Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Leap of Truth, Part 3: The Fall


July 13, 2011

This week we feature the third clip from the upcoming documentary “A Leap of Truth”, directed by filmmaker Ryan Pettey. As Ryan wrote in his accompanying post for the film’s first clip, our goal for the film is to put something proactive on the table to help motivate an elevated conversation above the unnecessary “war” between science and faith. It is our sincere hope that, above all else, the film can become a focal point for some of the big questions that inevitably arise at the intersection of science and faith. We believe Ryan's work will inform faith and enrich discussion, and we feel that this week’s topic, the Fall, is of particular importance for Christians as we think through the ramifications of creation by evolutionary mechanisms.

To help foster such dialogue, we are once again including several discussion questions with this week’s clip. In the transcript below, you’ll find several prompts that are meant to help viewers dig deeper into the material being presented. Mouse over each highlighted region and a question will appear on the side. We encourage you to "pull up" this page and watch this video with your friends, your churches , your small groups and Sunday School classes, your pastors -- or anyone else for that matter – and take some time to discuss what is being said (and maybe even what isn’t). It is best to think about this in groups. You may not all agree, but you will find yourselves engaged in fruitful and spirited conversation. And it is this kind of conversation that will help move the science and faith discussion forward.

The provided questions are just a few of the discussion questions that go with this transcript, and we'd be happy to send them to you to foster further conversation within your church or small group setting. If you’d like to see the questions, or if you have stories from your own small group discussions about the clip, we would love to hear from you at info@biologos.org.


A Leap of Truth - The Fall



Dr. Jeff Schloss: “My friends and colleagues, who have concerns about evolutionary theory for theological reasons, are onto something, and one of them involves the Fall, the nature of the Fall, what it is. Even if it is a metaphor, it is a metaphor for something, and what is that something? And how would we make sense of that something in light of evolutionary theory? The other issue on this has been probably the most serious issue that not only Christians, but all theists who believe in a good and providential God have wrestled with, it is the problem of natural evil.

Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd: “The problem of evil is a real problem to religious faith. It was certainly the thing for Darwin himself. That is what made him question his faith, and I think rightly so. It does not look like the sort of system that a good and loving and benevolent God would have set up. Now, obviously that raises huge questions because we don’t see any evidence of a world that was harmonious. We only see evidence of a world that was at war with itself, and that obviously is the problem that Christian theologians face. For a long time I used to believe that the Genesis narratives paint a picture of a world completely at peace, completely harmonious until the human fall, and then something goes wrong. When I began to look at it more closely, I began to think that there is more to it than that. There is evidence from the text that things are already dislocated, already out of joint. For one thing, there is the serpent, and however you interpret the serpent, here is a bit of the created order that is actively talking against God, working against God—so there is already something that has gone wrong. Secondly, there is the command to fill the earth and subdue it. There is the suggestion that something needs to be subdued, something is not quite right that needs to be put right and humans beings are called to do that—to put it right. And thirdly, it is a garden. It is almost as if God has said, ‘Here is a little bit I have done for you, here is a little bit of order and harmony that I have done for you. Now you go and spread that order and that harmony throughout the rest of creation.’ The tragedy is, of course, that human beings don’t do that. Rather than put that right, they make it worse.”

Dr. Alister McGrath: “Clearly Scripture distinguishes humanity from the rest of creation by this idea of the image of God. And that is understood in a number of ways—one of which is relational. Human beings have this God-given capacity to be able to relate to God, which is simply not there for the rest of creation. How do we understand that phrase: the image of God? If we accept the narrative of biological evolution, we have to say that at some point humanity became sufficiently distinguished from the rest of the natural world to be able to have this relationship with God.”

Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd: “If you have a very finely graded gas tap and you begin to turn it on, initially, there is not enough gas in the air for the gas to ignite. So, you turn it up some more, still nothing, a bit more, still nothing, and a bit more, still nothing. At a particular point, there will be enough gas to air ratio for the thing to ignite. So, you can have a completely smooth, upward development, and yet, you can have something decisive happening at a particular moment. You get an increase in that moral capacity and moral awareness; you get an increase in their relational ability, in their social ability. You get an increase in their tool-making ability. You get an increase in their language. At a particular point there is enough of all that. There is enough relational capacity; there is enough social capacity and moral awareness and spiritual awareness for God to deal with us in a new way: ‘They have enough creativity to reflect the fact that I am the creator. They have enough relational capacity to reflect the fact that I am love. This in some way reflects who I am, and I will stamp my image upon them.’”

Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne: “As hominids evolved and became more complex, then self-consciousness, in the sense of projecting our minds into the remote future or past began to dawn in them. And that didn’t bring biological death into the world, because obviously it had been there for millions of years beforehand, but it brought into the world what you might call mortality. Because our ancestors were self-conscious, they knew they were going to die. Because they had turned away from God, they had alienated themselves to the only one who was the ground for the hope of a destiny beyond death. And so, mortality, meaning the sadness, the human sadness at transiency and decay dawned in human life. Another very subtle feature of the Genesis 3 story is that it is a fall upwards as people would sometimes say. It is the gaining of some knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, the story says. And so, the dawning of self-consciousness is also the gaining of something that wasn’t there before. What the serpent whispers in Eve’s ear is, ‘eat this fruit, and you will be like God. You won’t need God anymore. You can do it yourself.’ That is the fundamental sin, the fundamental mistake in human life is believing that we can do it on our own, doing it my way, and spiritual death is to deliberately and persistently cut yourself off from that. It doesn’t occur as an angry God giving you a punishment for not falling into line. It is simply that you have punished yourself. You know, preachers sometimes say that the gates of hell are locked from the inside not to keep the creatures in, but to keep God out. And that, I think in the end, is what spiritual death is if you persist in it. But God is always, I am sure, at work, seeking to draw people back into the divine love. I think that is the work that is necessary to understand what Paul is getting at in Romans 5 when he says that death came into the world through one man. The cost of development is a degree of precariousness. The people need the grace of God if we truly are to live fulfilling lives.”






