One for you Lovers of Books and Theology

Last weekend I finished up a 2-week residency for my Doctor of Ministry program at Lipscomb University. As one who loves books, though the reading requirements are heavy, I also find them a bit energizing. As we discussed ideas in class, a number of new book recommendations came up in class that I hope to find time to start reading soon. For what it's worth, I thought I'd pass on a list of some books that I'm interested in exploring. If you've read any of these,

The 2012 and 2013 LU DMin Cohorts

tell me what you thought.

• James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept
• Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary Theologian: A Reader
• Brian M. Howell, Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience
• Dwight Zscheile, Cultivating Sent Communities: Missional Spiritual Formation
• John H. Walton, The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority
• G.K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry
• Jerram Barrs, Echoes of Eden: Reflections on Christianity, Literature, and the Arts
• Emily P. Freeman, Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live
• Michael Goheen & Craig Bartholomew, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama
• Shane Hipps, Selling Water By The River: A Book About The Life Jesus Promised And The Religion That Gets In The Way
• Mark Scandrette, Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life Together in the Kingdom of Love
• Kyle Idleman, Gods at War: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart
• Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles
• Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Volume 1
• Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism After Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness
• Edwin Friedman, The Myth of Shiksa and Other Essays
• Edwin Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue
• Don Edward Beck, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
• Scot McKnight, Embracing Grace: A Gospel For All of Us
• Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
• Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words

Below are most of the books that I had to read for this residency. If you want my opinion on any of these, feel free to inquire. For the ones I have in physical, non-ebook format, I'd be glad to loan them out. I have put in bold the ones that I liked best.

• Michael Goheen, A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story
• Carl Savage and William Presnell, Narrative Research in Ministry: A Postmodern Research Approach for Faith Communities
• John Swinton and Harriet Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research
• David Fitch, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier
• Graham Hill, Salt, Light, and a City: Introducing Missional Ecclesiology
• Andy Crouch, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power
• Leonard Sweet, I Am A Follower: The Way, Truth, and Life of Following Jesus
• Lawrence Golemon, Finding Our Story: Narrative Leadership and Congregational Change
• Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God's Work
• Alan Roxburgh, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood
• J.R. Woodward, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World
• The Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out Of The Box
• Richard Beck, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality
• Charles Campbell, Preaching Jesus: The New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology
• Charles Campbell, The Word Before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching
• Charles Campbell and Johan H. Cilliers, Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly
• Will D. Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly
• Tian Dayton, The Magic of Forgiveness: Emotional Freedom and Transformation in Midlife
• Charles Marsh and John Perkins, Welcoming Justice: God's Movement Toward Beloved Community
• Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible
• Peter Steinke, Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What
• Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness
• Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation
• Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower: On The Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

I am very grateful to my church for giving me the freedom to participate in this program. I know it is hard having me unavailable for several weeks at a time. The program has been challenging and shaping me in meaningful ways. 

What The Heavens Declare

I think the recent new pictures by the Hubble Space Telescope are astonishing, and worthy of some reflection. Embedded in creation are so many wonderful things to be discovered. Some of them escape our view from their smallness, such as atoms. Others have escaped our view by their vastness, such as the universe. I believe that whenever we encounter something new and astounding in creation, we should take it as a gift from God, and be grateful that his creation is such a wonderful place to explore.

Just imagine what is out there, still remaining to be found and admired.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
-Psalm 19:1

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
-Proverbs 25:2

Though a starry sky was already beautiful to be sure...

















...there is so much more hidden beyond our sight.

My Statement of Faith

After many hours of labor, I have completed my statement of faith. It is a paper that spans over two semesters at the Harding Grad School. I had to write it for my Systematic Theology classes (part A and B). In total, it is about 30 pages. The purpose is not to write a high-level research paper, but to simply state what I believe, incorporating Scripture and a few secondary sources where necessary.

If you have any interest in knowing what I believe about the nature and being of God (theology proper), theological anthropology, hamartiology, soteriology, pneumatology, or eschatology, have I got a treat for you!

