First written in 1997; updated 2003. After this was written, we found out that many others felt the same way we did: the New Jersey diocese lost nearly half its membership during Spong's tenure as Bishop. A Long Trip In the course of my work at Church of God Lay Ministries, I was asked to …
The Jesus Manifesto is Out. So Now What?
Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola lay it on the line: What is Christianity? It is Christ. Nothing more. Nothing less. Christianity is not an ideology. Christianity is not a philosophy. Christianity is the “good news” that Beauty, Truth and Goodness are found in a person. Biblical community is founded and found on the connection to …
The Price of Prosperity Teaching?
The Economist is buffaloed: Last year David Beckworth, an assistant professor of Economics at Texas State University, examined historic patterns in the size of evangelical congregations and found that, during each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, membership of evangelical churches jumped by 50%. This report filled the newspapers and TV news-shows at the height …
Visit to Zagorsk
In 1988, during my family business' first trip to the then Soviet Union, my brother Pem and I were given the chance to visit the Monastery of Trinity-St. Sergius, which was the administrative centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is located in the town of Sergeiev Posad, which was called Zagorsk during Soviet times. …
Taming the Rowdies
Originally posted November 2004. In the early part of the new millennium, a large Evangelical church set itself to build a new sanctuary, tripling its seating capacity in the process. It had the usual capital stewardship programme and, having lined up financing for the rest, began construction. One of the features of the new sanctuary …
Book Review: Bishop Claude Payne’s Reclaiming the Great Commission
Church growth books, even with the present crisis Evangelical Christianity finds itself in, are still in good supply. But one from an Episcopalian, whose church's ASA has been dropping the entire decade? That's the idea of retired Bishop of Texas Claude Payne's Reclaiming the Great Commission. Written before much of the excitement in TEC (The …
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To Do The Work
Originally posted March 2006. This issue has cost the Republican Party dearly, perhaps fatally. Had conservatives realised the reality of what they were defending, they might have taken a different view. Then again perhaps not... It wasn't so long after the first English settlers came to Jamestown, VA, that black slaves were forcibly brought from …
Public Education: A Christian Perspective
This article was originally published in the Winter 1990 issue of the National Forum of the Phi Kappa Phi honour fraternity. It was considerably reduced for publication; below is the complete text of the article. The subsequent history of the article is documented in a two-part series (Part I and Part II.) Also of …
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It Still Pays to be a Foreigner. Literally.
Back in April, I noted that the IRS, in a private letter ruling, had certain exemption from the tax code's excess compensation limits. (No, people, the concept of the government deciding what is excess compensation is nothing new.) Chuck Rubin, whose tax blog is great, reports that the IRS, in a different part of the …
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Circling the Wagons Around Evolution
The Department of Biological Sciences of Lehigh University (from whence my grandfather graduated in 1912) took the rather bold step of publicly opposing the concept of intelligent design as articulated by one of its own faculty members, Dr. Michael Behe (author of the opening shot in this debate, the book Darwin's Black Box.) How times …
Positive Infinity 