lesslie Newbign.
” ‘The Evangelisation of the World in this Generation’ did
There’s an oxymoron for you: “Ministerial Health.” According to some researcher somewhere the “average” minister puts in 55 hours a week. He vicariously experiences divorce, death, and disease more times a year then he would like to remember. And besides all this there is the daily pressure on him of concern for all the churches (2 Cor. 11:28
). Ministerial health? Nope. There’s ministry and there is health. They don’t go together. To bolster my point I cite one comic and one fact. Read the rest of this entry »
Solomon warns, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecc. 12:12).
Having just finished two small books worth reading but less wearying, brought to mind other small books I have read with profit. Leaving out C.S. Lewis several small manuscripts because those are well known, here are several others I commend. Read the rest of this entry »
Having recently published a letter, I didn’t think The Lutheran Witness would, I decided to publish this article Higher Things wouldn’t. To be fair, it’s not that they didn’t think it worthwhile. They just thought it too risky, perhaps risque. You decide for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »
Nobody likes to fall flat on their face. It means embarrassment, humiliation, and defeat. I doubt there’s a pastor alive who has not had that dream where he fell flat on his face while giving a sermon: his notes blow away; his manuscript is unfinished; he has no clothes on. The variations are many, but however your dream goes I’m quite sure you wake up with a start. That’s why it will probably strike you as strange to hear me say that falling flat on your face is the solution to all problems in the ministry. Read the rest of this entry »
The following is a letter I sent to The Lutheran Witness in reference to an article in their February 2008 edition. I don’t think it will see the light of day, so I thought I would give it some here.
Our Large Catechism addresses the education of our children under the Fourth Commandment: “For all authority flows and is propagated from the authority of parents. For where a father is unable alone to educate his child, he employs a schoolmaster to instruct him(141).” We confess that the first, the preferable, way to educate children is for the father to do it. If he, in conjunction with his wife is unable to do it, then he should employ a schoolmaster. Lutheran education should be seen as flowing not from the state or church, but from the home. What every Lutheran pastor and church, even those with day schools, should be doing is admonishing parents to take personal responsibility for the education of their children. Lutheran homeschoolers have done just this, and the fact that our synod doesn’t mention and promote this is telling. Read the rest of this entry »
The movie Stand By Me opens with a man (Richard Dreyfus) sitting in his car wondering if anyone has friends like they did when they were 12? At 12 and through my teen years I had a friend named Eric. Eric was a rebel, but a polite one. His favorite movie was Easy Rider, but when he came of age, he didn’t ride around the country in a chopped Harley. No, he had a Suzuki 500. I rode on the back of that with him throughout the state of Kentucky. Eric’s favorite song was “Signs.” He would sing with great gusto the part about “do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign.” Because of the “magic” of XM radio, I heard that song again. It reminded me of Eric. I could see him jumping up on the fence, as in the song, and shouting, “If God were here he tell it to you face/ Man you’re some kind of sinner.” And then my thoughts went a completely different direction. Read the rest of this entry »
A wiser man than I said, “For every current book you read, read five at least 100 years old.” I would modify that a bit and say, “For every 19th, 20th, or 21st century book you read, read five from before then.”
One old book worth reading is Plutarch’s Lives of the Nobel Greeks (His Lives of the Nobel Romans is good as well.). In his entry about the hero of Athens’s, Pericles, he begins with this rather stunning observation by Caesar: Read the rest of this entry »
