I was doing my morning reading a couple of days ago from the book of Hebrews. One of the verses that caught my eye this time was Hebrews 2:6-9, and particularly verse 7, quoted from Psalm 8:5 (all verse numbers from the English Bible, Psalm 8:5 is 8:6 in Hebrew). Now this quotation is an…
Identifying Your Gifts and Service is a workbook that I wrote, which is published by my publishing company, Energion Publications. I’m going to write here about how to use that workbook effectively in helping church members understand their spiritual gifts and put them to use in support of the church’s mission. Identifying Your Gifts and…
[Note, 3/25/06 — the original post was truncated due to a syntax error I made in the HTML. This is the corrected version.] (Continuing my series on Biblical criticism, from my last post From Criticism.) If Form Criticism can properly be called a “tree method” rather than a forest view, Source Criticism might be said…
The Wesley Daily has posted an entry by Jason Woolever (post-methodist) entitled The Unforgivable Sin. If you read this blog regularly,or if you look over the entries right now, you’ll realize that I don’t post something that just says, “Go look!” all that often, but this is the time for an exception. This is a…
My wife and I often approach things differently. I know that’s a really shocking admission, likely to stun our family, friends, and neighbors. 🙂 We even like different styles of worship services. She tends to embrace new things quickly. I’m rather conservative. I can be persuaded, but you need to prepare a good case first!…
This is a very different sort of blog entry for me. I’m used to writing heavy and sometimes obscure entries on religion, Biblical studies, or politics for this blog. So bear with me . . . My wife Jody and I spent a couple of hours today at the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival in…
The following chart is designed to allow persons who are not skilled in Greek to work with the parallel accounts of the parable of the sower, Matthew 13:1-9, Mark 4:1-9, and Luke 8:4-8. Notes cover very basic cocepts of textual criticism, form criticism, source criticism, and redaction criticism. In future entries I will expand on…
Over on the Pacesetters Bible School News blog I have posted an entry on prayer teams and prayer training. Prayer training seems to be quite rare in churches. ItÂ’s possible that we generally feel that prayer isnÂ’t something that should be taught, but rather is something that just happens. Many pastors that IÂ’ve talked to…
In my pamphlet God the Creator I briefly answer the following question: What are some broad essentials of the Biblical doctrine of creation? In my answer I listed the following six points. I will list the points below and expand on them, below. But first, what am I trying to do here? One thing that…
As reported in various newspapers and summarized on the Florida Citizens for Science web site, (Textbook Debate Still Evolving, Letter to Brevard County School Board, and Textbooks Changed under Pressure) a school board member in Brevard County wants to adopt a science textbook including two paragraphs about intelligent design. I find the introduction of these…