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This site’s home page has an excellent and growing video collection of solid teachers giving concise responses to this question.  I’d like to grow this collection, so if you have any links of people answering this question, I’d like to know about them.  I’m particularly interested in getting clips of Tim Keller, D.A. Carson, R.C. Sproul, Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung, Matt Chandler, ….  Even if you see it embedded in a longer video, I can clip out what I need.  Thanks!

Here’s a Sample

See Them All! Suggest a Link

There are some theological concepts that I continually find myself explaining to people. This is one of them. I first heard James White explain compatibilism in his debate with George Bryson. I was glad to see him spell it out in his book Debating Calvinism –five points, two views with Dave Hunt.

What follows is that excerpt from the book beginning on page 42, and is used by permission. I encourage all of you to visit Dr. White’s web site, buy and read some of his books (my favorites are The God Who Justifies and The Potter’s Freedom), and buy and watch some of his debates. All are available at his web site store.

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Those who oppose Calvinism appeal repeatedly to these three proof texts. We are called upon to take these verses in their “plain meaning” and then are left to accept their subjective assertion as to what the plain meaning is. If we really believe the Bible is our source of authority, it is crucial that both sides give their exegesis of the texts at issue. I’ll be drawing from the exegesis offered by James White in his book The Potter’s Freedom. For a more thorough treatment of these topics, please consider picking up a copy of the book.

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Two recent encounters inspired me to look deeper into the issue of God’s personal (subjective) leading of his people. The first is my bright and God fearing daughter’s insistence that God does lead her by promptings, etc. The other was a bright young missionary/church planter in training at our church who shared with me that my class Decision Making and the Will of God helped him to move away from superstition, etc. but had put him on a trajectory that took him too far away from a personal “guiding” relationship with God (my words not his, … he was very gracious).

I was doing some research on gifts of the Spirit in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology when I came across a section that exposed my errors in this area. Grudem thoroughly explained the gift of prophecy:

“… not as “predicting the future,” nor as “proclaiming a word from the Lord,” nor as “powerful preaching” –but rather as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind.“¹

Two things came to mind for me. First, I was not at all satisfied with that definition, and second, Wayne Grudem is a lot smarter about this stuff than I am. This latter truth is not enough to convince me, but is enough to prompt me to prayerful study and openness to correction.

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An Examination of Pop-Evangelism and Campus Crusade for Christ’s Popular Tract¹

It was while witnessing on the University of Arizona campus that it became apparent to me that there was something seriously wrong with the “God loves you and has a wonderful plan…” approach to evangelism. Not only did the students being witnessed to shrug their shoulders and say things like “that’s nice…” or “so what?,” but their objections were well founded. We’d never told them why they needed a savior.

Note these statistics and concerns from Ray Comfort’s Way of the Master book and website²:

• In one year a major U.S. denomination claimed to have obtained 294,784 decisions for Christ. Unfortunately, they could find only 14,337 in fellowship.
• A mass crusade reported 18,000 decisions, yet tragically, 94 percent failed to ever become incorporated into a local church.
• Less than five percent of those who responded to an altar call during a public crusade are living a Christian life one year later.

Here is the dilemma: up to 95 percent of the evangelistic crop is failing, both in mass crusades and in local churches. It withers and dies as soon as the sunlight of tribulation, persecution, and temptation shines on it. And those who do occupy our churches often fail to grow into vibrant witnesses for Jesus Christ.

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We can always count on Paul Washer to speak boldly and frankly. Here is a three part video series on biblical manhood that I highly recommend.  Click the “Continue Reading” button below to see all three videos.

What a Man is Not – Biblical Manhood Part 1

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I’ve ported the response to Shane Claiborne’s books The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President from my old web site.  Though not formatted as nicely as I’d like, a fella only has so much time…

Read it online Download the PDF

Eschatology (study of end times) continues to be a popular area of study among Christians today. Some teachers spend a lot of time and energy teaching about the future of Israel, the need to support Israel, etc. while the identity of Israel seems to be assumed to be the continuation of Israel’s identity as the physical descendants of Abraham.

Below you will find a collection of Scripture texts on the subject. Please read them carefully and work through the questions that follow them. As you do so, remember the importance of basing your beliefs on the sure foundation of God’s Word rather than “what I’ve always heard” or “what pastor so-and-so says.”

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Kevin DeYoung demonstrates insight and humor in this excerpt from Why We Love the Church. Enjoy.

Judging by the popularity of recent books like George Barna’s Revolution and William P. Young’s The Shack and the example of prominent Christians like John Eldredge, there are a lot of Christians who feel like current versions of church just don’t cut it. More than a few have already left their churches, and the number of the disaffected seems to be growing. At the very least the “we want God, not an institution” mantra has struck a chord with many formal, informal, and former churchgoers. So we have books like Life After Church, Divine Nobodies, Dear Church, Quitting Church, and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, not to mention Frank Viola’s church-as-we-know-it-is-all-wrong book Pagan Christianity and volumes like UnChristian and They Like Jesus but Not the Church, which explore why outsiders are turned off by the church.

The narrative is becoming so commonplace, you could Mad Lib it:

The institutional church is so (pejorative adjective). When I go to church I feel completely (negative emotion). The leadership is totally (adjective you would use to describe Richard Nixon) and the people are (noun that starts with un-). The services are (adjective you might use to describe going to the dentist), the music is (adjective you would use to describe the singing on Barney), and the whole congregation is (choose among: “passive,” “comatose,” “hypocritical,” or “Rush Limbaugh Republicans”). The whole thing makes me (medical term).

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There is a lot of talk these days about rethinking how we “do church.” Everybody seems to have ideas about how to rescue the church from the brink of irrelevance. Business/marketing model advocates always have another technique or promotion to grow the church; seeker-model apologists can always find a felt need that has yet to be met by their previous methods; and the emergent proponents continue to deconstruct the seeker and marketing church models (to their credit) only to proceed unhindered by the constraints of sound doctrine to decompose the church into a social community of individual agnostics.

When I read the following sections of David Wells’ The Courage to Be Protestant, I was compelled to create this page and share it with others. This is a phenomenal book and this section is but a taste of Wells’ insights–buy and read this book!

Forget Rethinking the Church

Today, prodigious amounts of energy are being poured into this effort. Everything about the church must be rethought! We must rethink how it becomes successful! We must rethink it all because this is what businesses have to do! Their products are all the time dying as new niches and needs arise. So it is in the church! Rethink or die!

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