This series of posts presents several of my active assignments from the required freshman class Biblical Interpretation and Spiritual Formation. This one has the students examine their use of time and money, and usually students are surprised at the results. Here are the instructions ...
Are you as concerned about the growing problem of biblical illiteracy as I am? We Christians have more Bible-focused resources available to us than has any generation of Christians in the history of the world. Despite this we are literally—from a spiritual standpoint—starving ourselves to death. Would you like your church, adult Bible class, youth group, or small group to reach Bible fluency by pursuing an Old Testament Fluency in 12 Weeks class or a New Testament Fluency in 12 Weeks class using the free resources at biblefluency.com? Here’s how.
What does it take to achieve Bible Fluency? In my next two posts I will guide you through how to use a brand new free resource called Bible Fluency: Sing it, See it, Study it, found at biblefluency.com. This first post seeks to answer the question: How can I use music, visuals, and a workbook to help me learn to think my way through the Bible?
Now there is a provocative title for a blog! But it’s probably not what you think. This past spring I attended a faculty development seminar at Biola University led by José Bowen, author of the book, Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2012). The main thrust of his sessions with us, and of his book, is that with information being so readily available through mass technology, we need to leverage that technology to maximize classroom interaction with students, shifting our roles from presenters of information (which students can get more readily online) to coaches who help students process that information, promoting deeper learning, critical thinking, and application of knowledge to life situations. As I reflected on Bowen’s ideas, I think we may need to start “teaching naked” in the church. Let me tell you what I mean.
Half of my teaching load each semester consists of teaching the required freshman class Biblical Interpretation and Spiritual Formation. Although I thought the combination of these two topics in one class was strange when I first read the job posting, the class has grown on me and I now love teaching it. I see the connection as leading from proper reading of the Bible to spiritual formation: the very structure of the class helps prevent us from merely reading the Bible in an academic fashion. We spend a large part of the semester looking at the different genres of the Bible (law, prophecy, etc.) and then we reflect on spiritual formation topics related to those genres (such as legalism and idolatry).
A family had a priceless family heirloom – a vase – that was passed down one generation to the next generation. One day, the parents of the family who had possession of the vase, left the teenagers at home while they went out shopping for the day. When they returned home, their children met the parents at the door, with sad faces, reporting: “Mother, Father… you know that priceless heirloom our family passes down one generation to the next… while our generation just dropped it”
Occasionally I find myself in a conversation with a non-Christian friend. Sometimes, I have to pay close attention to the language I use if the talk turns to things related to God and ultimate reality. I do the same when I talk to my children about Bible things. I want to be understood, but the normal Christian terms are a foreign language to many people, Christians included. The terms are difficult to use when they don’t communicate.
Have you ever felt like a failure? Inadequate? Ineffectual? Have you ever examined your heart and glimpsed sin and darkness and defeat? I have. It is discouraging and demoralizing. It makes me wonder what God sees in me. There is no doubt that I am a flawed vessel. But does that mean that I am a useless vessel?
One of the qualifications for an overseer/elder/pastor (all the same office in the Bible) is that he be “free from the love of money” (1 Tim. 3:3). Now suppose that you are on an elder board and seeking to know whether a new candidate for the office is in fact free from the love of money, how can you figure it out? Here are five useful diagnostic questions.
Each August the Hellermans spend several weeks vacationing in the mountains, in Mammoth Lakes, CA. One afternoon, on one of our getaways, our oldest daughter (then thirteen years old) came out of her room with a play she had written. Rebekah has always been into drama. She had participated in a number of children’s theater productions at our previous church. On the home front, Rebekah recruited neighborhood friends and staged “plays” before a captive audience of indulgent parents ... So began an adventure that continues to unfold today, sixteen years later.
I am all for weekends (even when I have to work, such as doing lesson planning, grading, or writing a blog post!). But sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking of work as the negative and leisure or rest as the positive aspect of our lives. Work can become something we need to “get through” in order to make it to the weekend; Sundays are our “spiritual” days as opposed to our “working” days that begin on Mondays, and so forth.
I gleaned more wisdom from my parents than any blog could contain, but here are three more lessons that stand out in my mind and heart as I remember Bob & Reka, lovebirds to the end.
In 19th century England, Atheists knew more about the Bible than most Christians do today. So did Liberal Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics, Unitarians, and Agnostics. So claims Timothy Larsen in A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford, 2011) ...
It’s been over two weeks since I last shared on the Good Book Blog. That means it’s time for me to share some more tidbits for life gleaned from my folks.
