Free Will-y?

After last Sunday’s message on divine sovereignty from Daniel 4 (“Clawing His Way To The Top” [Daniel 4]), I received a note from a young woman and her boyfriend who had talked at length about the sermon. At is turns out, they both struggled with the idea that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes (v. 17). “Does that imply that God put Hitler and Stalin in their positions of power?” this couple asked. “Can you give us some help here?” Here is what I wrote in response:

Well, you guys, to venture into the topic of God’s sovereignty versus our free will is to take up an issue that theologians have wrestled with for years! Some people (maybe you would fit into this category) lean strongly on the free will side of the debate, precisely because of the kinds of issues that came up in your conversation together. The problem with this (as noted by many) is that to put the responsibility solely in our hands (or Hitler’s and Stalin’s) doesn’t really get God ‘off the hook.’

This is because God as portrayed throughout the Bible is both all-powerful and all-good. Consider the logic: if God is all-good, of course He is gonna want to stop the likes of Hitler and Stalin (whether he put ‘em in power, or they got there by their own free will), and if He is all-powerful, He certainly has the ability to do so. So, even if we take a free-will position in the debate, it appears that God remains ‘on the hook’, since (a) he has the power to intervene to prevent the likes of the Hitlers and Stalins of the world, and (b) he should want to do so, if he is also good, as the Bible teaches.

This leaves us, I think, with but a few options (there are surely others, but the following stand out as the most obvious):

1. Redefine ‘God’ — Here we (a) compare the pain and suffering in our world with the biblical picture of God outlined above, (b) conclude that there is a glaring disconnect between the two, and then (c) reject the biblical portrayal of God, and define God in other terms.

Maybe God is not all-good and uses his power in harmful ways (like some of the ancient Greek and Roman gods). Or maybe God is all-good, but not all-powerful, so that God is actually unable do anything about the Stalins and Hitlers of this world, though he would love to get rid of them, if he could. Both positions have been taken by various persons throughout history, but you have to ditch the Bible’s understanding of God to go there.

2. Reject God — We simply dump the idea of God entirely, and adopt an atheistic, naturalistic worldview. But then we confront the problem of making moral judgments about the Hitlers and Stalins of this world to begin with, since we no longer have an external basis of authority on which to base our morality.

Do we really want to live in a world like that? Think about it. A naturalistic, evolutionary model of the universe assumes a ’survival-of-the-fittest’ understanding of reality—an understanding which correspondingly generates a ’survival-of-the-fittest’ morality. The strong survive. The weak are eliminated. Just watch animals go after each other on the African plains. No moral constraints there. The fittest survive to propagate the species.

Well, according to the naturalistic model, human beings are not created in the image of God. We are simply higher evolved animals. So the same ‘morality’ of the African plains logically extends to us. If a Hitler or Stalin effectively seizes power, then, hey, according to a naturalistic worldview, he has proven himself to be the ‘fittest,’ and the elimination of people whom he dislikes is thereby morally justified. One might reply that the pain Hitler and Stalin caused others was wrong. According to who? Pain and suffering are key ingredients in the evolution of the species. Just look at the rest of the animal world. This is certainly not the kind of social world that I want to live in.

3. Receive God —  Receive God, as revealed in Scripture, that is. Our final option is the biblical one: to embrace the idea that God is both all-powerful and all-good and, by extension, to assume that God is somehow involved in everything that happens on this planet (whether knowingly permitting it or actively causing it—Christian theologians continue to debate this issue), including who governs the nations and who does not.

The biblical worldview is certainly not without its problems, as honest Christian thinkers will readily acknowledge. But, in the final analysis, it seems to make more sense of the chaos of reality than any other worldview. For built into the biblical worldview is the promise that God will somehow use his power to turn the heartaches, evils, and sins of the human race (as well as natural disasters) into good in his divine economy, that is, in the big picture of things, once life on this planet is all played out.

