Resources from 2022

Advent and Christmastide beckon Christians to reflect on the first coming of Christ as we long for his return. We are situated in the time between, with a new life and reality defined by the events of Bethlehem and Golgotha and in anticipation of Christ’s parousia. As we think of Christ’s Incarnation in this time […]

I still remember my first experience in a Pentecostal worship service. Growing up in a ‘frozen chosen’ Dutch Reformed church, it was quite the culture shock. I was a Calvinist in exile at a Pentecostal university (a long story). As the music started to grow loud, the lights grew dim, and voices were raised along […]

The battle of ideas is over. We no longer live in an age of reason but an age of narratives. The battle of stories is just beginning. While the church wrestles with the ship’s wheel and tries to navigate this new current, we need faithful pastors to give us our bearings. David Murray proves an […]

The Reality of Idolatry Since Adam, all humans are idolators. We all perpetually break the first commandment by loving creation more than the Creator. As Calvin famously said, “the human heart is a perpetual idol factory” (Institutes I.11.8). In some cultures, this looks like offering sacrifices to man-made statues (e.g., Hindu-influenced India). In other cultures, […]

I find Jordan Peterson’s philosophy of life to be like eating a garden salad for dinner. A salad is refreshing and healthy, I keep coming back for more, but ultimately it does not sate my hunger for long. I’ve consumed a fair bit of Jordan Peterson’s thought and found it, in many ways, to satisfy […]

“Who knows what true loneliness is?” Joseph Conrad famously said. “Not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask.”[1] At first sight, loneliness seems easy to define. During the pandemic, a wave of concerns arose on behalf of people who suddenly found themselves isolated, especially the elderly and […]

While ministry burnout is nothing new, the past few years of pandemic and political turmoil have exacerbated burnout to alarming levels. Both pastors and lay leaders are exhausted from leading confused congregations through the crucible of the past few years. Tired, tattered, and torn, there is a great temptation to step away from the heavy […]

In 1533, Philip Melanchthon gave a speech entitled “On the Miseries of Teachers.” Melanchthon, a Reformer well-versed in educational philosophy and honored by his contemporaries with the title of “Praeceptor Germaniae” (the Teacher of Germany), bemoaned the attitude of students: “they insult us, they wrinkle their noses, they make faces behind our backs when we […]

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330–390), one of the most celebrated theologians of the early church, really didn’t want to be a preacher. In fact, after being ordained against his will at Epiphany 362, he couldn’t get away fast enough. Naturally, by the time he made his way back to Nazianzus a few months later, his […]

Asking how theologians and biblical scholars relate has become like asking what Athens has to do with Jerusalem. A Nehemiah-like wall has been constructed between the disciplines of theology and exegesis, to which come R.B. Jamieson and Tyler Wittman, declaring in Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis, “tear down this wall!” While distinctions […]