A Leap of Truth, Part 2: The Book of Genesis


July 6, 2011

Last week we debuted the first clip from the documentary “A Leap of Truth”, directed by filmmaker Ryan Pettey. As Ryan wrote in his accompanying post for last week’s clip, our goal for the film is to put something proactive on the table to help motivate an elevated conversation above the unnecessary “war” between science and faith. It is our sincere hope that, above all else, the film can become a focal point for some of the big questions that inevitably arise at the intersection of science and faith. We believe Ryan's work will inform faith and enrich discussion.

To help foster such dialogue, we are including several discussion questions with each clip from the film. In the transcript below, you’ll find several prompts that are meant to help viewers dig deeper into the material being presented. Mouse over each highlighted region and a question will appear on the side. We encourage you to "pull up" this page and watch this video with your friends, your church, your small groups and Sunday School classes, your pastors -- or anyone else for that matter – and take some time to discuss what is being said (and maybe even what isn’t). It is best to think about this in groups. You may not all agree, but you will find yourselves engaged in fruitful and spirited conversation. And it is this kind of conversation that will help move the science and faith discussion forward. We have more discussion questions that go with this transcript and we'd be happy to send them to you to foster further conversation within your church or small group setting.



A Leap of Truth - The Book of Genesis


Click link above to view video



Dr. Alister McGrath: “The Christian church has always wrestled with the interpretation of Scripture, realizing both how important it is and also sometimes how difficult it is to get it right. Certainly, the opening chapters of Genesis have been a topic of much debate throughout Christian history.”

Dr. John Polkinghorne: “The Bible is very important to me, but it is very important to recognize that the Bible is not a book. The Bible is a library. It has all sorts of different kinds of writing in it—It has histories, it has stories, it has poetry, it has prose. When we read Genesis one, we have to figure out, what am I reading? Am I reading a divinely dictated textbook to save me the trouble of doing science, or am I reading something, in fact, more interesting and profound than that?”

Dr. John Walton: “We have to approach Genesis 1 for what it is. It is an ancient document. It is not a document that was written to us—we believe the Bible was written for us like it is for everyone of all times and places because it is God’s Word—but it was not written to us. It was not written in our language. It was not written with our culture in mind or our culture in view.”

Dr. Alister McGrath: “It is not about the authority of Scripture, it is about the interpretation of Scripture. What method of interpretation do I use in the case of each individual passage?”

Dr. Karen Strand Winslow: “Biblical scholars urge people to take a literal, plain reading of the text…but I think in the controversy between theology and science, literal is often used to mean scientific, as if it is scientific, and that is a whole different story.”

Dr. John Walton: “We are inclined by our culture to think of the creation narrative as an account of material origins because we think about the world in material terms. For us, that is kind of what is important about origins. People come to Scripture thinking that they need to integrate it with science and so, they want to either read science out of the Bible or they want to read science into the Bible. That is not the way to do it because inevitably you end up making the text say things that it never meant to the ancient audience.”

Dr. Chris Tilling: “We are importing meaning into the text; we are bringing our own presuppositions and assumptions into a text and reading it in light of that as if it were in the text. Now, there is a sense in which we all inevitably do that, but there is also a sense in which we need to be aware when the times that we do that are damaging to the reading of the text.”

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “When I was a kid and the film industry was still relatively new, it was possible to depict people from two centuries ago as modern Americans dressed up in togas. As the film industry has gotten more sophisticated, they have gotten better and better at creating human figures that actually look and behave and think as they probably would have in the past. So, we Bible readers ought to be equally sophisticated and recognize that someone who was writing three thousand years ago, which is very hard to imagine, that these people must have been very different from us, with very different concerns. They certainly had very different understandings about how material things worked.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “One of the benefits of understanding the historical circumstances of the Bible is that we are reminded of how incredibly old this literature is. Let’s understand it in view of what we could even remotely expect of the Biblical writers to say.”

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “We can understand what our own creation stories are saying better, if we know what the creation myths were that were known at the times that those stories were written—for instance, to realize that a lot of the Genesis stories were written as a counter measure against the other cultures’ creation stories. That throws an immense amount of light on what parts of the story we are supposed to be paying attention to.”

Dr. Chris Tilling: “The Gilgamesh epic, for example, has a flood narrative and so forth, and so it wants to reflect creatively and theologically in light of those creation myths; it is going to be something recognizable.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “Genesis one shares theological vocabulary with the other stories—it just sort of takes things and turns it on its head.

Dr. Nancey Murphy: “If one creation myth talks about the earth being created as a result of the battle between gods, we know to look in our creation stories to say, ‘wait a minute! Is violence intrinsic to the very creation of the universe?’ We find very clearly written that no, it is not.”

Dr. Peter Enns: “It’s Israel’s declaration that Yahweh is worthy of worship. It is a potent and counter-intuitive theological statement in the ancient world where people say, ‘That is totally different from anything we have ever seen.’”

Dr. John Polkinghorne: “The stories of the ancient world were not so concerned with minute, literal accuracy as we are today. People wrote not to give you sort of a factual, journalistic account of what is going on, but to tell you the significance of what was happening.”

