Pastor Chris Scripture Reference: II Kings 24-25

  Educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Stephen Charnock gained a reputation for preaching in the years following his 1656 appointment as chaplain to Henry Cromwell, the governor of Ireland. Having previously ministered in Southwark, Charnock returned to London in retirement only to take up preaching again at Bishopgate Street Presbyterian Church as joint pastor with Thomas Watson.1 Though most of his sermons were published after his death, his greatest written work is entitled The Existence and Attributes of God. In this excerpt from his work, Charnock declares that the human will in opposition to God’s will is, in fact, practical […]

They met every two weeks in a pub in London. Their mission was the transformation of the world through biblical preaching and faithful pastoral care. They adopted the inauspicious title: The Eclectic Society.1 Their founder was the man who wrote the most famous hymn in the history of the world, Amazing Grace.

Word origins are fascinating, whether you’re talking about the Latin roots of “Mediterranean” (“center of the world”), the Greek roots of “sarcophagus” (“flesh eater”), or the Persian roots of “seersucker” (“milk and sugar”). Sometimes the base meaning is offensive, as with “hysterical,” which employs a Greek word for the womb (appearing also in the word, “hysterectomy”), implying that this emotional state is more characteristic of women than men. Sometimes it can be gratifying, as when a Stephen discovers that his name derives from a Greek word for “crown or garland of honor.”

The name Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) has become a byword for conviction and courage. In 1935, ten years before the Nazis hanged him in Flossenburg, Bonhoeffer presided over a seminary consisting of twenty-five young pastors. They were all part of the Confessing Church, believers who refused to drape Hitler’s policies with the Christian flag. Therefore, the seminary was illegal; they literally risked their lives to pray together, study together, and live together. In 1937 the Nazis shut down this clandestine seminary, and a year later Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together, reflections on a Christian community. In the pages of this book, he […]

Pastor Chris Scripture References: 2 Kings 22-23; 2 Chronicles 34-35

  A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Walker Percy studied medicine at Columbia University Medical School, but practiced only briefly. After contracting tuberculoses, he became a writer, whom the Los Angeles Times called “the Faulkner of his generation.” His novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award. Percy was a devout Catholic, who took his church’s moral pronouncements very seriously. In this selection from “Why Are You Catholic,”1 he reflects on the way in which American consumerism leads naturally to rampant abortion and the specter of euthanasia. He notes that the Nazis earlier covered this ground, albeit for somewhat different reasons.

18 Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. 19 But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. 20 For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:18-20 (NIV)

This support group features biblical, Christ-centered teaching that focuses on grief topics associated with the death of a loved one. The DVD seminar features nationally respected grief experts and real-life stories of people, followed by a small group discussion about what was viewed. Past participants have related how helpful the information and follow-up discussions were to them.

  Theologian Carl Henry’s magisterial work, God, Revelation, and Authority, sought to order all of life under the rule of Scripture. Believing that original sin taints all that man does in secular vanity, Henry counts “human progress” a fiction. As grand as works of technology, art, and scholarship may be, when people attempt them without faith in the Creator and then turn to these constructs for meaning in life, they are idolaters.