Here’s a new book that combines two things I love: Books that come from off the beaten path, and ones that deal with interesting but ordinary people. As it happens, John Stott’s Right Hand was privately published after being turned down by trade publishers, and it tells the life of a fascinating but relatively unknown…
Just about every blogger can identify with the frustration. You write an article that is kind and well-reasoned and, at least in your estimation, displays the fruit of the Spirit’s work in your life. With some excitement you share this article with the world and, yet, within minutes, you face a barrage of comments that…
Reports of the blogosphere’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Another year has come and (just about) gone and the blogosphere continues to be an integral means of communication, and this despite many predictions that blogs will soon go the way of the dinosaur (or the newspaper, as the case may be). 2011 was a great…
One of the unique features of this blog is the little counter down in the bottom right of the site. It’s a little feature that simply increments by 1 number each day. Today it stands at 2,920. What this means is that it was 2,920 days ago that I decided to make this blog an…
This week’s reading from John Stott’s The Cross of Christ for Reading Classics Together comes courtesy of Rebecca Stark. My week happened in such a way that I wasn’t able to write up my summary post, so I gladly borrowed Rebecca’s (with her permission of course). This week’s chapter was titled “The Community of Celebration”…
Today we continue our project of reading through John Stott’s classic work The Cross of Christ. We’ve now moved onto Part III which discusses “The Achievement of the Cross.” Here Stott begins to move from the event itself to the consequences, “from what happened on the cross to what was achieved by it.” The Bible…
This morning brings us to our next reading in John Stott’s classic work The Cross of Christ. This week I am simply going to offer up a few amazing quotes from this chapter. I hope that this will give everyone who reads this article something to chew on, whether or not you’ve read the book.…
This morning brings us to our next reading in John Stott’s classic work The Cross of Christ. We are now in chapter 5 which is titled “Satisfaction for Sin.” In this chapter Stott argues that the cross was necessary because God “must ‘satisfy himself’ in the way of salvation he devises; he cannot save us…
Every now and again I like to remind people of one of the programs I offer at this site. It is called Friends of the Blog. Friends of the Blog is primarily a means of supporting this site, but it offers a unique incentive to do so. Friends receive all kinds of great things–books, gift…
Today we continue reading through John Stott’s book The Cross of Christ. In the past 2 weeks Stott has “sought to establish two facts about the cross. First, its central importance (to Christ, to his apostles and to his worldwide church ever since), and second, its deliberate character (for, though due to human wickedness, it…
Last week we began reading through John Stott’s classic work The Cross of Christ. The book began by pointing out the centrality of the cross. This week’s reading was chapter 2 which asks and answers an all-important question: Why Did Christ Die? Why Did Christ Die? I enjoyed this chapter not only for what it…
Here we are, at the beginning of another edition of Reading Classics Together. This is a program I began several years ago in an attempt to read some of the classics of the Christian faith and to do so in community. To this point we’ve read 10 or 15 great books, ranging from Puritan to…
I’ve got something a little bit different today. This is a kind of discussion or interview I had with my friend Julian, who was asking me about some of the questions and some of the complications related to having a popular blog. I thought it would be worth sharing since it addresses some of the…
One more A La Carte to finish up another month. I believe I have done something like 1,300 A La Carte posts over the years. Turns out there is lots of interesting stuff to make note of! Here are a few more examples of this. An Interview with Newton – This is kind of cool.…
In April of 2010 I announced a program called Friends of the Blog. With the costs of maintaining this blog on the rise, Friends of the Blog allowed readers to support the site while receiving tangible benefits. The program worked out very well and for that reason I have renewed it for 2011. And that…
Over the past few weeks (since I submitted the first draft of my book and got that elephant off my back!) I have been trying to spend a little bit more time with the blog. One of the ways this has manifested itself is with articles that draw attention to outside resources–book series, resources dealing…
Admittedly, the title of this blog post is a bit of hyperbole. That’s probably not the best way to begin an article, but I know that far more people will read the first line of the article than the last one, so if I leave the punch line too long, most people will miss it.…
It is my habit to post some kind of an original article on Monday and then a book review on Tuesday. This week I am going to reverse the order since the book review in some ways feeds into what I would like to say tomorrow. So bear with me. I have not read too…
Why Are Bloggers Male? – This article from the Globe and Mail asks why most bloggers are male. And more than one person noted that in the list of the Top 100 Church Blogs, almost all the bloggers were male. Unfortunately her answer is somewhat trite, so I appreciate the question more than the answer.…
The Kindle Can’t Scare MeA small publisher of a very niche kind of book has some interesting things to say about Amazon’s Kindle. What it does well, what it does poorly and what it will do in the future. Do We Have Free Will?Andy Naselli answers this one over at Reformation21. It’s not one you…