One of the ways we keep up around here is to read what others are or will be reading. At any given time there are 8-10 books on my desk and I tend to take them on one at a time in between other aspects of the ministry. From time to time we post our reviews and since Stephen Burnett reviewed Why We’re Not Emergent by Two Guys Who Should Be two weeks ago it seemed about time for me to get a little caught up on this as well.

The first will be Mark Mittelberg’s latest offering Choosing Your Faith: In a World of Spiritual Options (2008; Tyndale House Publishers, $19.99). Mark has done a service to believers and non-believers in laying out and analyzing criteria by which we can and should examine our world view and embrace the beliefs which pass the test. Although an Evangelical himself the criteria he discusses can and should be applied to the Christian claims as well. The book isn’t an apologetic for Christianity directly as much as it is a call to ask the hard questions, understand relativism, pragmatism, tradition, authority, reality, intuition, knowledge, mysticism, logic, evidence and science. Each of these can be helpful or, if not properly understood, harmful. (more…)

What would you think would be the main idea of an article entitled “Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance”? Wouldn’t you think the article would be about how, unlike many Middle Eastern countries (and most of the U.K.), the religious people of the U.S. are much more tolerant—as in not burning down mosques, outlawing proselytizing, or generally persecuting those who believe something different about God and the universe? That’s what I thought when I saw the New York Times headline about tolerance. The U.S. is more tolerant than say Britain where the archbishop of Canterbury is willing to relegate whole neighborhoods to Sharia law, where it might be a crime to proselytize or even question the Koran.

Sadly no. When I started reading the NY times article I soon discovered that I was a victim of an Orwellian switcheroo where words have new meanings but the “Ministry of Truth” has not changed the dictionary. According to the paper of record, (more…)

From what I’ve read here on the MCOI site and elsewhere, it seems like it would be interesting for anyone to out-emerge “emergent church” writers in terms of style and substance.

First, I would have a great conversational style, interrupting myself multiple times for pop-culture and movie references to show (perhaps incidentally) how trendy and hip and with-it I am. Secondly, I would be very well-read and adept and making seemingly complex ideas lay-level and understandable. Oh yes, and thirdly, I would subtly undermine concepts of orthodox Christian doctrine and the very idea of claiming to know objective Truth. Instead, I would offer a custom-cooked stew of warmed-up leftovers from old and molded heresies, such as Pelagianism, extreme postmillennialism, liberation theology and Jesus-died-to-set-a-good-example-for-us-ism.

Alongside all that, I would maintain a demeanor of humility, yet suspicion and intolerance (more…)

When I was a new believer, the church Joy and I attended was very concerned about sound doctrine. I am still thankful today for the foundation they gave me in the Scriptures, and I draw on that regularly. I grew up as an atheist and many if not most of our friends and acquaintances at that time were non-believers. Early on, our ministry was largely outside the church, where non-believers are generally to be found. The area we lived in seemed ripe for evangelism and this little doctrinally sound church was right in the heart of it! I found, however, that I often met with resistance when I raised the issue of reaching the surrounding neighborhood with the gospel of Christ. It wasn’t that they did not careabout reaching the lost, and would happily welcome any lost people into the church, but they seemed to have plenty of ready excuses for not taking the message “out there.” It struck me that they were much like the 10 spies in Numbers 13:32-33: (more…)

Over the last few weeks we have had a number of requests about information on Todd Bentley and what is happening in Lakeland, FL. Of special concern are his claims that God told him to , kick elderly women in the face, body tackle people, beat a women’s legs on the platform like baseball bats, leg drop pastors and the like. I was very glad to see our friend Bill Randles write My People Love It So… Why There Must Be Yet Another Mystical Revival, and his piece, Todd Bentley - The New Simon Magus. You see, Pastor Bill is ordained in and pastors an Assembly of God church. No one can really say he is opposed to the Pentecostal and Charismatic views, theology and practice. He is however, very opposed to false teachers. The title of his first article, “My People Love It So…” particularly caught my attention because I think it also has application to other issues in the church.

Pastor Randles’ title comes from Jeremiah 5:31 but I will quote it starting with verse 30:

An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it?