Dr. Ard Louis: “And so what we see is that there are these really interesting structures in the Genesis text, which suggest that it is not describing the creation process as this is the order in which it happened. Rather, it is taking that story and emphasizing theological points. It talks about days; there was morning, there was evening—but the sun and the moon are not created until the fourth day. So why, for example, did the writer of Genesis put the sun and the moon on the fourth day? It is a very strange thing to do, and it is not as if it is only moderns who realize ‘Oh dear! Something is wrong.’ People at any time of history would have realized that that was an unusual way of writing down a journalistic account. And, of course, the reason most likely is that people of that day worshipped the sun and the moon, and the Israelites were always being drawn away that way, and the people around them were doing that. And so, what the writer was saying is, ‘no, I am going to demote these things to the fourth day. They are not the first thing to be created; they are something to be created somewhat later.’”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “This is simply the sort of language that people use to refer to concrete events, but to invest those events with their theological significance.”

Dr. John Walton: “We are well aware that people have to translate the language for us. We forget that people have to translate the culture for us, and therefore, if we want to get the best benefit from the communication, we need to try to enter their world, hear it as the audience would have heard it, as the author would have meant it, and to read it in those terms.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “There is a distinction which is there in Scripture between heaven and earth. But the thing about heaven and earth is that they are supposed to overlap, and have an interesting, interlocking, interplay with one another. They are never supposed to be far apart.”


Dr. John Walton: “In the ancient world, they didn’t have a line between supernatural and natural. God was in everything. You couldn’t talk about God intervening because you can’t intervene in something you are doing—and to them, God was doing it all. That kind of functional aspect was very important to them.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “In Genesis, God makes heavens and earth, and it appears that humans are in the world, but God is around as well because the heavens and earth have not split apart.”

Dr. John Walton: “The temple and the cosmos were all blended into one. If we used a modern metaphor it would almost be like the temple was the oval office. It is kind of where all the business is done, where all the work is run. It is the hub of activity and control, and when Deity took up his rest in the temple, it wasn’t for leisure or relaxation…it was to settle down to the work now that everything is set up and ready to go.”

Bishop N. T. Wright: “Telling a story about somebody who constructs something in six days, it is a temple story. It is about God making a place for himself to dwell…and this is heaven and earth. What you do with that is, the last thing is you put an image of this God into the temple. Suddenly, instead of Genesis one being about ‘were there six days or were there five or were there seven or were there twenty-four hours…,’ it is actually about when the good Creator God made the world, he made heaven and earth as the space in which he himself was going to dwell and put in humans into that construct as a way of both reflecting his own love into the world and drawing out the praise and glory from the world, back to himself. That is the literal meaning of Genesis. To flatten that out into, ‘this is simply telling us that the world was made in six days’ is almost perversely to avoid the real thrust of the narrative.”

Michael Ramsden: “If this is an inspired book, if this really is, you know, something where God is revealed and can speak through it, it shouldn’t surprise us that we find multiple layers of depth.”

Bishop N.T. Wright: “Genesis is one of those books like a Shakespeare play or like a Beethoven symphony or something where you can describe what it sort of literally says. Here is a Beethoven symphony; here are the notes, ‘Duh, duh, duh, duh.’ Then, you think, ‘well, that doesn’t actually catch what is going on in this’, and you want to use bigger language about the opening of Beethoven’s first symphony. This is an amazing statement about the power of empire and the fate of man…and goodness knows what! You still have got to play the notes. This world was made to be God’s abode, God’s home, God’s dwelling place. He shared it with us, and now he wants to rescue it and redeem it. We have to read Genesis for all it is worth. To say, either history or myth is a way of saying, ‘I am not going to study this text for what it is worth. I am just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask…and I think that is a form of actually being unfaithful to the text itself.”

Dr. John Walton: “The account in Genesis one is not intended to be an account of material origins. If that is so, then the Bible has no narrative of material origins, and if that is so, we don’t have to defend the Bible’s narrative of material origins against a scientific narrative because the Bible does not offer one. We can let the text be what it is and take it for what it is. That is the most literal reading that you could have.”





Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Text & Culture - The Relevancy of God's Word to Contemporary Culture


Attending "Talking Points" a week ago I met each of the speakers (except Doug Moo who was being interviewed at the time), revisited many friends and made new friends. From the conference I came away with feeling "How vast is the spectrum of human experience found within the bible" as God uses those ancient experiences of believers and non-believers alike to speak to our own, more contemporary experiences, in new and personal ways! And that within the bible's rich tapestry of story and narrative is discovered again and again the salvific themes of "renewal, restoration, reformation, redemption, and resurrection."

For it is to these rich biblical themes that gives us warrant to discuss the Bible's relevancy between its ancient manuscripts and texts-of-yesteryear to that of our global cultures today. Which very themes have been presented within the body of this blog in a variety of forms and functions: to the ancient text, we've discussed hermeneutics, various theologies, and subject matters on personal awareness and apprehension; to culture, we've discussed, or have shown, how the bible is made relevant to our common lives and lifestyles. So that none of these subject matters are new here, but only revisited again and again by way of helps and decorum.

