The following articles have been selected because they are informative, instructive, entertaining, or simply interesting. Articles appearing in Your Friday Five do not represent an endorsement.
Checks and Balances in Theological Method, By Dr. Rhyne Putman
Theology is the critical study of doctrine because the teaching of the church needs checks and balances. It must be tested for fidelity to the Bible. It must be tested for logical consistency. It must be assessed for its practical value. And it must offer a relevant word for the culture or context into which it is given. The message of Scripture must be properly understood and applied to every age. What should we know about doctrine?
Sermon Analysis Reveals What Pastors Preached on in 2020, By Aaron Earls
Like a good, alliterated sermon, in the fall of 2020, pastors preached on the pandemic, politics, and prejudice.
A Word to Young Preachers about Pride, By Dr. David L Allen
If you are in a leadership position in someone’s church, and especially if you are a pastor, let me offer a salient word of warning: Don’t become a Diotrephes who loves to be first. We all know preachers who are too big for their britches. You know the type. In the extreme, this is the guy who can strut sitting down. He exudes arrogance, either in the pulpit, outside the pulpit, or both. Joseph Parker, contemporary of Spurgeon, painted the picture of the prideful person in unforgettable prose: “Here is a little contemptible person who stuffs the unworthy sack, which he calls himself, with the shavings and sawdust of his own self interest.”
Opioid overdose deaths reach record high in U.S. during COVID-19 pandemic, By Diana Chandler
ATLANTA (BP) — Drug overdose deaths reached an all-time high in the United States in 2020, rising nearly 30 percent to more than 93,000, according to the latest provisional numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Character, Charisma, Hope, and Healing: Reflections on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, By Gayle Doornbos
As I finished listening to “Who Killed Mars Hill?”, the first episode of the podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill produced by Christianity Today and hosted by Mike Cosper, I sat in stunned silence trying to process and metabolize all the lessons and questions raised by the episode. I, like many, am familiar with the Mars Hill story—its impressive rise to a church of more than 15,000 in the notoriously secular city of Seattle under Mark Driscoll and its meteoric fall in 2014. I lived in Seattle during the church’s heyday. I was also a college student when the evangelical ecclesial landscape in the United States was shaped by complex movements like the emergent church and the young, restless, and Reformed. I remember the way Mars Hill was held up as an exemplar of a kind of church and brand of ‘conservative’ Christianity that could succeed and reach America’s cities. I also remember how many (not all) detractors and critics displayed a certain amount of schadenfreude (pleasure or self-satisfaction from the troubles or misfortunes of another) when Mars Hill collapsed, as if the demise of the church represented a definitive verdict on Driscoll’s brand of Christianity.