From the Pen of Pastor Paul by Daniel R. Hyde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A wonderful book by Pastor Danny Hyde. This is not a commentary in the strict sense of the word. You will not find chapters on Pauline authorship or the textual issues in these letters. Also this is not a slow, careful verse by verse examination of the text. These are sermons put to paper. Here are several things I enjoyed about the book. Continue reading
Discovering Church Planting: An Introduction to the Whats, Whys, and Hows of Global Church Planting by J.D. Payne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was okay, but honestly had way more information than was necessary. I am the founding pastor of a church plant that is now almost ten years old. There is not much in this book that would have helped me ten years ago. It felt like overkill for most situations. The best chapters were the ones on ecclesiology, discipleship and caring for one’s family. It might be more helpful for those in global situations.
While church planting does bring challenges that a pastor does not find when he goes to an established church, I believe books like this make it more complicated than it needs to be.
He Is There and He Is Not Silent by Francis A. Schaeffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
For a long time I have felt that presuppositional apologetics and classic apologetics, when done and held rightly, can be mutually supporting. Presuppositions feed facts. But facts, the way the world is, feed our presuppositions as well. While Schaeffer does not use this exact terminology that is part of the lesson I learned from this book.
I found this book more difficult than Escape from Reason and for some reason I skipped The God Who is There, which I will have to pick up. Schaeffer outlines how the failure to have an infinite personal God who speaks leads inevitably to meaninglessness. But more than that he shows how an infinite personal God who created this world and who speaks is the only option that matches the facts of how the world actually is. The key fits the lock and only this key fits the lock.
A couple of other thoughts. Schaeffer writes with a high level of empathy for the modern man in the book. Modern man is alienated, living in a meaningless world with no way of knowing what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil, what is real and what is imaginary. Schaeffer had an answer for this lostness. But he does not just have an answer he truly loves those he speaks to.
Second, Schaeffer (along with Os Guinness) has made less afraid of questions. Schaeffer noted that at L’Abri no question was off limits. Anything could be asked and there was answer for it from the Bible and the Christian worldview. A lot of times men steeped in presuppositional apologetics, like myself, simply say to objections, “Well you just need to believe.” Yes they do, but they also need answers. And Christianity has those answers.
Here are ten of my favorite quotes from Os Guinness’ excellent book on apologetics Fool’s Talk:
Almost all our witnessing and Christian communication assumes that people are open to what we have to say, or at least are interested, if not in need of what we are saying. Yet most people quite simply are not open, not interested and not needy, and in much of the advanced modern world fewer people are open today than even a generation ago. Indeed, many are more hostile, and their hostility is greater than the Western church has faced for centuries.
As with almost everything worthwhile in life, there is rarely just one day to do it. The same is true of persuasion. There is no single right way it should be done. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work with everyone. To be sure, there are some ways that are not Christian and some that not effective, but there is no single way that alone is Christian.
Sin must always end in justifying itself by framing God. God is in the dock [the one who stands accused]. To excuse ourselves, we have to accuse him. In short, sin frames God falsely.
In strong contrast to secularism, the Christian view is both this-worldly and other-worldly. It has a healthy appreciation of this world, but sees it always within an equally strong appreciation of another world that throws this present world into a different light, redeeming its worst features and confirming forever its highlights. And in strong contrast to the Eastern views, the Christian view has a solid appreciation of the created reality that we know and we may trust-even though there is another world that is needed to make this world what it should be.
Because of the cross and the resurrection there is always a way out.
Unbelief manufactures not only idols but illusions.
Only humans it seems, have the capacity to live as something other than what they are. [Guinness quoting N.T. Wright]
When it comes to belief and unbelief, we need to remember that, while no thoughts are unthinkable and no argument is unarguable, some thoughts can be thought but not lived…When we are talking of unbelief, there will always be unintended consequences. Unbelieving beliefs will be truly adequate because unbelieving knowledge is never fully adequate and not finally true.
