In an insightful review of Chris Seay’s Faith of My Fathers, Bruce Keisling analyzes, exposes, and cautions against the pragmatism that can be seen in both the “Revivalistic Baptist” church methods of yesteryear and the “Emerging” methods that might prove to be this generation’s fad. I commend to you this review. May it be another …
Category Archives: History
Naming the Sin of Liberal Christianity
Wow! This article by Charlotte Allen is so forthright it almost feels like a slap in the face. I can’t believe this piece, called “Liberal Christianity Is Paying for Its Sins,” got published in the Los Angeles Times. I hope that all the evangelical scholars, teachers, and Ph.D. students who are so excited about flirting …
Why Don’t Baptists Commune with Presbyterians?
In a recent comment a friend of mine raised the issue of whether the requirements for membership in the local church ought to be the same as the requirements for membership in the universal church. I take this to mean: we think that someone is saved if they make a profession of faith and show …
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What Is Church 3.0?
Check out Mark Driscoll’s blog to find out.
What Is Regeneration?
I’ve posted before about how we’re catechizing our kids, mainly using The Baptist Catechism edited by John Piper. I’m not sure that we’ll learn all the questions, though. For instance, I’m not certain that the question, “May all men make use of Scripture,” with the answer that all men are not only permitted but required …
David Wells on Evangelical Pastors
As he describes one of the chapters of No Place for Truth, David Wells writes, . . .the pastorate has become proffessionalized, . . . the central function of the pastor has changed from that of truth broker to manager of the small enterprises we call churches. To the extent that this tendency has taken …
History, Pastors, and Ministry Philosophy
In his brilliant book, Democratic Religion, Prof. Dr. Greg Wills details the way that Baptists in the South used to do church discipline and gives an account of why things changed. One of the main reasons that discipline declined among Southern Baptists was that they shifted from focusing on Bible and theology to focusing on …
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Baptism, Baptist History, and Church Membership
Both Dr. Mohler and Justin Taylor have posted today on the direction John Piper has led Bethlehem Baptist Church on the issue of Baptism and Church Membership. Mohler mentions that some allege that Calvinism may lead Baptists away from believer’s baptism. Baptist history can help us here. Tom Nettles (The Baptists, 138–42) describes how the …
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Dallimore on Why He Wrote the Biography of Whitefield
“Yea, this book is written in the desire—perhaps in a measure of inner certainty—that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more bring into being His special instruments of revival, that He will again raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner …
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Are Big Churches Bad?
I get the definite impression that many people who are careful about theology and earnest to obey the commands and examples of the Bible think that bigger churches are bad churches. Several observations are relevant here: First and foremost, let’s remember that the Jerusalem Church had over 3,000 after the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41). …
Mohler on the SBC
I've been eagerly anticipating this since I heard whispers of it at Together for the Gospel. Dr. Mohler has begun a new blog that will discuss issues facing the Southern Baptist Convention: Conventional Thinking. Let's pray that God will give him strong eyesight and insight to lead us well for many years to come. HT: …
Baptist History, Multiple Services, and Multiple Campuses
Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity (Beginnings in Britain), recounts a debate between the early Baptist Hanserd Knollys and one of his Presbyterian contemporaries, John Bastwick: Bastwick argued that the Jerusalem church had only one body of elders over several assemblies or congregations. Believers meeting at the Temple in …
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The Power of God’s Word and Spirit
From Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity (Beginnings in Britain), on the distribution of the New Testament by William Carey, William Ward, and Joshua Marshman in India: When the New Testament was printed, the missionaries began to distribute it carefully. William Ward and Krishna Pal, the first convert of …
Holding the Rope: the Words of Andrew Fuller according to John Ryland Jr.
From Tom Nettles, The Baptists: Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity (Beginnings in Britain): Our undertaking to India really appeared to me, on its commencement, to be somewhat like a few men, who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine, which had never before been explored. We had no …
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Thabiti Anyabwile: Trophy of God’s Grace
As soon as you get a chance, enjoy this beautiful profile of one of the elders at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
Michael Haykin on Francis Wayland
We Baptists would do well to know more of our heritage, and Michael Haykin, principal of Toronto Baptist Seminary, is one from whom we have much to learn. Read his post on Francis Wayland, president of Brown University (which was a Baptist school) here. Students of history will also want to check out Dr. Haykin’s …
Augustine on Suffering
Arguing that Christianity is not to be blamed for the sack of Rome by the Goths, Augustine explains in The City of God that both good and bad men suffer. He writes: But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both [good …
Timothy George and the SBC
Would that Timothy George’s voice would be heard loud and clear in these days. His recent piece in First Things titled “Evangelicals and Others” is a must read for any Southern Baptist in these troubled days. Can we hold tenaciously to our theological positions while maintaining a cooperative ecumenism? George suggests that we can learn …
Spurgeon on Elders
I recently bought Spurgeon's Autobiography and hope to read it soon, and that prompted me to look up this Spurgeon quote from Mark Dever's Baptists and Elders: “To our minds, the Scripture seems very explicit as to how this Church should be ordered. We believe that every Church member should have equal rights and privileges; …
Thomas Cranmer and Blue Like a Passing Purple Fad
I recently finished reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's stellar biography of Thomas Cranmer. Anyone interested in the life of a great man who pushed forward the reformation in England should read this book. Cranmer is presented sympathetically in all the complexity of one who recanted under great distress only to heroically withdraw his recantations in the hour …
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