Overall, my favorite lecture was by Scot McKnight as he heatedly ripped through the several themes of (emergent) Christianity (at least to my way of understanding the Gospel) to some of my overly conservative evangelical brethren's consternation. These themes have most recently appeared in Scot's latest book, "The King Jesus Gospel," just newly published by Zondervan this past month. Here are the themes as I hastily captured them without further review to date:

  • What is Biblical Relevancy? Neither a mirror of culture nor a reduction of message
  • Culture, Compromise, and Corrupted Christian Traditions
  • The Primacy of Christology (New Covenant) over Soteriology (Calvinism)
  • God's Love Expressed in the New Covenant and through Salvation History
  • Biblicism and the MultiVocality of Scriptures (sic, Christian Smith)
  • Authority of Revelation v. Authority of Church Tradition
  • Discerning Truth & the Wisdom of God: All good theology leads to the gospel of Jesus
  • The Comprehensive Gospel v. Reductionism (creeds and confessions)
  • Cultural Criticism (sic, Peter Rollins): What is most relevant is most anti-cultural
  • Family Terminology in the Bible: God's love in the midst of family dysfunctionalism
  • Critique of the Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic (sic, Bill Webb): Paul is not a prisoner of a pre-set cultural hermeneutic (Ex. "slavery")
  • The Ethics of the Kingdom of God: - Personal & Social Justice in the Gospel of Jesus

I say to the consternation of some of the brethren present, but not to all of the brethren who were present. Simply because it was my unhappy experience to have had lunch with one group of pastors struggling with the reception of these emergent Christian themes - themes not intended for the conference's topics per se, and would only appear an hour later at McKnight's afternoon presentation when speaking to the "Relevancy of God's Word (text) to Contemporary Culture" (thereby making these emergent themes very relevant!). Which is why I intended to be present on this day, hoping to hear the emergent themes of Christianity freshly enacted in the ears of my fellowship's very conservative Reformed and Baptistic brethren, and to watch audience's reaction (which were graciously received in humble and studious fashion).

I began this blogsite six months ago because of the severe backlash which I had witnessed firsthand to Rob Bell's Love Wins book - both to sort out my own thoughts as well as to correct the many misstatements,  popular jokes and poor opinions of so many of my friends, family and fellowship. Thus, we have here explored each theme and topic of Emergent Christianity from a variety of perspectives and discussions, and I am beginning to find hope that my fellow conservatives and evangelicals are beginning to understand and embrace these same topics as well in their own way, however belatedly, if this conference is any indication.

Anyway, back to my story. I had unwittingly sat down amid a lively discussion about my pastor and church (Rob Bell of Mars Hill) as he is transitioning from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Los Angeles, California, to begin new ministries (announced but only a week earlier). And as quickly identified myself to help quiet the conversation down and then found as quickly again a layer of ice 3 layers thick extending across our lunch table making for my discomfort, try as I did to crack and break it at the simplest levels of gracious communication. Consequently, McKnight's later lecture was unforeseen, but a most welcomed reminder to my serving brethren, that Christ is larger than our ideas of Him, His message, or even his servants. And it was my prayer that God ministered to my tablemates that hour by opening their hearts just a crack to understand the courage it took for someone like Rob Bell to speak to the church's cultural conditions in its misconstrued Christian messages and misplaced tasks.

Later I found Dr. Watson to be pleasant and helpful as we talked at day's end on several matters of eschatology and hermeneutics - especially relating to Webb's Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic. His patient teaching earlier in the morning on several OT passages will give to the listener tremendous examples on how to relevantly exposit the bible in its original texts to today's culture. His method is at once plain and simple, but peppered with humor and personal insight, and was a solid review of how to teach the bible using the careful, considered means with which we have on hand through the Internet, research tools, and informed websites; helping to make plain and meaningful God's word in our studies and to those around us. As you listen you'll discover indeed that the Scriptures are relevant to our culture when discerned, divided, and handled aright without any additional need for hermeneutical gymnastics, delusions, misled suppositions, forced imaginations and whatnot.

Doug Moo presented at length a pedantic discussion on the new NIV Study Bible and the translation work he has done in committee with CBT (Committee on Bible Translation) as its long-time chairman in conjunction with  Biblica and Zondervans, as they together created an up-to-date dynamic equivalency version of the English Bible. The NIV's initial publication date was 1984 and after several transitions has produced its latest release during this month, October of 2011 (see the CT article further below). Hence, we all received as part of our attendance package, a gift from Zondervan Publishing of the new 2011 NIV bible.

Doug went on to explain how a common English word is translated into the vernacular which ended up not being too common at all when exposed by regional biases of linguistic naunce; the efforts of the many teams of scholars who work on their translation teams; and the difference between literal bibles (NASB, ESV), dynamic equivalency bibles (NIV, TNIV, HCSB), and meaning-by-meaning bibles (NLT, The Message) that occur along a wide spectrum of publications each serving a specific purpose for their readership at-large. Several articles ago within this blog, a video clip by the BBC was submitted showing how a team of scholars (not the CBT) were working on updating the ESV bible and was reviewed here: http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/09/difficulties-in-translating-bible-esv.htmlReferring back to this blog article will give the reader an idea of the difficulty of splitting a word's nuance from its literary syntax found within a biblical passage and how a translation team cooperates to meet its objectives.

Lastly, Zondervan Publishing was present to vouchsafe several displays of academic study tools and pastoral/personal wares along a couple of tables where, to my surprise and great pleasure, I found my cousin's son (and thus my second cousin) representing the marketing department. From time-to-time I mention Mason's blog, "New Ways Forward," and was glad to visit with him; he is a very astute young man, showing broad and good discernment in matters of the Christian faith, and I would highly recommend reading his blog as you can (http://masonslater.com/). Mason's blog may also be found listed along the sides of this blog as well in the blogger section.

As always, may God's grace and peace be yours.

