Books

A friend just sent me this link to a recent interview Jonathan Merritt of Religious News Service did with eighty-four year old IVP and NavPress author, Regent prof, and pastor, Eugene Peterson. This particular excerpt has to do with sodomy, lesbianism, and sodomite marriage. Peterson says he's OK with them all.

My friend writes, "As one formed by Intervarsity in the late 80s/early 90s, I see one "esteemed " teacher after another have no courage."

He's speaking euphemistically. This is no mere lack of courage, but utter apostasy. In other words, this man will never enter the Kingdom of God.

One might hope the things Peterson says are the product of early stages of dementia if only they didn't perfectly reflect everything I've known of Inter-Varsity and its press for decades now. How any Christian continues to give money in support of this organization and its employees is...

Just now (and by "now," I mean now) I finished writing The Grace of Shame. Tentatively subtitled, 7 Errors that Keep the Church from Loving Homosexuals (And What To Do About Them), the book is co-authored by son Joseph and Jurgen von Hagen. All three of us are pastors, but here's a hint: one of the three is not like the others.

Get a feel for it by going over to CrossPolitic and listening to today's podcast.

The three guys behind CrossPolitic, David Shannon, Gabriel Rench, and Toby Sumpter, were great to work with and you'll want to sign up to support their work. Tell them I sent you.

Then look for Grace of Shame's release in a few months after it's turned down by all the publishers and we rob the piggy bank to get it printed and released.

If you want to help with that, please give me a shout.

Native Americans attacked Fort Casco (Maine) in May of 1690. Along with her children, Hannah Swarton was taken captive. Her husband had been killed when the fort was taken and her eldest son was killed several months later. Early in her captivity, Hannah was separated from her three remaining children.

Over the course of the following year, Hannah traveled with her Indian captors. Poorly clothed, often freezing, and just as often famished, she learned to eat foods she was not accustomed to. Once, there was nothing to eat but a moose bladder which...

One widow's take on hipster church plants: Working out her grief over her recent loss to cancer of her husband and the father of her daughter, a young mother calls the church to care for her and other widows in their distress. To love them and give them prayer and Jesus. She wants them to stop trying to give her sofas, videos, light shows, and coffee bars. You're not doing that stuff for me, she says. You don't want people who are poor and suffering if you're focussed on coffee smells Sunday mornings. Your church marketing plan shows you don't want me. Check it out: "Why the church doesn't need anymore coffee bars..."

Book publishing and sales: The self-publishing trend continues to leave legacy publishers behind. Meanwhile, the average book sells around 2,500 copies across its lifetime with average sales of 250 or so the first year. This reminds me Dad's satire about Evangelical parachurch evangelism he self-published back in 1964 titled The Gospel Blimp wasn't picked up by Zondervan until it had sold 40,000 copies self-published.

...if I were to sum up my principal objections to most forms of feminism, it would be in the contention that feminism privileges dogmatic ideology over close and receptive attention to reality.  - A. Roberts, link

In Scripture, authority is symbolically masculine, as it originates with a God who stands over against us ...and who refers to himself with masculine pronouns.  - A. Roberts, link

I have some fairly far-reaching criticisms of complementarianism as most understand it. I believe that it unjustly marginalizes women within the life of the Church and society in many and various ways and tends to devalue them. I believe that women need to exercise far more prominent roles in the life and teaching of the Church, not just as a matter of permission, but as a matter of necessity.  - A. Roberts, link

We need more female spiritual directors, lay teachers, theologians, commentators, scholars, churchwardens, vestrywomen, treasurers, vergers, sacristans, elder women (different from elders), deaconesses, lay chaplains, leaders of Bible studies, missionaries, etc.  - A. Roberts, link

Justin Taylor works for Wheaton publisher Crossway. Now, just prior to their release of a book Heirs Together by UK Ph.D. Alastair Roberts, Justin got Gospel Coalition to run a piece on their blog introducing what Justin assures readers is a "big book." The GC blog post introduced by Taylor is written by Roberts and titled "How Should We Think About Watching Women Fight Women?" 

