I used to think that worship songs where you could swap out all the God references, with baby were evidence that God had been trivialized by a sappy, spiritualized romanticism in the church. There may be truth to that. But perhaps the interchangeability of God and baby in worship songs says less about worship songs and more about love songs, less about how the church man-sizes God (which does happen) and more about a much broader tendency in the church and culture-at-large to God-size our romantic partners ...
The short answer, I believe, is that there is nothing wrong with offering a prayer to the Holy Spirit since God the Spirit is, of course, fully God, just as is God the Father and God the Son. However, most prayers in the New Testament and in the church of the second and third centuries were to God the Father, with a few exceptions.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss to what extent pastors should be "culturally savvy."
Although most 晩晩当際際夊消消夊2023 students have grown up in the church, a surprising number of undergraduates (especially freshmen and sophomores) do not attend church. Students cite a variety of reasons for this, including busyness, lack of transportation, difficulty of settling into a church, receiving Bible instruction through Bible classes and required chapel attendance, and lack of depth in relationships when they attend church. Recognizing that these students do face legitimate difficulties, I created an assignment requiring them to attend the same church four times over the course of the semester and answer a series of questions about the church for the purpose of helping them think through how they should pick a new church. Ive included the questions below. Id love to hear any feedback on them!
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California talk about the ways that pastors can respond to "church shopping" and a consumeristic mentality about faith.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California talk about ways to encourage participation in church life with those attending church.
Disfrutar de una relaci坦n 鱈ntima con el Dios del universo es el prop坦sito principal del ser humano. En Dios encontramos respuesta y sentido a nuestras vidas. El salmo 15 describe al tipo de persona que puede relacionarse personalmente con el Creador. El salmista se pregunta qui辿n puede ser un hu辿sped de Dios. En esa cultura, un hu辿sped gozaba de acceso directo con el anfitri坦n. Este salmo de sabidur鱈a se entonaba al entrar al templo. Los adoradores iniciaban con la pregunta y el sacerdote respond鱈a con los requisitos y finalizaba con una promesa para aquellos que los cumpl鱈an.
Michael Wilkins recommended these axioms to me. It has taken me several years to figure out and understand what they mean. They have worked like seeds for me. Im sure he would elaborate on them differently (and better) than Im doing here. But this is what I see in them ...
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss the different ways to assess the health of a church.
I am regularly vexed by how shallow my prayers can become. When I pray for somethingand I know that all prayer is not for thingswhat should I pray for? Only for my family? For someone I know who is ill? For God to help me in the day ahead? For God to resolve whatever problem is currently worrying me? I often sense that there is some content that Im missing when Im praying. Do you sense the same thing? ...
This post is the substance of a chapel message I gave to the students of Kyiv Theological Seminary on October 14 of last year (2014). At the time Ukraine was (and still is) in the midst of brutal conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern regions of the country. All of the students present had been impacted by the conflict, some profoundly either by burying church members, relatives, and friends, or by answering conscription summons. No one in the country has been left untouched by the crisis. I offer these thoughts here because suffering and crisis and loss may come to those around us at anytime. We need the mind of our Lord to enter into such a house of sorrow or pain and be his instruments for healing ...
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss the challenges and opportunities of bi-vocational ministry.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss how their Talbot education impacts their ministry today in valuable ways.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss why a seminary education is so valuable for ministry today.
Las noticias a nuestro alrededor pueden ser bastante desalentadoras. Por alguna raz坦n las noticias que se publican y tienen promoci坦n tienden a ser las negativas y las que reflejan alg炭n conflicto social. Para los medios de comunicaci坦n y para la sociedad en general las buenas noticias parecieran no ser atractivas y solamente las negativas pueden salir de la sombra de lo cotidiano para llamar nuestra atenci坦n. Desgraciadamente, el estar rodeados de malas noticias origina un ambiente negativo en el que la vida pareciera una mara単a de conflictos que crece cada vez m叩s y a la que no se le encuentra soluci坦n por ning炭n lado. Si a esta situaci坦n le agregamos los actos de terrorismo de grupos radicales que se escudan en la religi坦n para cometer atentados deleznables contra inocentes y las posturas tan radicales de pol鱈ticos y grupos sociales que impiden una sana conversaci坦n para resolver sus diferencias, es f叩cil caer en la desesperanza y la impotencia.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss how local churches can better engage and love their communities.
Talbot faculty member, James Petitfils, and a panel of Talbot graduates who are now pastors in Southern California discuss the unique challenges of ministry in this region.
A few months ago I wrote about Jos辿 Bowens seminar and his book, Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2012). I shared that his main thrust was for teachers to use technology to deliver content outside of class sessions, and shift the use of class time to processing that information, promoting critical thinking and the application of knowledge to real life situations. There are three ideas from Bowens work that I think have the potential of deepening the impact of our teaching in the church. Over the next few months Ill be writing a brief blog on each of the three ideas, beginning with ways of using technology to get students into the content of the Bible lesson/study before you meet, preparing them for a more active and deeper learning experience together.
Several years ago Charles Arn and I surveyed pastors and asked them to identify the most frustrating part of their job. Can you guess the most frequent response? Getting laypeople to help with the work and ministry of the church ... One of the major reasons people are reluctant to serve in and through a church is the feeling that theyll be stuck in the position for ever, or at least a very long time ...
In this audio recording, David Horner, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, shares about Epiphany and its significance in the life of the Christian.
I was raised in a church world in which culture war was a favorite metaphor of how the church relates to the nonchurch. We were Gods courageous moral infantry doing battle against those cunning cultists, those hateful homosexuals, those lying liberals, and those devilish Darwinists. If we listen with tuned ears to Christian radio, Christian literature, Christian blogs, and Christian conversations, it becomes clear: We Christians love the language of war. Over the last 30 years it has become our dominant metaphor for relating to culture; it saturates our vocabulary, shapes our politics, and soaks our worldview. But is culture war helpful? Is it biblical? Should we be jarheads for Jesus?
A few evenings ago, we hosted a delightful group of ten 晩晩当際際夊消消夊2023 students at our house for dinner. During dessert, we launched into a lively discussion about how we should celebrate Christmas as Christians. We discussed various sub-topics under this broader question, but we spent the largest portion of our time talking about how Christians shouldand should nottalk to their children about Santa Claus.
Readers of this blog may be interested in the short article I have written over at Reformation 21. The gist of my claim is that the person of Jesus Christ shapes our primary ethical response to torture and our attitude to its perpetration by our authorities. Person, that is, over procedure, particularly over fear based consequentialist reasoning that might allow in extremis the ends of security to justify the means of torture. I very minimally offer that the health of our moral imaginations as Christian citizens is attested to in our habits of corporate prayer.
Students often ask, What does a Christian leader need in order to experience an effective life of ministry in the local church? A key part of the answer has to do with the kinds of people we gather around ourselves. As I look back over some thirty-five years of local church ministry, four kinds of relationships (besides God and my natural family) have proven indispensable to the health and vitality of my own pilgrimage as a pastor ...
晩晩当際際夊消消夊2023