Is the CSB Suitable for Expository Preaching? An Excerpt from my Sent Folder
A reader who attends Boyce College, the undergraduate school of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: I'm not going to keep you, this is the only question I will ask and then I'll simply follow you via social media; can I trust the CSB as an expository preacher? Interested in your thoughts (which will remain here). Thanks, Mark. A writer who doesn't wish his thoughts to remain there: Great question. I would say two things: You have to trust someone, or a group of someones, until you can...
A Must-Read Piece Featuring a Number of My Favorite Writers
I read pretty much everything Alan Jacobs writes. This piece is at the top of the list of must-reads. It’s his assessment of the major storm between two conservatives: Sohrab Ahmari and David French. Let me try to spin Jacobs’ basic argument into the way I would put it. Insofar as liberal proceduralism is indeed on the rocks, and is serving mainly as an impolite fiction, a fig leaf covering progressive illiberalism, it’s bad and should be rejected along the Stanley Fishian...
Ron Horton: A Biblical Approach to Objectionable Elements
I had only one class with Ron Horton, Aesthetics—and I had to drop it when my little daughter was born. But I listened to enough lectures to know that the man was brilliant, and I read and enjoyed his book, Mood Tides. I respected him greatly. He died—into new life—yesterday. And the greatest honor I can do him is to try to give his words another hearing. I read the following essay as a freshman, I think, and didn't get it. I read it much later, as an adult, and found it to be full of wisdom....
Review: Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion
What first attracted me to Rebecca McLaughlin’s Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion was the title. I actually assumed it was a non-Christian book. Second was the author: I read a piece of hers on TGC that I liked. Third, to be honest, was that Crossway was willing to give me a free copy in exchange for an honest review, no strings attached. So here I go: McLaughlin is easy to read, has done some good homework, has a compelling personal story, and writes...
My Top “Ten” Favorite Choral Pieces
One of my wife’s best Christian friends at our homeschool group is the wife of the talented music director at a large area church. This couple has become respected friends of ours, and recently they asked us to house two singers from a choir that was visiting their church. These two had themselves been in the choir in their undergrad days: The Master’s University Chorale. We agreed to keep two singers and provide them a sack lunch the next morning, and we packed up the whole family to go hear...