I was pleased to get my COVID vaccination a couple of weeks ago. I view getting vaccinated as part of my missional calling as a Christian to love my neighbour. Unfortunately, many Christians do not see things in the way I do, with the potential risk that we do not reach herd immunity as a society. Southern Manitoba, where I currently reside, is often considered to be one of the Bible-belts of Canada, yet it has the lowest vaccination rate in the province. (more…)
Category: Public Lectures
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Xplore Series at CMU
I have been invited to return to Canadian Mennonite University and offer the six week lecture series on Dietrich Bonhoeffer that was cut short last spring due to the pandemic. The series entitled, “Theological Resistance in Troubled Times: The Compelling Witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” is being offered through CMU’s Xplore program that encourages learning among those 55 years of age and older. My first lecture, this Thursday at 11:30 am Central Time, will provide a biographical orientation to Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy. The series is being offered on Zoom this year, so if you fall into that demographic, you can register for $40. You can learn more about the CMU Xplore series and register for the course here.
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The Church Post Pandemic Forum on YouTube
Recordings of the sessions from the recent Zoom forum on the theme “The Church Post Pandemic” hosted by the Biblical and Theological Studies Department at Providence Theological Seminary are now available on YouTube. These include excellent presentations from my colleagues Lissa Wray Beal and Joshua Coutts and three Southern Manitoba pastors. Alongside of these presentations is my paper that draws upon the work of St. Augustine of Hippo as a resource for understanding ourselves, our world, the identity of the church, and the vocation of pastors in the time of the COVID pandemic.
You can watch the videos here.
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Living According to the Lord’s Day (Video Resource)
My colleague Joshua Coutts, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Providence Theological Seminary, delivered a lecture this week as part of Regent College’s Summer Lecture Series. The title of his address was: “Living According to the Lord’s Day: The Formative Role of Worship in Early Christianity.” You can watch the lecture below:
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Claimed by Costly Grace (Video Resource)
This spring I was scheduled to deliver a series of lectures as part of the Xplore program at Canadian Mennonite University entitled, “Theological Resistance in Troubled Times: The Compelling Witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” Unfortunately, COVID had other ideas. I was only able to give two of the planned six lectures. Because I was teaching an intensive course on Bonhoeffer at Providence Theological Seminary the week that Xplore was scheduled to start, I had to record my first lecture: “Claimed by Costly Grace: The Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” You can watch that recording below: (more…)
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“God’s Unpredictable Plans”
The following is a response I was invited to recently give to chapter 1 of Matt Brough’s forthcoming book Let God Send: Crossing Boundaries and Serving in Christ’s Name. Matt is the Minister of Word and Sacraments at Prairie Presbyterian Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He also serves as the Program Coordinator for the New Worshiping Communities Initiative of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. (more…)
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“Formed by the Word in an Age of Information”
My colleague at Providence Theological Seminary, Joshua Coutts, Assistant Professor of New Testament, recently presented a wonderful paper on the nature and use of Scripture at our Fall Biblical and Theological Studies Symposium. The paper was entitled, “Formed by the Word in an Age of Information: Recovering a Christian Approach to Scripture.” Another of my colleagues, Ed Neufeld, Professor of Biblical Studies provided a short response, in which he began by drawing some connections between Coutts’s paper and my essay “A Tale of Two Stanleys.” You can watch both the paper and response below:
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Powerful Preaching: Fleming Rutledge’s Parchman Lectures
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. (more…)
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It’s Still the End of the World!
It was able to share an enjoyable evening last night with an engaged group of people at the McNally Robinson bookstore in Winnipeg. One of the things I was attempting to do in my lecture was to recover the eschatological character of the Christian faith, bound up as it is with the coming of Messiah and the pouring out of the promised Spirit. The irruption of the eschaton introduces the distinction between church and world, which is clearly elucidated by Hauerwas and Willimon in the following quote which appeared in my lecture: (more…)
