The Church of England Ordained More Women Than Men Last Year

Informative story here from David Kotter at the CBMW blog.

You might also check out Kotter’s post where he summarizes Wayne Grudem’s reflections on his experience in the gender debate over the last 20 years.

I commend this blog to your attention, and may the Lord grant us grace to glorify him as we enjoy his gift of gender!

reThink: Decide For Yourself, Is Student Ministry Working?

My friend Randy Stinson sent me this book my Steve Wright and Chris Graves. I’ve only thumbed through it, but it looks to me like this is a very important book. If you’ve wondered how best to shepherd your own children, or how the church should shepherd its young people, you’ll want to consider this book.

There is a spectrum of opinion on the question of youth ministry today. At the one end are the churches that take the kids completely away from their parents and the rest of the church and have their own student worship services. These folks conduct themselves as though they might say to the parents, “Don’t try this youth ministry thing at home. Leave it to us. We’re the professionals.”

At the other end of the spectrum are those “family integrated” churches who speak as though God gave the family as the primary means of advancing the gospel. I’m all for the family, and I am against age-segregation in churches, against the idea that the youth will benefit from their own worship service (while the old fuddyduds do their own thing in “big church”), and I am most certainly for encouraging parents, and especially fathers, to disciple their kids and lead their families in family worship. But I would say that the Church, rather than the family, is the means God has given to us for advancing the gospel.

In this regard, reThink seems to offer a helpfully balancing perspective. I appreciated in particular three subtitles that I saw in reThink as I thumbed through: “Championing the Family,” “Championing the Church,” and “Co-Championing the Family and the Church.”

If you’re wondering what this looks like, you’ll want to read this book. Here’s the table of contents:

reSearch: Gauging Student Ministry Today

reValue: Shifting the Values of Student Ministry

reModel: A Biblical Framework for Student Ministry

reShape: Beginning a Transition

reSource: Locking Arms with Parents

reDiscover: Spiritual Formation

reGroup: Facing and Overcoming Obstacles

reVision: A New Perspective

Thanks to Steve Wright and Chris Graves for helping us think through these issues, and may the Lord bless our efforts to transmit the faith to the coming generations.

Trevin Wax Interviews N. T. Wright

From an email that I’m grateful to have had forwarded to me:

I thought you guys might be interested in the latest Said at Southern interview. Trevin Wax has recorded an interview with NT Wright for the Said at Southern podcast. You can listen to the Mp3 Interview or read the full transcript. Topics covered include Wright’s views on justification, the new perspective on Paul, and penal substitution. He also discusses his critics and John Piper’s new book The Future of Justification.

Spiritual Formation and the Internet: Making Good Use of the Mammon of Unrighteousness

The paper that I presented last week at ETS is here.

May the Lord be pleased to help us leverage all we have–including the internet–for his glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.

The Influence of Isaiah on the Gospel of John

I have attempted to account for all the ways that the language of the book of Isaiah has influenced the words of the Gospel of John, and that attempt has now appeared in print in the journal Perichoresis, published by Emmanuel University of Oradea in Romania.

The journal’s website is here, and you can read my article here. To download just my article rather than the whole journal, click here.

I do not think for a moment that I have exhausted the ways that Isaiah has influenced John, but this article does attempt a beginning at the correspondences between the language used by the two books.

Free Christian Audio Book of the Month: Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections

If you have never read Jonathan Edwards’ The Religious Affections, here’s your chance to download the audio book for free. The folks at ChristianAudio write:

Use the coupon code: NOV2007 to receive the download format of Jonathan Edwards’ The Religious Affections for free.  Simply add the download format of this product to your cart and enter the coupon code when prompted.

The Religious Affections is quite possibly one of the most important books ever written by America’s greatest theologian. Among the questions asked is, “What is the nature of true religion?” “What are the signs of a true revival?” and “How is the heart changed?” Edwards used his pulpit and his leadership of the Great Awakening to pen one of the most challenging and inquisitive books ever written.

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Local Church Seminar Audio Available

Baptist Church of the Redeemer recently hosted a seminar on The Local Church: God’s Program for Evangelism and Discipleship.

Thanks to the labors of some good brothers, the audio is available for the two sessions:

Session I: What Is The Church?

Session II: How Does the Church Militant Wage Her War?

Piper’s ETS talk on Justification

The audio of John Piper’s message on Justification at ETS is available, as well as the transcript and the video.

May this push us all to closer attention to the text!

HT: JT

The Future of Justification: John Piper’s Response to N. T. Wright

N. T. Wright is perhaps the most influential clergyman in the United Kingdom, and John Piper is perhaps even more influential here in the United States.

And the two have crossed swords.

This might be the most significant pastoral interchange of our time.

In the Acknowledgments Piper relates that he sent the first draft of the book to Wright, and that Wright sent back an 11,000 word response! Piper’s The Future of Justification gives us Piper’s response to N. T. Wright’s views on justification, and Piper recounts that the book is twice as long as it was before he received Wright’s interaction.

This is an important book. We can thank John Piper for teaching us how to engage in controversy, and we can thank Crossway for publishing a series of books that contend for the heart of the gospel: John Piper, The Future of Justification, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions, and Brian Vickers, Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness.

Last night Piper gave a great address here at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. The address made me want to read this book closely, but even more it made me want to read the Greek New Testament closely. May this book so inspire you, too.

Mike McKinley Contemplates Cool

If you’re in ministry, and you’ve toyed with the idea of wearing jeans with an untucked shirt when you preach, growing a goatee or chin patch, or maybe getting a hip new set of spectacles, this article by Mike McKinley is a must read.

Even if you haven’t considered any of the above, this piece is great fun.

What an encouraging word! What a freeing thing to read that the best thing to do is believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, relax and be yourself, and love people.