How can we be sure of that? We can be sure because this is precisely what God did at the crucifixion of Jesus. The crucifixion of God’s Son was the most heinous, evil crime ever perpetrated by human beings on this planet: God comes to visit us in the person of Jesus, and we hang him on a Roman cross. Was God the Father somehow involved in that horrendously evil deed? Yes. Acts 4:27-28 reads as follows (Peter is praying to God): In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed,  to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

The important thing to note here is what God was able to DO with that infinitely evil crime: he turned it into the greatest good that humankind has ever experienced. By means of the crucifixion of Jesus, our sins are forgiven, we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and we enter into an eternal love relationship with the God who created us and with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Where we struggle with all this, I suspect, is that unlike the crucifixion we don’t get to see all the ways in which God turns bad into good in the ongoing suffering of people in our world today—not in this life, at any rate. Sometimes, however, we do get a glimpse. For example, after months of stonewalling and red tape, two families in our church are suddenly bringing home their adopted kids from an orphanage Haiti—something that would not have happened apart from a horrible natural catastrophe. But, of course, this is only a little glimpse, and a tremendous amount of suffering in Haiti remains unexplained.

This is why we must always return to the cross. For what God did in the face of evil by using his power for our good (and for his glory) at the crucifixion of Jesus assures that he is the kind of God who will someday make sense of a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti, as well. That is the message of the Bible.

You two are obviously wrestling with a big issue here, one that has tremendous ramifications for how we understand reality and how we live our lives. In closing, I would only add that, if you choose to reject the biblical picture of God, you will by default (if not consciously) have to replace it with another. And I do not think you will find another way of looking at life, and at ultimate reality, that accounts for our world as well as biblical Christianity does.

Continue to ask questions. Seek honest answers. God will reward your search. Christianity is intellectually credible enough to have survived the poking and probing of both believers and skeptics (and some of us that happen to be both!) for two thousand years.

The above is my attempt to bring the cookies of the free-will-versus-divine-sovereignty debate down to a shelf where a couple young adults who are not trained theologians can reach them. I would greatly appreciate some comments in response. [I know you're out there, because I see your hits on my blog log! And this is an issue about which many of us have some pretty strong convictions. ]

Who’s Yo Mama?

Does Jesus ever surprise you with the way he responds to certain individuals in the Bible? The following interchange certainly cries out for some explanation. We are in the middle of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is teaching in public, when suddenly a woman in the crowd calls out, Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you! Jesus responds: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it (Luke 11:27-28).

QUESTION #1: Why is Jesus so apparently insensitive here? The term translated rather in the NIV is a strong adversative expression in Greek. Jesus is doing some major ‘course correction’ here. Yet it seems that this woman has simply said something nice about Jesus’ mother. What’s the big deal here? Why not an affirming response like: Why, thank you! I’ll be sure to pass that on to my mama. She’ll really appreciate it.

QUESTION #2: What’s the logical connection between the woman’s exclamation and Jesus’ response? Why would Jesus follow up a comment about his mother with an observation about hearing and obeying God’s word? We appear to have somewhat of a non sequitur here.

The answers to these questions are found in family, gender roles, and personal identity, as they were understood in the cultural world of first-century Palestine. Family systems in Jesus’ day were patrilineal. This means that the male bloodline determined family membership. A father/male passed on family membership to the next generation. A mother/female did not. Although we do family very differently in America today, a vestige of the patrilineal family construct remains in our practice of passing male surnames on to the next generation. Thus, my kids have the last name “Hellerman” (their father’s), rather than my wife’s birth surname, “Crites.”

Now the patrilineal family system of Jesus’ day placed little girls in a very tenuous position. One Jewish writer went so far as to assert, “The birth of a daughter is a loss” (Sirach 22:3). Why? Because a daughter was unable to pass on family membership to the next generation. Only a son could do that. So EVERYBODY wanted to have baby boys—not baby girls.

What’s left, then, for a baby girl? Well, a baby girl is supposed to grow up, be married off into another patrilineal kinship group, and make baby boys to help guarantee the honor and future viability of that patriline. You could almost say that in such a setting a woman becomes a person—in the fullest sense of the word—only when she gives birth to a son.

Aha! Now the woman’s blessing, as recorded in Luke 11:27, makes perfect sense. This lady is essentially exclaiming to Jesus, Boy, did YO MAMA become someone special when she had YOU for a son!

Jesus, however, will have no part of it. He has a program in mind for women (and for men!) that flies right in the face of the dominant culture’s family values. Jesus forcefully responds, On the contrary! No longer will the personhood of women be defined by son-bearing. Just like a man, a woman becomes the person God intends her to be when she hears the word of God and obeys it.