The post gives us an idea what Roberts's book will be like. He writes about "the particular subjective and objective otherness of the other sex," saying it is an "otherness that should excite wonder, love, responsibility, and care," A few sentences later he writes: "the strength and athleticism of women such as Rousey and Nunes is worthy of admiration in many respects." Then this...

Harry Schaumburg and Brian Bunn invited a group of pastors and elders up to Port Washington, Wisconsin, this past week. Harry is the author of two classic books written to help Christians on the road of repentance for sexual sin. The books titled False Intimacy and Undefiled are an extension of the one-week Biblical intensive counselling program Harry provides...

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce Tim Bayly's new book, Daddy Tried. This book has been several years in the making, and is unlike any other book on fatherhood you'll find. It's not a parenting guide. It's a book on the nature of fatherhood—one that draws on decades of experience as a husband, father, and pastor. It stares the sins of fathers past, present, and future squarely in the face and clears a path to overcoming them—a path that begins with faith in our heavenly Father who tells us He knows our weaknesses.

Pre-Order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Download a free sample chapter and learn more at WarhornMedia.com.

Theodore Beza carried on the work of the church and academy in Geneva after John Calvin went to be with the Lord. Only three months after Calvin’s death in 1564, Beza published the first edition of his biography of John Calvin, The Life of John Calvin. The following section of Beza’s work stood out to me. No longer do we read providence the way our Reformed fathers in the faith did. These are the same men who taught us to see God’s Word as the only infallible revelation, yet they were willing to read God’s providence through means in His creation in a manner that many of us would refuse, even rebuke. Here’s the passage I’m speaking of…

The following month, Calvin suffered an attack of gout which lasted several days. This was so severe that on the 18th, which was the day set for the examination of pastors in preparation for the Christmas communion service, they gathered in his room while he stayed in bed.

There had been a fierce gale blowing all night long and it continued to increase in fury as the day went on. The wind continued to rage all the next day, which was a Saturday, before dying down on the Sunday. In the presence of the assembled ministers, Calvin remarked on the force of the wind and uttered words which were to prove true in the days that followed. ‘I do not know what it is,’ he said, ‘but all last night, as I listened to this wind, it seemed to me as if I could hear God’s beating a drum in the breezes. I cannot get the thought out of my mind that something important is happening.’ Now, ten or twelve days later, the news reached us that the battle of Dreux had been fought on Saturday, 19 March and, whatever else one may say about it, there is no question that in that battle God rose up against the enemies of his church.

Calvin is guarded about the way he speaks of his impressions, his reading of God’s providence in the storm that raged outside his bedroom windows, but he nonetheless concludes that the fierceness of the unrelenting winds meant something. Beza goes on to say that those impressions Calvin received by his reading of the winds were confirmed...

Maybe you make new year's resolutions? Few are more important than to make a plan to read through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. You can buy a one-year Bible and that's good because you get a little bit of four things each day—some Old Testament, some New Testament, a small bit from Psalms, and a small bit from Proverbs. The McCheyne reading plan is similar. I prefer reading through the Bible because it gives you a straight-through feel for the whole special revelation of God and each day you get a strong dose of whatever book you happen to be in. This means you get a strong dose of the continuity the Holy Spirit chose including laws, genealogies, jeremiads, lamentations, Pauline defenses of pastoral authority, and apocalyptic bloodshed.

Anyhow, however you read it, read it. And if you choose to go through the Bible, always read with a pen or pencil so you can put question marks in the margin, lines under the things you find particularly helpful because they're particularly offensive to you, and themes you highlight with a letter or two in the margin. Currently, mine are "FS" for the texts helping me to see the marks of false and true shepherds, "CR" for Scriptures against cremation, "C" for every Scripture that speaks of fruitfulness of any sort, from children to apples to the righteous deeds of the saints, "F" for fatherhood, "S" for sex, and so on.

If you miss a day or two or three, don't let it keep you down. Get back on the horse and ride again.