This is a picture of people run amok. It is also an apt description for the cry-baby boomer generation. Victor Davis Hanson describes how the cry-baby boomer generation solves problems in ,All About Me. Frankly, I am not all that surprised when non-Christians (more…)

A few days ago my wife Joy read an article which she thought should be mentioned in this week’s E-Letter and sent me the link. I opened up the WorldNetDaily article Apologetics: Cure for America’s social ills, and the first thing I noticed is that a friend (Anthony Horvath) authored it. Anthony, like so many others we have met over the years, became involved in apologetics and discernment out of a desire to reach the lost. His burden for the current state of affairs in the church is all too familiar:

No sooner do we put our attention on our apologetic and evangelism efforts do we come to some very hard truths about the state of Christian education. Indeed, when we compare the overall thrust of the youth and education programs of many churches with the nature of the challenge arrayed against us, there can be little doubt as to the extent of the problem. If we wanted godly young men and women who could carefully discern how various legislative endeavors threaten to hurt and harm millions of people – even as we speak, or in a generation hence – one cannot see how cutesy skits, movie nights and glorified Sunday School curricula will achieve that goal.

At the same time Anthony and others are raising this concern Brian McLaren is traveling the country and doing his Deep Shift: Everything Must Change Conference and the trailer “The Shift” film (not directly related to McLaren) came out. Watching the trailer and thinking about McLaren took me back to my child hood days when my mother would sometimes say to me, “If Johnny jumped off of the edge of a cliff, would you jump too?” It may not seem at first blush that all of this is related but let’s see. (more…)

I’ve just begun to digest the Evangelical Manifesto , a twenty page, eloquently written statement about what it means to be an evangelical, spearheaded by such luminaries as Dallas Willard, David Neff—editor and chief of Christianity Today, and Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary. It comes complete with study guide. The first half of the manifesto is a basic rehashing of Christian doctrine—kind of like the Nicene and Athanasian Creed but without all that pesky Latin. The second half however reads like a cross between an apology and a Christianity Today op-ed on church, state, and the sins of the evangelical right.

Of course it’s the last part that’s getting all the press. Seizing on the mea culpa and ignoring the theology, USA Today has the headline: “Manifesto Aims to Make ‘Evangelical’ less Political”. The LA Times sports the headline: (more…)

Many love Brian McLaren and his books. It comes across as a breath of fresh air to them. Most probably are simply aware of his name and that he is popular but beyond that don’t really know what he has to say. Some are wondering if he is a Christian though few would dare to answer that negatively. It just wouldn’t be good P.R. After all, he is promoted by Willow Creek Community Church, Saddleback Community Church, Christianity Today, Rob Bell and many other big names. I suppose in order to answer the question we would have to know what one’s definition of Christian is. If the definition is someone who was born in the United States, attended an Evangelical or Fundamentalist church and then went on to pastor an Evangelical church the answer would be yes. If the definition is someone who wants to call all people to social action, eliminate poverty, eliminate sickness, redistribute the wealth, and create a Utopia on earth in the name of God, then yes he is a Christian. If the definition is someone who has accepted the atoning sacrifice and physical resurrection of Christ it becomes more questionable. As Brett Kunkle points out in Essential Concerns Regarding the Emerging Church McLaren doesn’t know why Jesus died on the cross and floats out the option of that being an act of “divine child abuse.” McLaren writes: (more…)

Ben Stein’s film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released on the April 18th. I didn’t have an opportunity to see it right away but have been encouraging others to go to the movies. A friend, Dr. Ron Allen, emailed to let me know that he had seen it and thought it was very well done. He and several others have mentioned that the interview with Richard Dawkins at the end is worth the entire price of the ticket. Another friend emailed and said she hadn’t seen it but had read some negative response from some of those from the anti-intelligent design camp who had been interviewed for the film. The Center for Science and Culture published a fairly lengthy (three parts), although not exhaustive paper by Casey Luskin titled, MICHAEL SHERMER’S FACT-FREE ATTACK ON EXPELLED EXPOSES INTOLERANCE OF DARWINISTS TOWARDS PRO-INTELLIGENT DESIGN SCIENTISTS On Monday Joy and I decided to take in the movie in the afternoon and am very glad I did. Shermer exposed himself (more…)

One of my favorite columnists is Thomas Sowell. He does this “Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene” which is his brand of conservative rabble rousing about the conversation in the public square. Here’s my experiment in doing the same thing from an evangelical point of view … so don’t say you weren’t warned …

(more…)