Cultural Apologetics: An Interview with Paul M. Gould
For the past two millennia, Christians have sought to articulate their faith in thoughtful and compelling ways. Many of these “arguments” have been etched into church history, like Anselm’s ontological argument, Thomas Aquinas’s five ways, or William Paley’s illustration of the watchmaker. More recent times have witnessed a shift toward engaging the surrounding culture with the truth and the practice of Christianity. Men like Francis...
Relational Discipleship
by Aaron Pierce Unsurprisingly, discipleship is a buzzword that has increasingly arisen in church conversations over the last decade. This trend is positive since many pastors of the twentieth century unfortunately relegated discipleship to the backburner. But with this new re-emphasis has appeared a vast array of materials, curriculums, and opinions on the nature and practice of discipleship in the local church. One particular...
Living Near the Land: An Autobiography of Agrarianism
by Phillip T. and Megan M. Morgan The excitement surrounding the 2017 documentary, Look and See, which engages the agrarian thought of Wendell Berry, highlights some of the fault lines in modern America. Many have grown tired of the empty promises of industrialization, while others have simply noted the soulless and placeless quality of the ubiquitous concrete and mallscapes of our cities. Even those in rural America have not escaped...
What Preachers Can Learn from Tom Brady
(Note: An earlier version of this article appeared at www.fwbtheology.com, the official blog of the Free Will Baptist Commission for Theological Integrity) This past Sunday, for the ninth time in eighteen years as a starting quarterback, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots played in the Super Bowl. He had won five of his previous eight trips to football’s biggest game (and the most watched sporting event in America) before adding a...
When “No Show Jones” Showed Up at Church
I still remember the first time I heard “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” It was one of the saddest songs I’d ever heard. It’s the story of a heartbroken lover who can’t get over the woman he loves and is estranged from. He reads over letters from a bygone era of their relationship and notes all of the times she wrote “I love you.” The punchline of the song is powerful: It isn’t until he dies that he’s finally able to stop loving her....
Recommended Books (Winter 2019)
The old PBS program Reading Rainbow opened with a song that argued that reading allows us to go anywhere and be anything, even if only for a moment. While PBS has aired more than its share of silliness, that point is important. Reading really does open whole new vistas for the reader and makes it possible for us to travel to distant lands and learn new ideas from the comfort of a favorite sitting chair. Words, in themselves, are...
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