This is part of the series Catalyst 2013. Angela Ahrendts is the CEO of Burberry who engineered an extraordinary turnaround, beginning in 2006 when she took over. Since the interview, it was announced last week that she would be joining Apple in mid-2014 to head up its retail efforts — which sounds like a fantastic […]
Archives for 2013
One-Way Love, and Are Christians Still Totally Depraved?
I’ve dipped into Tullian Tchividjian’s new book One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World a bit, and have really enjoyed it. It is so clear and understandable. For example, in the last chapter he has a great discussion of the question “Are Christians totally depraved?” The answer is that we need to make some […]
John Piper: Glorifying God by Maximizing Our Joy in Him
This is part of the series Catalyst 2013. Piper’s message was excellent, and I think it is a fantastic ingredient in the leadership teaching here at the conference. It is critical to not just lead, but to lead in a God-centered way. And that means understanding the centrality of God’s glory to all of life […]
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
This is a great video summarizing the Kalam cosmological argument, which shows how science helps demonstrate that it is fully rational to believe in the existence of God. The Kalam cosmological argument was initially developed in the middle ages, but it has been updated and refined in an incredibly insightful way in recent years by […]
Why Prayer and Bible Study Are Not Enough
That title sounds pretty bad on the face of it. So don’t hear me diminishing the importance and significance of prayer and Bible study in the slightest. In fact, I originally started one of the chapters in my book this way: “If you do nothing else, other than read your Bible in faith every day, […]
Have We Missed the Meaning of the Incarnation?
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. Here’s the point: Sometimes, helping the poor requires taking part of their burden on ourselves, and suffering deprivation […]
The Meaning of Justice
In his excellent book Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, Tim Keller quotes Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke’s very shocking, but absolutely correct, definition of justice: The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves. Keller expands: Most people think of […]
The Difference Between a Christian and Non-Christian
Very well said by Mark Dever in The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (note: this might be slightly paraphrased, because it’s from my notes and I don’t have the actual copy of the book with me right now): The difference between Christians and non-Christians is not that non-Christians sins whereas Christians don’t. The […]
The Necessity of Distinguishing Relief and Development
In both cases, the goal is to help the person back to self-sufficiency. But the strategies in each case are different — often profoundly so. Relief The goal of relief is to meet pressing, urgent needs that are causing great hardship to a person or group. You don’t worry about things like “dependency” here; you […]
One of the Most Important Sermons Any Christian Can Ever Read
Jonathan Edwards’ The Christian Duty of Charity to the Poor.