Winter 2018: Other Significant Articles
Jeff Oliver, “Why the Church May Be Ignoring the Powerful Significance of Pentecost” Charisma (May 9, 2017).
James F. Linzey, “The New Year that Ushered in a World War” Assist News Service (December 28, 2017).
Douglas Groothuis, “Learning to Say Hello Again: A New Year’s resolution that could make a big difference” Christianity Today Online (January 5, 2018). |
“Throughout the day, we can pronounce a silent blessing on many we encounter. I often pray, ‘May God bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you, and give you peace.’ The Bible is packed with blessings and benedictions for our discovery and use. Thinking and praying this way opens us up to greeting people with heartfelt good wishes and without fear.”
Alec Ryrie, “Beyond the Reformation of Politics” Modern Age (Fall 2017).
In an age when Western societies think most problems are susceptible to political solutions, what can we learn from the apolitical heritage of people like Martin Luther, Pietism, early Pentecostals, and South Korean Christians? “Protestantism is not, in any of its forms, a political movement. It is about God, and it is about human salvation. The centrality of those spiritual concerns has often been exasperating to secular politicians who want to make Protestants their allies and are frustrated by all the wearisome Jesus-talk, but it is unavoidable. Naturally, Protestants’ spiritual preoccupations have political consequences, sometimes dramatic ones. When an overwhelming encounter with God has turned your whole world upside down, nothing, politics included, will be quite the same. Yet if we misread these secondary effects as primary, we will not be able to understand their impact.”
Marshall Shelley, “What Christians in the US Can Learn from Immigrant Pastors: For those who met Christ elsewhere, Americanized Christianity can look a bit strange” Christianity Today Online (January 2018).
“The temptation there is hypocrisy, to appear more spiritual than you actually are. But in the US I pray less than I did in Korea. No one checks on my discipleship; we don’t talk about it. It’s all left up to the individual. Here we’re not hypocrites; we’re just lazy.”
Kate Bowler, “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me” The New York Times (February 13, 2016).
Did you miss this insightful 2016 article by a historian of the prosperity gospel?
Dorothy Littell Greco, “Pastoring the Victims of #MeToo: Four steps your church can take to minister well” WomenLeaders.com (January 21, 2018).
“Escalators to heaven: Evangelicalism is spreading among the Chinese of South-East Asia” The Economist (January 4, 2018)
“Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity is growing more quickly in Asia than most parts of the world, with over 200M adherents in 2015, up from 17M in 1970. The largest congregations are in South Korea and the Philippines, where dazzlingly large mega-churches hold tens of thousands of people. But Christian zeal is also increasing in other parts of the continent, including Indonesia and Malaysia, where proselytising among the Muslim majority is well nigh impossible, but where Buddhists, Confucians and Christians of other denominations, almost all of them ethnically Chinese, are proving receptive.”
William Spencer, “We Saw Trees Walking: Our Stories of Eye Healings” Applying Biblical Truths Today (December 27, 2017).
John Lathrop writes: “Here is a healing testimony by one of my former seminary professors. Dr. William Spencer.”
Shawna Songer Gaines, “How to Make Finding a Mentor Less Awkward: Three shifts in the way I thought about mentoring freed me” WomenLeaders.com (January 24, 2018).
Craig S. Keener, “What Is the Mark of the Beast?” Zondervan Academic (January 5, 2018).
Category: Winter 2018