In conservative evangelical circles we make much of what Jesus has to say about a person’s individual relationship with God. And so we should. But apparently Jesus also has a lot to say about cultural institutions—like family. We should pay close attention this, as well. As Jesus put it, let’s hear the word of God and obey it.

Political A-Musings

This morning I preached on Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar discovers the hard way that “the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes” (v. 17). I serve a wonderful, God-loving congregation of mostly conservative Republicans. One Sunday some months ago, I delighted my people by informing them that I would not make a very good Democrat, because I don’t trust big government. But I immediately added that I also wouldn’t make a very good Republican, because I don’t trust big business. And then I think I really got ‘em thinking, when I said that I probably don’t make a very good pastor—at least not according to current American evangelical criteria for pastoral success—because I don’t trust big churches.

Well, this morning I finally showed my hand politically. I told the congregation that I am not a fan of Barack Obama. Many of them were probably somewhat relieved to hear that Pastor Joe is not the liberal they thought he was. But I suspect the warm fuzzies didn’t last very long. For I proceeded to tell the congregation a marvelous story—the kind of story that can help us all to rise above the pitiful mire of partisan politics to share King Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective on God’s sovereign control over the rulers of the world.

I am involved with World Impact’s Urban Ministry Institute in Los Angeles. At a board meeting last month, Bob Drummond, who served many years as the principal of LA Christian School, related to us an interaction he had had years ago with some parents in this inner-city school.

It was presidential election day in November 1992. Two Latino ladies from the neighborhood arrived to pick up their kids, proudly wearing their red-white-&-blue “I Voted” stickers on their lapels. It seems that these women had just become American citizens, and this was their first opportunity to participate in the political process. The principal noticed the stickers and warmly encouraged the ladies. Then one of them enthusiastically remarked, “Yes, Mr. Drummond, we voted for God’s candidate, Bill Clinton.”

Now Bob Drummond was decidedly not a Clinton fan. So he gently inquired of the ladies, “Why do you feel that Bill Clinton is God’s candidate?” They replied, “Oh, Mr. Drummond, Bill Clinton is soft on the borders, and if we had not been able to get across the border, we would never have had the opportunity to come to America and hear about Jesus.”

Ain’t it funny how things look a little different from the other side of the tracks?

A passage from the book of Acts sums it up well: “From one man God made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27).

Apparently Nebuchadnezzar got it right. God truly is “sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.” In His wisdom. For His eternal purposes. Think about that the next time your (wo)man wins—or loses—in Washington.

Only An Act Of God

Ever been part of something that only God could have done? It’s 1978 (or thereabouts). My very first year in vocational Christian ministry as a high school director for some 60 wonderful kids. The Baptist church I’m a part of hosts its annual evangelistic crusade. The hired evangelist is scheduled to preach Sunday AM, PM, and then Mon-Tue-Wed evenings. At the Sunday AM service the church people decide if we like the guy enough to invite our friends. Same drill every year. Usually falls flat on its face.

Not this year. I rush from teaching our high schoolers during the Sunday School hour to the 11 AM service. We start singing a couple hymns. I start weeping. WHAT?! Something’s afoot here. The evangelist starts preaching. Actually, he just turns his tattered Bible from passage to passage and reads them to us one after another. The Spirit’s presence is palpable, like you could almost touch God or something. By the end of the crusade on Wednesday night, 100 high schoolers had walked the aisles. I about wore the tires off my VW Bug following up on ‘em all the next week. On Thursday AM, at staff meeting, Barney Andrews, our beloved Senior Pastor, says, “I have never experienced anything like that in 35 years of ministry.” And I get to be a part of it during my first year as a youth worker? Amazing. And I want to see it happen again!

In fact, I challenged our congregation at OCF to pray this year for Jesus to do something in our church that we could only explain as an act of God. At our elder meeting last Tuesday, I discovered that both Brandon (my co-pastor) and I were praying separately for exactly the same thing: 100 new converts at Oceanside Christian Fellowship during 2010. Since we probably only had a half-dozen during 2009, that would truly be an act of God. I say BRING IT ON! What say you?

