Between the Trees

I recently picked up Death by Love: Letters from the Cross, Mark Driscoll’s new book. I realize that there is a long line of people who like to blast Driscoll (and whose comments will probably not make it through moderation unless they’re talking about this book); I don’t happen to be one of them. Is [...]

Michael Spencer has an excellent article called “What Gays and Lesbians hear when they listen to Evangelicals.” The entire article is outstanding and obviously still relevant in light of Ray Boltz’ recent announcement. However, I think many of the points have a broader relevance to them as well.
Spencer’s first point is that they hear that [...]

Sinclair Ferguson opened the conference with an exposition of James 3:1-12. You can read, listen, or watch the session at the link provided, so what follows in this post (and the other recap posts I do) will be my reflections on the talk as well as some very brief notes.
Ferguson’s talk was helpful on a [...]

[Update: Whoops, classically bad typo my quick proofread missed. I am indeed a paedobaptist; that "not" crept in unintentionally and was most definitely not the Holy Spirit or a Freudian slip :)]
Scot McKnight has a fascinating article up by Peter Berger, defending much of the prosperity gospel movement. Berger is doing mostly sociological study, but [...]

First, it must be said that I’m writing this from a Somali coffeeshop on the corner of 15th and Niccolet in downtown Minneapolis after getting dinner at a Somali restaraunt. And that, in itself, is a highlight.
As far as the conference goes:
1) John Piper wearing a black tweed skater jacket with the DG logo sewn [...]

Michael Spencer discusses women’s roles in the church and also explores the problem plaguing the Southern Baptists. Hint: It’s not evangelism.
Brant Hansen continues to demonstrate his gift for concise explorations of complex issues. Brant’s also reports on recently discovered fragments from Qumran that “explain everything.” Oh, and as long as we’re linking to Brant: He’s [...]

So true confessions: there was a point in my life where I was a huge nerd. To be clear, I’m over this now. The last time I did something nerdy was, like, yesterday.
While I’ve always hid it well (okay, who am I kidding now?), my comfort level at a gaming shop, LAN party or computer [...]

A powerful reminder from John Piper, via Tullian Tchvidjian:
“I remember being at a conference years ago when, during the panel discussion between the various speakers, one of the speakers (an editor of a conservative political-theological magazine) was expressing his frustration with many of the political ‘left-wingers’ in an unnecessarily sarcastic and condescending way. When he [...]

Yesterday I wrote a post on some areas in which the house church movement and other “modern anti-clericals” have rightly criticized the institutional church. Today I’d like to offer a couple of critiques to their critiques, if that’s not overly reduntant, and then tomorrow I’ll conclude by painting a vision for the church, grounded in [...]

Yes, I am gloating a little bit.
I’m going to try quasi-liveblogging it. I say quasi because I’ll probably dump all my notes into individual posts for each session and then put them on a time stamp to post one every day or two.
But for now, enjoy: