Fleming Rutledge recently delivered the Parchman Lectures at Truett Divinity School located at Baylor University on the theme “By the Word Worked: The Unique Power of Biblical Preaching.” I recently had the opportunity to watch the first two lectures which are available for public viewing through the Parchman Lectures Media Library.
In the second half of the first lecture, Rutledge incisively identified four trends that weaken the power of contemporary preaching, before positing five counter-affirmations about the power of the preached word. In what follows, I’ll attempt to summarize her important observations, in the hope of encouraging interested readers to watch the lecture itself. Continue reading Powerful Preaching: Fleming Rutledge’s Parchman Lectures→
“Yet the preacher of the gospel of grace cannot be a mere minstrel, grinning good cheer in an age of despair. The preacher’s struggle against the darkness of this present world must be furnished with a full kit: the Bible, the sword of the Spirit, understandable now as it was not understood prior to modernity;1 the history of God’s peaceable Israel old and ongoing (called in Scripture the preparation of the gospel of peace); and supremely (though like the Trinity never so named in Scripture) the primary theology that gives our sermon its center, its raison d’être, its point. Continue reading The Pulpit is a Prow→
While not denying the gains of modern biblical scholarship, I would be inclined to see the legacy of the historical critical method of interpreting the Bible in more ambiguous terms than McClendon seems to at this point. ↩
It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce the publication of Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas with Robert J. Dean by Cascade Books. The book is currently available for purchase through Wipf and Stock and in the days ahead will be available through many of your favorite book-sellers. Continue reading Announcing the Publication of “Minding the Web”→
This past year I’ve had the great privilege of working with Stanley Hauerwas on his forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Cascade Books). I served as something of a curator and editor of Hauerwas’s essays, addresses, and sermons, as well as contributing a couple of essays and sermons of my own to the volume. The essays, I believe, feature some of best writing, so I am delighted that they have found a home in such a rich volume alongside of Hauerwas’s enduringly relevant and provocative investigations and sermons. In addition to the gracious invitation to participate in the project, Stanley has generously granted me permission to share some of my favourite quotes from the book in the days leading up to its publication. Over the course of the next few weeks, I will draw attention to some of the turns-of-phrase, sentences and short passages that, for one reason or another, captured my imagination. Continue reading A New Series on “Minding the Web”→
For many years now I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to teach a course on the Church Fathers. In January, the day will finally arrive. I’ve recently finished drafting my syllabus for the course I’ll be offering in the winter term entitled: “Theologians of the Church: Reading with the Fathers.” The course will consist of a combination of lectures and seminars around primary readings from the Fathers. You can read the course description below. As there are many students who come from Mennonite and evangelical traditions where the Church Fathers are either ignored or perhaps even looked upon with suspicion, it seemed important to cast the description in an apologetic key. Continue reading Reading with the Fathers→
I’m in the midst of reviewing some resources for a course I’m going to be offering on the Church Fathers in the winter and came across this quote from the introduction to Robert Wilken’s wonderful book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought that resonates with Robyn’s and Don’s comments on my previous post: Continue reading The Spirit of Early Christian Thought→