The gospel makes better sense of what simply is because the way God sees reality is the truth of what is.
Indeed, it is now difficult to think of what might actually constitute a crisis of faith for the Christians revisionists [liberal Christians]. Revisionist faith has so lost its authority that it has become compatible with anything and everything, and so means nothing.
And one:
Questions and needs do not create faith. No one believes because of questions and needs. Rather, the effect of questions and needs is to make people disbelieve. They no longer believe whatever it was that they believed before, because what they used to believe no longer answered their questions.
Quotes From Other Books
The New Pastor’s Handbook by Jason Helopoulos
On Being a Pastor by Derek Prime and Alistair Begg
How to Exasperate Your Wife by Douglas Wilson
The Things of Earth by Joe Rigney
A Son for Glory by Toby Sumpter
Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer
Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung
Making Gay Okay by Robert Reilly
Christ Crucified by Donald Macleod
Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God by John Calvin
Just in time for Advent and Christmas here are ten quotes from Douglas Wilson’s book God Rest Ye Merry.
Bethlehem was the opening gambit in the last campaign of a long war.
Our good God, our overflowing God, our God of yes and amen, has always been able to promise far more than we are able to believe. I am not here speaking of unbelief, or of hard hearts, which is another problem. I am speaking here of true and sincere faith, a God-given faith, but one which is still infinite, and which God loves to bury under an avalanche of promises. We serve and worship the God who overwhelms, who delights to overwhelm.
The one who took the position of a servant was given authority over all.
Mary overcame in the way women are called to conquer-by giving birth to conquerors, or by giving birth to daughters who will give birth to conquerors. And this explains how the Magnificat [Luke 1:46-55] can have been composed by a woman and still be so gloriously militant. Godly child-bearing is militant.
Man in his sinful condition does not want to be saved. That is part of what it means to be a sinner. This means that man wants, by various strategies, to put himself out of God’s reach.
We are told to clothe ourselves with humility and tender mercies. When Jesus told His disciples to follow Him, the cross is certainly in view. But we do not just follow him to the cross-we must also follow Him to the manger. We must become little children.
There is a vast difference between narrow partisanship and a broad political worldview. Many Christians in their attempts to keep the former out of their spiritual lives, have also found themselves excluding the latter. This is a drastic mistake. In doing this, they have found themselves without a consistent biblical worldview at all–because all worldviews are inescapably political. If you are resolved to be apolitical, you are resolved to abandon the world, to write it off.
The sun has risen. Christ has come. He is the king. The light covers the world. A return to heathen midnight is an impossibility. Those who walk in darkness now are doing so in a world diffused with light. This is hard to do–you have to remain blind, or hide in root cellars. There are ways to stay out of the sunlight, but they are difficult to accomplish.
We should strive over time to have our celebration of Easter far surpass the glory of Christmas…and we shouldn’t try to fix this by reducing what we do at Christmas.
“Penitential” seasons can be put to a genuinely good use if they are a time when serious, once-for-all mortification of particular sins occurs-if real sins and real bad habits are uprooted from your life.
And One:
From the very start, from the very beginning, the life of Jesus presented a potent threat to the status quo. This threat was not the result of Herod’s paranoia–Herod knew what many Christians do not. The birth of this child meant that the old way of ruling mankind was doomed. The transition from the old way of rule to the new way of rule was not going to be simple or easy, but it was going to happen.
Quotes From Other Books
The New Pastor’s Handbook by Jason Helopoulos
On Being a Pastor by Derek Prime and Alistair Begg
How to Exasperate Your Wife by Douglas Wilson
The Things of Earth by Joe Rigney
A Son for Glory by Toby Sumpter
Escape from Reason by Francis Schaeffer
Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung
Making Gay Okay by Robert Reilly
Christ Crucified by Donald Macleod
Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God by John Calvin
Singing & Slaying 