R.E. Slater
October 2011

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You can listen to each of the talks here:

Daniel R. Watson
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Kansas City, MO


2 - Click here for Doug Moo's Lecture
Douglas Moo, Ph.D.
Kenneth T. Wessner Professor of New Testament
Wheaton College, Chicago, IL

3 - Click here for Scot McKnight's Lecture
Professor of Biblical & Theological Studies
North Park University, Chicago, IL




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Talking Points at GRTS

by Scot McKnight
October 9, 2011

Last week Grand Rapids Theological Seminary hosted an event for pastors and students (and anyone else) interested in the connection of ancient text to modern culture. The event was called Talking Points: Text and Culture. Three different speakers, with Q&A, flexibility, and a generous break for lunch permitted all of us to interact over the presentations.

Dr Dan Watson, of Midwestern Theological Baptist Seminary, got us going with a talk about how culture informs the Old Testament, and his theoretical as well as illustrative examples were a good warm-up to the topic. Showing how culture informs that text is what many need to see all over again, and Dan offered plenty of examples.

At the heart of the issue of text and culture, of course, is translation, and GRTS invited Doug Moo, of Wheaton, who heads up the Committee on Bible Translation, which provides the translation for the NIV 2011 (all NIVs actually), discussed how the NIV translators worked: how they examined original text in original language, how they sought to create “natural” English, and how that involves both interpretation and seeking for natural English equivalents to what the text says. By all accounts, this was a special time for all of us.

My talk, after lunch, which had one of its goals to keep everyone awake and away from those early afternoon naps, was devoted to the theme of “cultural relevance,” and I developed seven themes — briefly of course.

Not enough thanks can be given, but to Joe Stowell and John Verberkmoes and Nate Clason I offer my appreciation for hosting a fine event — and to Zondervan for providing an NIV 2011 to each person.


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Correcting the 'Mistakes' of TNIV and Inclusive NIV, Translators Will Revise NIV in 2011
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2009/09/breaking_transl.html

"We fell short of the trust that was placed in us."

Ted Olsen
September 1, 2009

Note: An earlier version of this blog post said that Keith Danby's remark that "some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made" was in regard to the Today's New International Version. He was discussing the earlier New International Version Inclusive Language Edition, released in the U.K. in 1996. I sincerely apologize for the error.

TNIV.jpgIn announcing a major revision of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible, Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society and Send The Light; or, IBS-STL) CEO Keith Danby said decisions surrounding the release of the NIV inclusive language edition and the 2002 revision, Today's New International Version (TNIV), were mistakes.

"In 1997, IBS announced that it was forgoing all plans to publish an updated NIV following criticism of the NIV inclusive language edition (NIVi) published in the United Kingdom. Quite frankly, some of the criticism was justified and we need to be brutally honest about the mistakes that were made," Danby said. "We fell short of the trust that was placed in us. We failed to make the case for revisions and we made some important errors in the way we brought the translation to publication. We also underestimated the scale of the public affection for the NIV and failed to communicate the rationale for change in a manner that reflected that affection."

Danby said it was also a mistake to stop revisions on the NIV. "We shackled the NIV to the language and scholarship of a quarter century ago, thus limiting its value as a tool for ongoing outreach throughout the world," he said.

"Whatever its strengths were, the TNIV divided the evangelical Christian community," said Zondervan president Moe Girkins. "So as we launch this new NIV, we will discontinue putting out new products with the TNIV."

Girkins expects the TNIV and the existing edition of the NIV to phase out over two years or so as products are replaced. "It will be several years before you won't be able to buy the TNIV off a bookshelf," she said.

"We are correcting the mistakes in the past," Girkins said. "Being as transparent as possible is part of that. This decision was made by the board in the last 10 days." She said the transparency is part of an effort to overhaul the NIV "in a way that unifies Christian evangelicalism."

"The first mistake was the NIVi," Danby said. "The second was freezing the NIV. The third was the process of handling the TNIV."

Gender-inclusive inclusion?

Doug Moo, chairman of the the Committee on Bible Translation (which is the body responsible for the translation) said the committee has not yet decided how much the 2011 edition will include the gender-inclusive language that riled critics of the TNIV.

"We felt certainly at the time it was the right thing to do, that the language was moving in that direction," Moo said. "All that is back on the table as we reevaluate things this year. This has been a time over the last 15 to 20 years in which the issue of the way to handle gender in English has been very much in flux, in process, in development. And things are changing quickly and so we are going to look at all of that again as we produce the 2011 NIV."

I don't think any member [of CBT] would stand by the NIVi today," Moo said. "But we feel much more comfortable about the TNIV." He expects many of the TNIV's changes to appear in the updated NIV.


"I can predict that this is going to look 90 percent or more what the 1984 -IV looks like and 95 percent what the TNIV looks like," he said. "The changes are going to be a very small portion of the whole Scripture package."

Nevertheless, Moo said, the NIV does not currently reflect developments in the last 25 years of scholarship in Bible translation. CBT has made 1200 changes to the text in its database since the TNIV's most recent 2005 revision. (About 100 of these, such as typos, appear in current print editions.)

"I sit in a church where the NIV is a pew Bible," he said. "But Sunday after Sunday I hear the preacher say, 'I don’t think the NIV is quite right here.' And I feel like saying as a member of the CBT, 'Yes, but we've changed that!'"

Likewise, he said, the NIV is a translation that strives to reflect contemporary idioms and there have been significant changes to the English language in the last quarter-century.

"The English is understandable but not natural to people anymore. It's not what people are saying day to day," he said.

