Announcing Traditional Model Seminary; Article up at Ref21
I have an article up at Ref21. It begins,
How I wish seminaries described themselves in press releases (let the reader understand):
Our approach to pastoral preparation is time-tested, rich, and rigorous.
The university has been the handmaiden of the church for over a thousand years. The model of pastoral preparation of devoting years of one’s life to study under specialized masters has produced generations of competent and faithful ministers who have lovingly shepherded Christ’s church. Here at Traditional Model Seminary (TMS), we are committed to continuing this great tradition of pastoral preparation with a successful track record literally millennia long…
This was a fun one to write.
Worship Is
Our church just finished a month-long sermon series on the church and worship, and this was the definition of worship we used:
“Worship is the fitting and delightful response of God’s people to him, our Creator and Redeemer, for what he has done, for his glory in creation and redemption, through Christ, by the power and direction of Jesus himself through his Holy Spirit.”
It relies on the definitions provided by Gibson (Reformational and dogmatic) and Block (biblical-theological) in this wonderful little list.
(Untitled)
“In pastoral care, in particular, we do well to remember that we do not need to be experts in a million different fields to be faithful to our calling. We do not need to know how to handle every difficulty, hurt, or need presented to us. But we need to be faithful in this: proclaiming the news that Christ is risen.”
From Wesley Hill in his most recent article, “Pastors, You Have One Job.” I highly commend the whole thing.
On the Death of the Old Testament
Andrew Bunt of ThinkTheology has shared an overview and some thoughts on Brent Strawn’s book The Old Testament is Dying.
Strawn’s basic thesis is that knowledge, understanding and good use of the Old Testament are waning; in short, the Old Testament is dying. He uses a helpful analogy to explore this by likening the Old Testament to a language. Languages help us make sense of reality, and the Old Testament has the potential to do the same. But languages can die, and so the analogy provides a useful way for Strawn to explore the possibility that the Old Testament is dying…
Strawn then explores how this demise can be seen more broadly, and it is here that he makes particular use of the language analogy. The process of a language dying is called repidginization because as the original language dies out the simplified version that is left is like a pidgin language. When languages repidiginize sometimes the pidgin version then develops into a new, but different, language called a creole. Creoles are completely regular – they remove all the complexities of the original language…
On Resolving to Control My Tongue, 14-20
In his Some Pastors and Teachers, Sinclair Ferguson “takes a leaf out of Jonathan Edward’s Resolutions” and writes twenty resolutions on the tongue from James (pages 638-642). They are resolutions I need to better keep. I will be posting all twenty, and here are six through thirteen. Resolutions 1-5 are here, and 6-13 are here.
(14) Resolved: To never allow anything but total integrity in my speech.
But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation (James 5:12)…