It's a .pdf. And yes, I know the footnotes are not flawless Turabian formatting. The program I used to make it a .pdf messed them up. At any rate, this is about a year's worth of thought. Whether or not anyone else ever sees it, I'm proud of it.

Here's the link to it.

If any of you have the endurance to read all or even part of it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Coercing the Gods

An idea popped into my head today, and I wanted to blog about it to see if I can express it in a coherent fashion.

There is a sense in which the sins of the world continue to repeat themselves. "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man" -I Corinthians 10:13. We certainly have a different worldview, and an extremely different culture from what would have been prevalent in the ancient near east. But I think we could agree that many of the sins--the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life--all remain the same.

I spotted another one today that really took me off guard. A few weeks ago I was reading in Nahum Sarna's book Understanding Genesis, where he talked about the role of magic in pagan religion that was strikingly absent in Israel's worship of God.

For pagan religions, the gods are not uncreated beings. If you go back far enough, even the gods have birth stories, therefore there had to be some force beyond the gods that could bring them into existence. Here is Sarna's observation:

Since, according to pagan concepts, man's destiny is controlled by two separate forces, the gods and the powers beyond the gods, it was inevitable that magic became an integral part of pagan religion. Man had to be able to devise the means of activating those forces superior even to the gods. Religion, as a consequence, became increasingly concerned with the elaboration of ritual designed to propitiate the numerous unpredictable powers that be. (Page 11)

In contrast, Israel felt that God was the Creator. He was without a superior, and there were no higher forces to whom one could appeal.

What got me thinking was a conversation I had with a dear friend of mine who is working on his PhD at a prominent divinity school in the northern USA. I've found it a bit odd that the majority of divinity students at this point and time are female. It's not a vast majority; kind of a 55/45, but it seems to be an increasing majority. (I'm not saying it's good or bad; it's just interesting to me) But some of these students are not just females who want to know the Bible better and live as good Christians. My friend is in school with numerous agenda-pushing homosexuals, and several trans-gender people ("women" who used to be men and vice versa). It isn't totally uncommon for divinity schools to contain more atheists than any other branch of a university.

Without getting too much into that can of worms, I wonder if I can make a connection between our culture and the ANE culture when we consider how people currently understand God's origin. Why are people whose lives are so diametrically opposed to Biblical teaching so drawn to study theology? If the gods are born of higher powers, and you find a way to control the higher powers (magic), then you can coerce the gods to do as you please.

Many of these people today are pushing their own moral and political agendas. They study divinity under the assumption that after "the beginning", it was Man who made God by writing these holy books. Even if we can't get people to change the books, maybe we can change how these books are understood. If we can change the way people understand the holy books, then we can change the way they view God. The end result? We are trying to appeal to forces beyond God to make Him into what we desire, so that our own wishes are granted.

Is scholarship the new higher power to whom we appeal when we want to force God into our mold?

What do you think?

Which Theologian are You?

You scored as Jonathan Edwards. You're the original hellfire-and brimstone preacher and you take God's justice very seriously. You are passionate about preaching and an accomplished theologian.

Friedrich Schleiermacher		80%
Jonathan Edwards		80%
Karl Barth		73%
Anselm		67%
Jürgen Moltmann		67%
Augustine		53%
John Calvin		53%
Martin Luther		47%
Charles Finney		33%
Paul Tillich		27%

Which theologian are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

So apparently I'm most like Jonathan Edwards and Friedrich Schleiermacher, with a leaning slightly more towards Edwards. (They had me answer a tie-breaker question on the quiz) I'm hoping that my theological resemblance to Schleiermacher doesn't also mean that any books I write will turn out to be dreadfully boring.

Tomorrow's sermon: 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'. Not really, but ironically, my sermon tomorrow morning is going to be very apocalyptic. We have been doing a daily reading through the New Testament, which we finish this week. I'm preaching from the last chapters of Revelation. Having Hussein put to death this week makes for some interesting applications about how God will bring justice for everyone when Christ returns. We all will eventually reap what we sow. Take the quiz and let me know how it turns out for you.