For example, Girkins said, the NIV uses the term alien rather than foreigner. Using contemporary English is particularly important internationally, Danby said, because that in some parts of the world the NIV is used for teaching English as a second language.

A question of process

Most translation revisions are not met with as much fanfare as today's announcement. But most translations have not been on top of the best-seller list for a quarter century. Nor had other translation committees previously announced that they would not update their text. Most importantly, other translations had not been the focus of boycotts, Christian bookstore chain bans, Southern Baptist Convention resolutions, and other outrage that accompanied the TNIV's release.

"We're trying to do this right and be as transparent as possible," Girkins said. The NIV team has already created a website, NIVBible2011.com, to solicit comments from scholars and Bible readers. Moo says the CBT will read and consider every suggestion received by the end of the calendar year.

Is the team's repeated emphasis on transparency and openness an admission that World Magazine was right when called the TNIV a "Stealth Bible" in a 1997 cover story that was the first volley against the translation?

"We're not saying the TNIV was a stealth Bible," Girkins said. "But the ways it was brought to market weren't transparent. We didn't bring people with us and caught people by surprise. ... We made a big press announcement today because want people to get on the page with us. We don't want to imply that we're going to overhaul the NIV. We could be giving the impression that this is a lot bigger than it is."

Best seller

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association reports the NIV is still the best-selling Bible translation overall, though specific Bibles in other translations are outselling NIV Bibles. Last month, for example, the English Standard Version's Outreach New Testament and the New King James Version's Text Bible outsold the NIV's Adventure Bible. The TNIV is not among the top ten best-selling translations and no TNIV edition is among the best-selling Bibles. One bright spot for the TNIV, however, has been in sales to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, where the TNIV is the third-most popular translation (behind the NIV and King James translation).

The New International Reader's Version, a version of the NIV translated into simpler English in 1996, will stay as it is, Girkins said. The translation has had more commercial success than the TNIV; The NIRV Adventure Bible for Early Readers, for example, was last month's tenth-best selling Bible.





Mormonism & Christianity

My Take: This evangelical says Mormonism isn’t a cult
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/09/my-take-this-evangelical-says-mormonism-isnt-a-cult/?hpt=hp_t2

October 9, 2011

Editor’s note: Richard J. Mouw is President of Fuller Theological Seminary, an evangelical school in Pasadena, California.

By Richard J. Mouw, Special to CNN

Some prominent evangelical pastors have been telling their constituents not to support Mitt Romney’s bid for the 2012 presidential nomination. Because Romney is Mormon, they say, to cast a vote for him is to promote the cause of a cult.

I beg to differ.

For the past dozen years, I’ve been co-chairing, with Professor Robert Millet of Brigham Young University - the respected Mormon school - a behind-closed-doors dialogue between about a dozen evangelicals and an equal number of our Mormon counterparts.

We have talked for many hours about key theological issues: the authority of the Bible, the person and work of Christ, the Trinity, “continuing revelations” and the career of Joseph Smith, the 19th century founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), better known as the Mormon Church.

We evangelicals and our Mormon counterparts disagree about some important theological questions. But we have also found that on some matters we are not as far apart as we thought we were.

I know cults. I have studied them and taught about them for a long time. It’s worth noting that people have wondered whether I belong to a cult, with a reporter once asking me: “Evangelicalism, is that like Scientology and Hare Krishna?”

Religious cults are very much us-versus-them. Their adherents are taught to think that they are the only ones who benefit from divine approval. They don’t like to engage in serious, respectful give-and-take dialogue with people with whom they disagree.

Nor do they promote the kind of scholarship that works alongside others in pursuing the truth. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for instance, haven’t established a university. They don’t sponsor a law school or offer graduate-level courses in world religions. The same goes for Christian Science. If you want to call those groups cults I will not argue with you.

But Brigham Young University is a world-class educational institution, with professors who’ve earned doctorates from some of the best universities in the world. Several of the top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have PhDs from Ivy League schools.

These folks talk admiringly of the evangelical Billy Graham and the Catholic Mother Teresa, and they enjoy reading the evangelical C.S. Lewis and Father Henri Nouwen, a Catholic. That is not the kind of thing you run into in anti-Christian cults.

So are Mormons Christians? For me, that’s a complicated question.

My Mormon friends and I disagree on enough subjects that I am not prepared to say that their theology falls within the scope of historic Christian teaching. But the important thing is that we continue to talk about these things, and with increasing candor and mutual openness to correction.

No one has shown any impulse to walk away from the table of dialogue. We do all of this with the blessing of many leaders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some of whom have become good friends.

While I am not prepared to reclassify Mormonism as possessing undeniably Christian theology, I do accept many of my Mormon friends as genuine followers of the Jesus whom I worship as the divine Savior.

I find Mormons to be more Christ-centered than they have been in the past. I recently showed a video to my evangelical Fuller Seminary students of Mormon Elder Jeffrey Holland, one of the Twelve Apostles who help lead the LDS church. The video captures Holland speaking to thousands of Mormons about Christ’s death on the cross.

Several of my students remarked that if they had not known that he was a Mormon leader they would have guessed that he was an evangelical preacher.

The current criticisms of Mitt Romney’s religious affiliation recall for many of us the challenges John Kennedy faced when he was campaigning for the presidency in 1960.

Some well-known Protestant preachers (including Norman Vincent Peale) warned against putting a Catholic in the White House. Kennedy’s famous speech to Houston pastors clarifying his religious beliefs as they related to his political leadership helped his cause quite a bit.

But the real changes in popular attitudes toward Catholicism happened more slowly, as Catholic Church leaders and scholars engaged in a new kind of dialogue with each other and representatives of other faith groups, most dramatically at the Second Vatican Council during the early years of the 1960s.

