Norway has experienced a nightmare—3 hours of abject terror. On Friday afternoon, right around 3:30, thirty-two year-old Anders Behring Breivik ignited a bomb outside government offices in Oslo, killing at least 7. As the bomb exploded, he was on his way to Utoya Island, about 20 miles from Oslo, the location of a youth camp…
It has been almost 4 months since the release of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. This is a book that has ignited a great debate on the subject of hell. It has also ignited discussion on the way this debate has been handled, and particularly so by those of us who considered this a dangerously…
I recently added a feedback and suggestion component to this site that allows readers like you to suggest topics for me to consider writing about. This has generated a lot of fantastic ideas, many of which are going to take a lot of study to adequately answer. One that I wanted to address right away…
I know that it is bad form to turn a sermon into a blog post, but I’m going to do it anyway (hey, it’s my blog!). Yesterday I preached from Genesis 3 and found great joy in going from the garden to the cross. There are lots of ways we can do this, but I…
Part of the joy of blogging is in interacting with other people through the comments. When I write an article, and especially an article on a difficult topic, I am always aware that I have not said it all. There are always ways in which what I have said can be improved. This was the…
It was not too long ago that blogging was all the rage. Everyone was beginning a blog and everyone was talking about this exciting new medium. Today you are more likely to hear declarations that blogs are defunct, passe, a vestige of an era that has already come and gone. I say “Stuff and nonsense!”…
In September of 2006 George Barna released what must be among his most influential studies. Following interviews with more than 22,000 adults and 2,000 teenagers from across America, he revealed that the majority of twentysomethings who are raised as Christians subsequently abandon the faith. The study found that “most twentysomethings disengage from active participation in…
404
Desiring God Ministries has posted John Piper’s long-awaited interview with Rick Warren. This has brought to completion the invitation Piper extended to Warren to speak at the 2010 Desiring God National Conference. The interview was supposed to happen at that event, but in the end Warren was unable to travel to Minneapolis and the interview…
Last week I took a brief look at the first part of Genesis 3:16, a verse which describes the consequence of the woman’s role in the fall into sin. In the first part of God’s judgment on the woman he declared that bearing children would now be painful and traumatic. Her primary life function would…
It is an interesting question to ask: What does Genesis 3:16 mean when it says that, as a consequence for her sin, the woman would now have pain in childbearing? (“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall…
C.J. Mahaney tells a story about a man that I think we can all identify with–a man who went out into the world with a cringe-worthy problem. I am quite sure the story is not an original Mahaney (I do not have his book in front of me at the moment so cannot check for…
By the time you read this, I will be on my way to the Gospel Coalition Conference in Chicago, Illinois. I am sure it is going to be a great conference and I am looking forward to taking it in. I am there on a mix of business and pleasure–I’ll be attending some of the…
I pay little attention to the statistics software that runs in the background on this site. Every time someone visits, every time someone looks at a page, that software makes a little notation and at the end of the day I can look and see how many people browsed the blog. I don’t look all…
The day is here at last. Today is the day that The Next Story officially releases. This book has been a near-daily companion for almost 2 years now–a book I was thinking about, living, researching and writing. And finally it’s a book on my bookcase. And on my Kindle. Now release dates are a tricky…
Yesterday a reader of this site sent me a link to an interesting series of blog posts–posts written by Pastor Akira Sato, who is the pastor for the Fukushima First Baptist Church, near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The email included this poignant paragraph:”Yesterday (Friday, March 18) one member who has been with us…
Today I’m making the final pre-order push for The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times already, so bear with me. I want to tell you about it again simply because it gives you an opportunity to get the book at a really good discount.…
I got to meet my book today. Zondervan rush-shipped a few boxes of the books straight from the printer to the Ligonier Ministries National Conference where I’m hanging out for the next few days. So as soon as I got here, I went over to the bookstore to check it out. Lukas and Susannah VanDyke…
I don’t want to keep talking about Rob Bell. Honest. And in this post I am only going to touch on him on the way to something else. I think the uproar about his view on hell has helpfully illustrated what passes as virtue in the evangelical world today. As I have read some of…
Two weeks from today is the official release date for my book The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion. And if you’re planning to order the book (and really, you should, don’t you think?), it makes some sense to pre-order it before the official release date. If you are going to be…