The following is quotation from Ellen Davis’s rich collection of sermons, Preaching the Luminous Word, that seems especially appropriate for the Feast of Christ the King: Continue reading A Quote from Ellen Davis for the Feast of Christ the King
“On the Mountain with Jesus”: A Sermon from Wycliffe College
On November 2, I had the privilege of preaching at Morning Prayer at Wycliffe College in the faculty preaching series, entitled “The Word is Near You: Seeds of Reformation.” It was a privilege to join the distinguished faculty of Wycliffe College in this Reformation-themed preaching series and to preach from a pulpit that has, over the years, welcomed an impressive collection of archbishops, leading preachers, and distinguished theologians. My assigned text was Matthew 28: 16-20. You can listen to a recording of the sermon here. For those not familiar with Wycliffe, in the first few sentences of the sermon I am riffing on the titles of books written by members of the Wycliffe faculty.
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
In 1994, the historian Mark Noll published his now famous work, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In the very first sentence of the opening chapter, Noll goes right for the jugular: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”1 Noll’s thesis seems to have been anticipated in some ways by the Anglican cleric and evangelical leader John Stott, who wrote the following in his 1982 book on preaching (although it should be noted that Stott’s purview seems to be much broader than evangelicalism, extending to Western Christendom as a whole): Continue reading The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
- Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 1. ↩
The Good News of “You Shall Not Murder”
Thomas White concludes his theological reflection upon the commandment “You shall not murder” in his recent commentary on Exodus with this striking paragraph: Continue reading The Good News of “You Shall Not Murder”
95 at 500
The following is an extract from a sermon I preached this past Sunday at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Scarborough. The service made use of some of the liturgical resources prepared conjointly by the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Christian Reformed Church to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is not a scholarly treatment, nor does it exhaustively treat the complex and often ambiguous legacy of the Reformation. Rather, it simply attempts to acquaint people with the person of Martin Luther and some of the early developments associated with the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. Continue reading 95 at 500
Ring in the New Year with Bonhoeffer
For those who have been living with the guilt of a string of broken New Year’s resolutions to study the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 2018 may be your year to break the slide! Starting on January 2, 2018, I will be teaching a five-day intensive intercession course on “The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” at Tyndale Seminary. Here’s the course description to whet your appetite: Continue reading Ring in the New Year with Bonhoeffer