Cults do not engage in those kinds of self-examining conversations. If they do, they do not remain cults.

Those of us who have made the effort to engage Mormons in friendly and sustained give-and-take conversations have come to see them as good citizens whose life of faith often exhibits qualities that are worthy of the Christian label, even as we continue to engage in friendly arguments with them about crucial theological issues.

Mitt Romney deserves what every politician running for office deserves: a careful examination of his views on policy and his philosophy of government. But he does not deserve to be labeled a cultist.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Richard J. Mouw.


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Mitt Romney Responds To Anti-Mormonism:
‘Poisonous Language Doesn’t Advance Our Cause’
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mitt-romney-responds-to-anti-mormonism-poisonous-language-doesnt-advance-our-cause/

by Frances Martel | 1:02 pm, October 8th, 2011

After half a weekend where the top news story was a debate whether his own religion was a “cult,” Mitt Romney took the stage at the Values Voter Summit today and shot back at those who would undermine his political prowess based on his religion, decrying “poisonous language” and, particularly, “one of the speakers who will follow me,” referring to anti-Mormon American Family Association representative Bryan Fischer.

RELATED Anti-Mormon Pastor To Anderson Cooper: Romney May Belong To A ‘Cult,’ But He Is Better Than Obama

Romney, preceded by a speech in which Bill Bennett explicitly shamed pastor Robert Jeffress for calling the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints a “cult” and hurting the Rick Perry campaign by proxy, thanked Bennett for his speech– “talk about hitting it out of the park,” he joked, a comment Perry had made about Jeffress. During his speech, Romney took a respite from political issues to remind the crowd that “decency and civility are values, too” and to note in particular that “one of the speakers who will follow me today has crossed that line, I think.” Attacking his “poisonous language,” he argued that it “does not advance our cause; it’s never softened a single heart or changed a single mind.” While he did not mention Jeffress, Fischer has made similar comments about the LDS church.

A report on Romney’s comments Fox News below:




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Bill Bennett: Jeffress comments on Mormonism 'bigotry'
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65475.html

By ALEXANDER BURNS | 10/8/11 9:40 AM EDT Updated: 10/8/11 6:58 PM EDT


Conservative commentator Bill Bennett, speaking at the Values Voter Summit, rebuked the Texas pastor who described Mormonism as a “cult” here Friday afternoon.

Bennett, the former education secretary and conservative author, said that Baptist church leader Robert Jeffress had given “voice to bigotry” in his remarks.

Jeffress gave a fiery speech endorsing Rick Perry for president and later told reporters he did not believe Mitt Romney is a Christian.

“Do not give voice to bigotry. Do not give voice to bigotry,” Bennett said in his speech Saturday morning. “I would say to Pastor Jeffress: You stepped on and obscured the words of Perry and Santorum and Cain and Bachmann and everyone else who has spoken here. You did Rick Perry no good, Sir, in what you had to say.”

Bennett’s remarks came less than half an hour before Romney was scheduled to take the stage at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65475.html#ixzz1aT2zFOYJ


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For More Information on Mormonism

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism

Theopedia - http://www.theopedia.com/Mormonism

MormonInfo.org - http://mormoninfo.org/

Scot McKnight's Website: Comments - http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/10/10/romney-a-mormon-is-he-a-christian/#comments


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Jeff Goldberg, a Jew: “Mormonism isn’t Christianity”
http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/11/02/jeff-goldberg-a-jew-mormonism-isnt-christianity/#more-21854

by Scot McKnight
November 2, 2011

Jeff Goldberg thinks he needs to step into this “is Mormonism Christianity?” issue:
One reason why is that Mormonism isn’t, in fact, Christian. Today’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t resemble a cult in any meaningful way. But its relationship to Christianity is similar to Christianity’s relationship to Judaism….

Just so we’re clear, I couldn’t care less whether Mormons are Christian, for two reasons: 1) I’m Jewish, so both Christianity and Mormonism (not to mention Islam) are a bit too arriviste for my taste; and 2) religious tests for public office are profoundly un-American. It says so in Article VIof the Constitution: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”…

Neither does Mormonism offend me aesthetically. I don’t particularly care about what secular culture — on Broadway and off — sees as evidence of its essential ridiculousness: the early dalliance with polygamy; the belief that every righteous Mormon gets his own planet; the sacred underwear; the off-putting absence of both acne and irony among Mormon youths. Christians believe in a virgin birth, after all, and members of my faith remove the foreskins from 8-day-old boys, just as our Bronze Age ancestors did (which bothers me not at all)….

Mormons themselves contend that “Christ is at the center of our worship, study, service and faith,” as a statement released by the church after Jeffress’s comment put it.
But theological honesty demands that we recognize that Romney would be the first president to be so far outside the Christian denominational mainstream.

There is much in Mormonism that stands in opposition to Christian doctrine, including the belief that the Book of Mormon completes the Christian Bible. Christianity had an established creed about 1,500 years before Joseph Smith appeared in upstate New York with a new truth, codified in the Book of Mormon, which he said was revealed to him by an angel named Moroni.

“The Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed settled the basic ideas of Christianity,” said Michael Cromartie, an evangelical who is vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Centerin Washington. “The canon was closed, and then Joseph Smith comes along and says that there’s a new book, an extra-biblical addition to the agreed-upon canon.”…

Nothing in Mormonism is quite as alien to Christian thought as the core assertion that God and man are of the same species.