Pastor Joe On Blues Harp

Sometimes they let me play the harmonica at our church’s New Year’s Eve party:

Leadership In Crisis?

After a hectic Fall semester—full load at Talbot and preaching new material every Sunday—I am sort of enjoying some down time now between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I say ’sort of’ because, as my wife will tell you, I don’t do real well with down time—especially when I don’t have a large writing project looming on the horizon. I get a bit grumpy and self-absorbed. The break has given me an opportunity, however, to reflect upon a rather disturbing phenomenon that surfaced on several occasions during the semester: the abuse of power and authority by pastors and others in local church leadership.

Dysfunctional leadership is hardly new, of course, but this semester alone I had four students take the initiative to make appointments with me to discuss their recent experiences along these lines. The stories broke my heart. And they made me angry. One young man was basically ‘run out of town on a rail’ by his senior pastor. Apparently he was becoming a bit too influenced by what he was learning at Biola, and he was not teaching the denomination’s ‘party line.’ He served as a successful and much-loved college pastor in a denomination that ascribes to a ‘great man theory,’ whereby everyone is expected to listen to the sermons of the denomination’s founder and preach or teach accordingly. Now I have no problem with a church or denomination preserving its distinctives where community teaching and culture are concerned. Perhaps it was time for the college pastor to move on. It was not the fact that this young man was terminated but, rather, the underhanded, manipulative manner in which it was done that troubled me. Well, God is in the business of turning garbage into glory and, as it turns out, this particular young man is becoming better—instead of bitter—from the experience. But it sure didn’t look that way back in August, when he was so hurt that he was about ready to ditch both his plans for future ministry and his faith in God.

I won’t depress you with the other stories of power abuse I heard this semester, but I would like to hear your thoughts. I can see why our Foucaudian friends are so skeptical of all agendas championed by persons in position of authority. Little wonder that some of our ‘emerging’ brothers and sisters want to dump local church leadership entirely. That, of course, is not  a biblical option. But what is? The source of the crisis in leadership is relatively transparent. Increasingly, we are not raising emotionally healthy human beings in our homes , and we are not training relationally healthy leaders in our churches. So a scenario repeats itself whereby (a) we run across an emotionally needy  young man who deeply loves Jesus and who demonstrates a little ‘leadership charisma’ in our church community, (b) we send him off to seminary to get a little theology, Hebrew, and Greek, and then (c) we turn him loose to shepherd God’s people. The results are predictable.

Talbot School of Theology makes a noble attempt to address this systemic problem through Intentional Character Development courses that are required of each student. The courses do a pretty good job of identifying potential problems, but fixing them is another story entirely. No seminary program can give a person a childhood he or she did not have. Neither can the church. But I can’t help but think that our churches can do more to address the issue than we are presently doing. Any thoughts? Are there some structures, programs, church cultural values that we can adopt to raise up healthy, relationally functional leaders for our churches and our mission fields? What are we presently doing that might serve to undermine or obstruct such a goal? I’d love to hear you weigh in on this.

Book Review By Scot McKnight

See Scot McKnight’s kind review of When the Church Was a Family at: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/10/church-as-family.html

My Pilgrimage As A NT Scholar

A week or so ago, I received a request from a fellow named Matt, who is a student at Dallas Theological Seminary. He wanted me to fill out a questionnaire to post on his blog (http://broadcastdepth.wordpress.com/). The questions had to do with my role as a New Testament scholar and seminary professor.

I don’t know if or when Matt will post it on his blog, but I thought, “What the heck, I’ll paste it into my own blog!” Maybe some of my highly opinionated comments will give (a) some of us something to think about, (b) some of us something to rant about (please post a reply!), and some of us something to pray about. Enjoy!

First, tell us a little about yourself.

I am Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Talbot School of Theology. I also serve as a team pastor at Oceanside Christian Fellowship, El Segundo, CA, a church that has become a laboratory, of sorts, for my vision for the church as a family.

My education includes an M.Div. and Th.M. from Talbot, and a Ph.D. in History of Christianity from UCLA. I wrote several academic monographs, including The Ancient Church as Family (Fortress, 2001), Reconstructing Honor in Roman Philippi (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Jesus and the People of God: Reconfiguring Ethnic Identity (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007). Most recently, I authored a book for local church leaders, When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community (B&H Publishing 2009).

