I have a friend who pastored the same church for nearly twenty years. It almost did him in. He tried to keep everyone happy (always a losing proposition, of course), but they were un-keep-happible. Highly conflicted. Especially around worship style. “We need contemporary music to reach younger people,” some folks reasonably recognized. OK, so we’ll […]
Books that Didn’t Make the Cut: 1 Enoch
January 7, 2016 By
It’s a difficult thing to write a blog post on a book of the Pseudepigrapha. One’s head hurts trying to think through the complexities of it: there is what the Old Testament says, then there is the pseudepigraphal work that interprets said OT text, then there is the New Testament interaction with the OT text, […]
Books that Didn’t Make the Cut: The Pseudepigrapha
December 10, 2015 By
Marie Antoinette did not actually say, “Let them eat cake.” Nor did she say Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (that’s “let them eat cake” in French). It makes a great story though. Nor did Julius Caesar actually utter the famous Et tu, Brute? According to Plutarch he died in silence, while Suetonius has him asking […]
The Book of the Twelve
December 8, 2015 By
A Sunday School taught by Pastor Rich from November 15, 2015 – Feb 7, 2016 The last twelve books of the Old Testament are known as the Minor Prophets. This is an unfortunate name, as for us the term “minor” sometimes means “less important.” They aren’t minor in that they are less important; they are […]
The Value of the Apocrypha: 1 Maccabees and Jesus
December 3, 2015 By
Historical context matters. I can think of many instances when learning the “rest of the story” is of immense help in understanding the current context. A social gathering gets suddenly awkward when Yuri enters the room; Boris, next to you, leans over to whisper, “He and Sasha used to date.”* A particular church’s dynamics seem […]
