Danny Sweatt‘s sermon entitled “Young and Restless” (preached on April 7, 2009 at a regional FBF meeting in North Carolina)
A good friend asked me to listen to it last week, so I did (with my wife) early on Sunday morning. Not a good start to Mother’s Day.
Cf. Bob Bixby’s thoughts.
(The title of this post is a play on Kevin Bauder’s thoughtful paper.)
Update:
A good word from Kevin DeYoung:
Here are the two most important things you need to know about the rise of the New Calvinism: it’s not new and it’s not about Calvin. . . . “Please God, don’t let the young, restless, and reformed movement be another historically ignorant, self-absorbed, cooler-than-thou fad.”
Cf. my review of Collin Hansen’s Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists.
First Mary Ann Glendon. Now some students:
John Frame offers extremely high praise for John Barber’s The Road from Eden: Studies in Christianity and Culture (Palo Alto, CA: Academic Press, 2009). (Also available from Amazon.com.)
My last post highlights a book I read last night:
Gregory Koukl. Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.
In the foreword Lee Strobel recounts this story:
When I hosted a national television program called Faith Under Fire, which featured short debates on spiritual topics, I decided to invite best-selling New Age author Deepak Chopra to be a guest. The topic would be the future of faith. To offer a different perspective, I asked my friend Greg Koukl to represent Christianity. The idea was to tape them as they interacted for about fifteen minutes via satellite, the typical format for a segment of the show.
That plan quickly went out the window.
Greg was simply so engaging and so effecting in poking holes in Chopra’s worldview that I had to keep the cameras running. Time after time, Greg was able to expose the faulty thinking underlying Chopra’s amorphous theology and correct his inaccurate claims about Jesus and the Bible. Before I knew it, we had consumed the entire hour of the show. Chopra—who was accustomed to spouting his opinions unchallenged on television and radio—was left thoroughly defeated and deflated.
As soon as the taping was over, I turned to my producer. “That,” I said, “was a textbook example of how to defend Christianity.” For the only time in our show’s tenure, we decided to devote an entire program to airing one debate.
Why was Greg so incredibly successful in that encounter? He wasn’t belligerent or obnoxious. He didn’t raise his voice or launch into a sermon. Instead, he used the kind of tactics that he describes in his book: winsomely using key questions and other techniques to guide the conversation and unveil the flawed assumptions and hidden contradictions in another person’s positions. (p. 13)
Koukl’s website lists many video resources and other resources on apologetics, including a link to the Chopra-Koukl debate. (I also searched on “Koulk” at LeeStrobel.com and discovered ten videos, including the Chopra-Koukl debate in smaller segments.) Here’s a 36-minute video of the Chopra-Koukl debate:
As I acquire new books, I typically do not immediately assign them to their proper places on bookshelves. First I want to spend at least a few minutes with each book to get a sense of its argument and how it might be a useful resource to consult in the future.
Tonight I’ve been working through a stack of new books, spending fifteen minutes with one, five with another, etc. Then I picked up this one:
Gregory Koukl. Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. [excerpt]
This is one of those rare books that is hard to put down. It’s insightful, witty, and fun to read. Except for an unpersuasive argument against determinism (pp. 128–29), the book is extremely helpful, particularly Koukl’s winsome and strategic use of asking questions (chaps. 3–6).
One of the most helpful chapters is entitled “Rhodes Scholar.” [Read more…] about The Fallacy of Expert Witness
Last week I uploaded some new MP3s to the D. A. Carson archive:
Over the last two weekends (and trailing into the wee hours of this morning!), Jenni and I listened to three more outstanding audio books by Randy Alcorn: Deadline, Dominion, and Deception. They’re like modern Sherlock Holmes novels that deal in an edifying way with issues like abortion, racism, and faith and challenge readers to live in light of eternity.
Since Randy is the author, I expected the novels to be edifying. What I didn’t see coming was his ability to write a riveting murder mystery. This partially explains it:
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors/artists?
Those who read Deception will see that I have a special love for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories—every chapter begins with a Holmes quote. In Deception, I also pay tribute to the Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout. I’ve read or listened to most of the forty-seven Nero Wolfe books.
Deadline is the story of a politically correct journalist forced by tragic and mysterious circumstances to come to terms with his own mortality. In the process he must also deal with the consequences of his skewed perspectives on life, family, morality, and religion. Intended for believers and unbelievers.
Deadline portrays friendship, family, faith, morality, social decline and media bias in the context of an unpredictable and hopeful story of personal crisis and change. The second story line, on death’s other side, compliments the who-done-it mystery. Deadline is a unique pro-family, pro-values, pro-life, pro-faith book. It portrays the vital connection between how we think and live in the present, and how that will inevitably impact our future, both on earth and in eternity.
Clarence Abernathy, an Oregon columnist and suburban middle-class black, is dragged into a world of inner-city gangs, drugs, violence and racial conflict. Clarence’s anger at injustices he cannot control pulls him onto turf that becomes more dangerous by the moment. Encouraged by fellow columnist Jake Woods, Clarence forges an unlikely partnership with Ollie Chandler, a white homicide detective. As the case unfolds questions of racial prejudice and misunderstanding rise to the surface. As unseen eyes watch from above, the urban terror that has robbed Clarence of loved ones and uprooted his faith in God now threatens to unleash its deadly violence on him.
In the footsteps of his best-selling novel Deadline, author Randy Alcorn tells an exciting story filled with drama. The characters are so real you’ll never forget them. In America’s racially charged atmosphere, this story offers profound insight concerning our perceptions and conflicts, and points clearly toward the only true hope for racial reconciliation. As you become immersed in its riveting story, Dominion will make you laugh, cry and think.
Ollie Chandler is a brilliant and quick-witted homicide detective with exceptional deductive skills and street smarts. He’s a police department legend for his off-beat methods that solve crimes and coax confessions. But he’s a risk taker and a rule-bender who drives his procedure-conscious superiors crazy. If not for his success rate, he’d have been squeezed out of the detective division years ago.
When a Portland State University professor is found murdered in his home, Ollie is called in. Some strange indications on the professor’s body suggest a peculiar means of death. Tests confirm something even more bizarre than Ollie suspected. A motive of revenge seems likely. But revenge for what? The murder mystery gets more complex the deeper Ollie probes.
Deception is a spin-off of Randy’s first two novels, Deadline and Dominion.
Here’s a three-minute video of Randy talking about Deception (following a brief audio clip from the novel):