I have a deep love for the local church, and have served for more than thirty years in various capacities in both full-time and part-time vocational church ministry. As a scholar-practitioner, my driving passion is to see Christians enjoy the benefits of authentic community in our local churches.

I am blessed to live with Joann, my wife of 29 years, in the home in which I was raised, in Hermosa Beach, CA. We have two adult daughters who are walking close to Jesus. When I am not involved in church or academic ministry, you might find me fishing in the Pacific Ocean, playing jazz piano, wine-tasting with Joann in Temecula, or mentoring inner-city pastors through World Impact’s Urban Ministry Institute.

What motivated you to enter your field of study? What keeps you going?

I found studying the Bible and biblical languages in seminary to be immensely satisfying, and, as a pastor, I decided that I wanted to influence future pastors in a broader way than I could if I were to remain full-time in the local church. So that started it all.

What keeps me going as a pastor-professor is the incredible honor of teaching and mentoring men and women who are giving their lives to make a difference in this world for our Lord Jesus Christ. They deserve better, but somehow God has chosen to use me in their lives.

What issues have you had to overcome along the way?

Well, in my case, a five-year Ph.D. program (after four years in seminary!) became nine years long because (a) our senior pastor took another job during my first year in the program, and I had to fill the pulpit weekly, (b) my mother became terminally ill, and my wife and I took care of her in our little 2-bedroom, 750 sq ft house, with two young daughters, and (c) I fell on a jetty fishing and broke my hip right after I had completed my comprehensive exams, half-way through the program.

Obviously God’s “school of character” turned out to be a little different than the agenda I had set for my education, when I entered the program at UCLA in the Fall of 1989. But I would not have it any other way, as I look back on it today.

What is your favorite passage of scripture?

I really have to pick? OK, I’ll choose Philippians 2:5-11. Much of pastoral ministry has to do with the way we choose to leverage the authority we have as Christian leaders, as we minister to others in the body of Christ. Sadly, it seems that almost on a weekly basis I run into someone who has been hurt or otherwise abused by a pastor or another individual in Christian leadership, that is, by a leader who has used his authority in a self-serving way. When I wrote my book on Philippians (Reconstructing Honor), I was profoundly impressed by the way the Second Person of the Godhead leveraged his power and authority—solely in the service of others. We would all do well to become more like Jesus, in this regard.

Can you divulge any information on any new publication or project on which you are working?

I am teaching a full load and preaching every Sunday this Fall (2009), so I have no writing projects in the pipeline at present. I am finding a little “nerd time” here and there, though, to read the Aramaic Targums, and in the future I might explore the importance of the Targums for understanding the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament. My father was a German Jew, and I have this thing for Semitic languages—I know, I know—a bit weird for a New Testament scholar.

If there is one author/theologian that you believe everyone should read, who is it?

This is a hard one. There are so many New Testament scholars I admire (Bauckham, Hurtado, Carson, Witherington, etc.). If I must pick one, however, I’ll finger N. T. Wright, not necessarily because I agree with his every conclusion, but because (a) he thinks creatively, (b) he thinks ‘big picture,’ and (c) he thinks historically/culturally first, and theologically second. I have probably learned more from N. T. Wright than from any other author/theologian.

Wright is not, however, an  author/theologian I think “everyone should read.” I would not want the people in my church feeding themselves solely on a diet of Tom Wright, for example, without a broader scholarly context in which to situate him. But a budding New Testament scholar (e.g., a seminary student with a rudimentary grasp of the field) would do well carefully to work his/her way through Wright’s trilogy on early Christian history.

What do you think are the biggest problems facing New Testament scholarship today?

Problem #1: The way the popular media champions the likes of Bart Ehrman, instead of putting forth a fine conservative scholar like Dan Wallace. [You did say you’re a DTS student, Matt?!] That has become a major problem, I think, for people in the broader culture, and for some of our less-informed church members, as well.

Problem #2: New Testament historiography has been taken captive by our post-Shoah Zeitgeist, so that (especially liberal) scholars seem increasingly unwilling to entertain the remote possibility (a) that there might have been something awry with Second Temple Judaism (and its leaders), and (b) that Jesus might have offered some…er…much needed “course correction,” in this regard.