“This is a canonical belief of Mormons, and it stands in radical opposition to the beliefs of the monotheistic religions,” Richard J. Mouw, the president of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in California, told me. “Your people” — that is, Jews — “and my people would say that the fundamental sin here from the biblical point of view is that God is God and we’re not. There’s an ontological gap between creator and creation.”

When confronted by such questions about his religion, Romney shouldn’t defend its doctrines. He should defend the right of a Mormon to be president. And those Mormons drafted to defend their faith on the political battlefield shouldn’t argue that they are merely misconstrued Christians, a claim that won’t fly with pivotal Christian constituencies. Instead, they should assert that theirs is a legitimate and moral system of belief, and that a country that elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama as president is certainly ready to elect an adherent of what [Mr.] Land calls the "Fourth Abrahamic faith." (sic, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, as used in this sense - skinhead)



Monday, October 3, 2011

Rob Bell - Sermons on Philippians


Teaching Archives of Rob Bell on Phillippians
http://marshill.org/teaching/past-teachings/

*Each .mp3 file may be found on the Internet but are here linked to their originating source at Mars Hill Church (for a small donation).

*If there are any Google bloggers who are technically proficient and willing to link each .mp3 file below to this site page, this help would be appreciated. Each line will need its own embedded code and a reasonably stable link that will be available for years and years. Or, perhaps there is an Internet channel that can be used. Comments may be made below.



Philippians pt 01: Grace And Peace - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 02: A Good Work - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 03: All Of You - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 04: Abound - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 05: What Has Happened To Me - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 06: But What Does It Matter - Kent Dobson
Philippians pt 07: My Deliverance - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 08: Exalted In My Body - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 09: I Do Not Know - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 10: Progress And Joy - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 11: Boasting Will Abound - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 12: A Worthy Manner - Brian Mucci
Philippians pt 13: Same Struggle - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 14: One Mind - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 15: Others - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 16: Grasping And Giving - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 17: The Crux And The Hyperhypsosem - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 18: God Works In You - David Livermore
Philippians pt 19: Shine Like Stars - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 20: A Life Poured Out - John Ortberg
Philippians pt 21: Examples - Leroy Barber
Philippians pt 22: Beware The Dogs - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 23: Skubalon - Greg Boyd
Philippians pt 24: Blocks And Boards - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 25: I've Got You Hanging Around My Neck - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 26: I Will Say It Again, And Again, And Again - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 27: An Odd But Ancient Way To Live - Tim Brown
Philippians pt 28: The Right Kind Of Contentment - Richard Mouw
Philippians pt 29: Who Doesn't Want In On That? - Rob Bell
Philippians pt 30: Letter On A Letter - Rob Bell








Rob Bell - Sermons on the "Letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation"



Teaching Archives of Rob Bell on the "Letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation"
http://marshill.org/teaching/past-teachings/ ( ~ 2010 - 2011 )

Yet again, an  e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t   series. Profound, convicting, motivating. - res

*Each .mp3 file may be found on the Internet but are here linked to their originating source at Mars Hill Church (for a small donation).

*If there are any Google bloggers who are technically proficient and willing to link each .mp3 file below to this site page, this help would be appreciated. Each line will need its own embedded code and a reasonably stable link that will be available for years and years. Or, perhaps there is an Internet channel that can be used. Comments may be made below.



Letters To The Seven Churches pt 1: Rev 2: First Love - Rob Bell
Letters To The Seven Churches pt 2: Rev 2: Lighting The Wick - Shane Hipps
Letters To The Seven Churches pt 3: Rev 2: The Agony Of Explanation - Rob Bell
Letters To The Seven Churches pt 4: Rev 2: Thyatira - Richard Mouw
Letters To The Seven Churches pt 5: Rev 3: Fool's Gold - Shane Hipps
Letters To The Seven Churches pt 6: Rev 3: Sardis - Rob Bell







Rob Bell - Sermons on the Kingdom of God


Teaching Archives  of Rob Bell on the Kingdom of God
http://marshill.org/teaching/past-teachings/

Here is another  e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t   series. Profound, convicting, motivating. - res

*Each .mp3 file may be found on the Internet but are here linked to their originating source at Mars Hill Church (for a small donation).

*If there are any Google bloggers who are technically proficient and willing to link each .mp3 file below to this site page, this help would be appreciated. Each line will need its own embedded code and a reasonably stable link that will be available for years and years. Or, perhaps there is an Internet channel that can be used. Comments may be made below.



Kingdom pt 1: Suffer The Kindness - Dan Allender
Kingdom pt 2: Within You - Shane Hipps
Kingdom pt 3: Weeds - Rob Bell
Kingdom pt 4: Sleeping - Shane Hipps
Kingdom pt 5: Returning To The Field - Shane Hipps
Kingdom pt 6: Ten Virgins - Rob Bell
Kingdom pt 7: The Learner - Shane Hipps







Rob Bell - Sermons on the Sermon on the Mount


Teaching Archives of Rob Bell on the "Sermon on the Mount"
http://marshill.org/teaching/past-teachings/   ( ~ 2009 - 2010 )

This is an  e-x-c-e-l-l-e-n-t  series. My all time favorite. Profound, convicting, motivating. - res

*Each .mp3 file may be found on the Internet but are here linked to their originating source at Mars Hill Church (for a small donation).

*If there are any Google bloggers who are technically proficient and willing to link each .mp3 file below to this site page, this help would be appreciated. Each line will need its own embedded code and a reasonably stable link that will be available for years and years. Or, perhaps there is an Internet channel that can be used. Comments may be made below.



Resurrection - Rob Bell