A Call to Christian Men: Start acting like one

I take joy in being a part of a Christian denomination that holds a high view Scripture and that encourages members to structure their lives in a way that is true to Scripture and God honoring. Baptists are often accused of being closed-minded and backwards because we cling so tightly to Scriptural principles in a [...]

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A Little Older, A Little Wiser

I celebrated a birthday this month. As I get older I have started to notice more and more how youth oriented our culture is. It’s also interesting to hear people my age talk fondly about high school like those were their glory days.
I guess I’m an optimist, but I believe my best days are in [...]

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The Joys of Ministry vs. The Struggles of Seminary (and a possible solution)

Seminary has not been an easy or especially fulfilling journey for me. It seems I am not alone in this as I have heard both professors and students talk about how seminary was/is a spiritually trying time. Fortunately, I have found great joy in the last six months through being able to do ministry in [...]

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Thoughts on N.T. Wright’s “Surprised by Hope”

One of my books to read this summer was N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope. I finished the book this afternoon and thought I would share a few thoughts about the book.
1. The book is accessible. N.T. Wright is a first rate scholar and some of his works are tough slogs. Not so with this [...]

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Operation Worship: Free Bibles for Chaplains

I attend a Southern Baptist Convention seminary which means our campus bookstore is also a Lifeway store. I was in the store a couple of weeks ago to see if my textbook list for the semester had been released yet and I saw something that caught my eye. It was a small Bible decked out [...]

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The Current Healthcare Debate and the Failure of the Church

I have avoided posting on this issue because I try to avoid talking politics on this blog. This issue, however, butts up against some convictions I have about the church which makes it fair game on this blog. Unless you live in a cave somewhere, you have undoubtedly heard something of the current debate over [...]

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Recovering the Resurrection (part 5)

Recovering a Biblical View of the Bodily Resurrection
The bodily resurrection of the believer, while the idea seems to have largely vanished from the minds of Christian culture, is too important to Christian theology to let it slip away. The struggle to change the hearts and minds of Christians about the issue will not be easy. [...]

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Recovering the Resurrection (part 4)

Losing the Resurrection
The loss of the importance of a bodily resurrection is something that permeates Christian culture. It is found in everything ranging from our hymns to our popular funeral liturgies to our popular music. With the increasing rationalism and dependence on science to explain everything in the world that became popular in the 19th [...]

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Recovering the Resurrection (part 3)

The Resurrection in Early Christian Works
There are many authors and works to choose from when examining the topic of the bodily resurrection in early Christian literature. This paper will focus on the works of two of the early church fathers to illustrate how important the bodily resurrection was to some of the earliest and most [...]

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Recovering the Resurrection (part 2)

The Resurrection in Intertestamental Jewish Literature
The bodily resurrection was not entirely a Christian idea. The centuries leading up to the coming of Christ found the Jewish people of Palestine in a familiar situation. They were under siege and threatened by enemies that did not just threaten them as a people, but also threatened their religious [...]

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