Scholarship is always historically contingent, but it seems that cutting edge New Testament scholarship is presently over-determined by issues of power and discourse (under the domineering aegis of postmodern epistemological pessimism) and under-determined by evidence from the New Testament itself, read against the background of the social and historical realities of the ancient Mediterranean world. This is highly problematic for anyone who believes in authorial intention and an inspired New Testament text.

What areas do you think New Testament scholars will have to focus on in the next ten years?

Wow! (1) We’re well into the “not-so-New-Perspective-on-Paul” era, with all the opportunities that brings to integrate recent findings about Second Temple Judaism into our study of Paul, (2) the origin of the Gospels is up for grabs anew with the demise of the dominance of form criticism, plus (3) we’ve got to deal with an American stream of revisionist historiography (where form criticism curiously still reigns supreme) that postulates a whole variety of “Christianities” during the first and second centuries—and that’s just some of the trendy stuff already in the pipeline!

More broadly, though, there will always be linguistic discoveries to be made (ongoing reflection on the tense of the Greek verb comes to mind). And continued archaeological digs will provide some new historical data. Ancient inscriptions are just beginning to be mined for the riches that are there to be had for New Testament studies. The work that Dan Wallace, Peter Williams, and others are doing in the area of textual criticism will also be increasingly important—particularly to reinforce our confidence in the New Testament text, in the academy and in the church.

I suspect, however, that the social and cultural world of Mediterranean antiquity—and the way these background materials inform our understanding of the text—will prove especially fruitful for the next generation of New Testament scholars. I hope so, at any rate. I have a former teaching assistant, for example, who is at UCLA comparing Greco-Roman ideals of honorable leadership with Paul’s view of leadership in his epistles. This kind of research has tremendous potential practically to inform the way we do church. And that, for my money, is New Testament scholarship at its best. But this is coming from a guy who does most of his work in this very area!

Where do you believe are the best places for a student to study the New Testament either as an undergraduate, graduate, or doctoral student?

Depends on goals, background, and a myriad of other factors. I went to Talbot for my seminary training and UCLA for my doctorate, simply ‘cause I live in LA, and that’s where church, family, and the Pacific Ocean are.

Lastly, if there is one piece of advice you could give to someone entering New Testament scholarship, what would it be?

The church. Do it for the church!

Please do not go into New Testament scholarship (a) because you got some warm fuzzies from that ‘A’ you earned in Greek exegesis, or (b) because you love to study the Bible. Go into New Testament scholarship because you want to serve the church.

I would (and do) discourage anyone who is not presently in a ministry position in the local church—and who plans to stay in one throughout his/her education—from doing a Ph.D. in New Testament. This doesn’t mean he/she has to be a full-time paid pastor. But it does mean, in my view, he/she should be teaching AND shepherding others in the local church throughout (and after) the academic training.

I have met with the same group of elders in my church every Tuesday morning for 10 years, simply to pray for one another and for our church family (no church business at these meeting). To these men, the august string of academic letters after my name mean nothing. These guys are my brothers in the Lord, first, and my partners in ministry, second. And because of the close brother-relationships we share, these men do more for my spiritual life (and, consequently, more to keep my scholarship biblical) than any of my academic peers in the field of New Testament studies.

You will likely discover (as I have) that the people in your local church who are not biblical scholars will teach you more about following Jesus than any scholar or any book you’ll ever read. I simply cannot overemphasize this truth.

So, if you are unwilling to (a) be a true brother in relationship with others in the local church, and (b) shepherd the flock of God, please do not bother with a Ph.D. in biblical studies. We don’t need any more non-relational “loners” in biblical scholarship. We have lost too many well-meaning conservative Ph.D. students to the enemy, simply because many of these folks did not keep their feet firmly planted in the nurturing relational soil of the local Christian church throughout their scholarly pilgrimage.  Sermon over.

Hello world!

Greetings! This is my first attempt at blogging. Not even quite sure what I’ll be doing with this site but, hey, I’ve got a new book coming out in August that I think people who are interested in church might find informative:

See ‘About’ button for more info. Or download a sample chapter at: http://bhpublishinggroup.com/leadership/church/books.asp?p=9780805447798