A question that naturally surfaces in [the reading of Luke 18:18-27] is whether Jesus considers wealth to be compatible with a life of faithful discipleship. Some interpret this story to say that material things and following Jesus do not mix well. This interpretation is sometimes based on a plain reading of passages like this, but it can also be motivated by material excesses in Christianity that make us uncomfortable. Too much focus on material blessing as a necessary indicator of God’s approval can stifle efforts at legitimate Christian disciplines such as frugality, generosity, and financial sacrifice. As such, divesting material wealth is sometimes seen as a corrective to bad prosperity theology ...
In my last post, I talked about the importance of our ministry with children and some ministry objectives we need to pursue. In this follow up blog I would like to talk about four aspects of children’s ministry that together help us accomplish our goals of helping children grow and mature as a part of the church, the people of God. These are worthy goals, and it can be tempting to try to design one children’s program in the church to address them all. But if we take them each seriously, it will soon be clear that this is more than a matter of having a class or a club program for children. Instead, it requires thinking carefully about the full life of the church, as well as the church and family environment our children grow up in. It has implications for what we do for our children, with them, to them, and the opportunities we provide for them to be engaged in ministry themselves. I invite you to read and think with me about what this might look like.
Almost eleven months ago, my wife and I said a tearful goodbye to our young adult daughter Lydia just before she boarded a plane at the Los Angeles airport on her way to serve as a missionary nurse in Mindanao, Philippines ... About six weeks ago Lydia discovered that she had contracted typhoid fever, a very serious illness. Subsequently, she was hospitalized three times in Mindanao, first to treat the typhoid, then to rescue her during a life-threatening emergency related to the typhoid, then to treat sepsis, her second life-threatening emergency ...
This year’s Mother’s and Father’s Day season brought to mind some wisdom my folks shared with me years ago. These morsels of sound reason have helped me navigate the diverse oceans and streams I’ve crossed over the years. I do realize that not everyone has great parents, but mine were pretty solid. So, please let me share some of the gold I received from Bob & Reka Boersma, two lovebirds who shared an incredible adventure in life with four kids and a huge assortment of farm animals.
Maybe it’s because I’m on sabbatical. Then again, maybe it’s because I just became a grandmother. For whatever reason, I collected these thoughts: acts of life for every day ...
“¿Cómo estás?” Un amigo mío respondía en tono de broma a esta común pregunta con las palabras “bien, pero ni modo” o “bien, pero ya se me va a pasar”. Aunque su respuesta era graciosa en el fondo describía una tendencia común de nuestras percepciones y sentimientos. Por alguna razón es más fácil enfocarnos en lo negativo y olvidarnos de todo lo positivo que tenemos y recibimos. A pesar de estar llenos de bendiciones, con frecuencia pensamos que siempre nos falta algo y que nunca tenemos lo suficiente o alcanzamos la plenitud de la vida.
The week from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday must have been an emotional rollercoaster for the disciples, Jesus’ friends and family, and Jesus himself. Together they experienced the triumphant celebration of Palm Sunday, the poignant fellowship of the Last Supper, the deep despair of the cross, and the amazing joy of the resurrection. In Ezekiel 37:1-14, Ezekiel has a vision that takes him on a similar journey from a place of deep despair to a place of incredible hope.
Superman is dead… I don’t know when it occurred, I don’t remember the moment that I realized I was mortal. What I do know is this feeling of Fear lurks around every corner like never before. Perhaps it began with a serious car accident I experienced in late 2012 – an accident I walked away from uninjured but my beloved Ford truck was declared DOA. Or maybe it was the diagnosis of medical condition that I did not fret, but soon began to hear random stories of people with the same condition dying of cancer at too young of an age. Perhaps it is the uncertain future of my young adult children, or… The list could continue for all us.
I’ve read a few blogs recently that suggest the idea of a women's ministry in a church is somehow passé. I beg to differ. Instead, I want to say that every church will always need a women’s ministry. Let’s talk about why that is. In this first article, I want to address the biblical basis for a women’s ministry in every church. And then, in the second article we’ll think about women’s ministry historically and why it is still needed today in our egalitarian society.
There was a woman I know who fell in love and married a man from another culture, another religion, different ways very foreign to her known life. Her husband’s father had died before she met him, so she entered this single parent family wholeheartedly and her mother-in-law taught her a new way of living and loving where their house became a home and she felt she belonged.This was so true that when her husband died ten years into their marriage, she made a commitment to her mother-in-law.
Christians desire guidance for how to integrate their God life with their work life—especially those in the business sector. “Whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31, NIV). Listed below are three insightful perspectives on this issue. The first two frameworks overlap in some ways, but they also bring out distinctive contributions, and offer particular guidance to help close the Sunday-Monday gap. Some may tend to compartmentalize work life as a second class necessity, and that the real action of Christian living takes place within the church facilities. We want to bring our whole life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, on Sunday and the rest of the week.
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