What are the factors contributing to keeping young adults in the Church? John Sorensen talks with Jon Nielson, a college pastor at College Church in Wheaton, IL, who has some ideas on what keeps young people in the Church.

As a tenured lesbian professor at Syracuse University, Dr. Butterfield had no desire to become part of the heterosexist, patriarchal culture that she perceived to be the identity of Christianity. Her thinking was challenged by the letter of a local pastor who inquired about her basic presuppositions and asked her questions no one had ever asked her before. What began as an academic exercise to find fault with the Scripture and expose the darker side of Christianity ended with answers and a changed life that resonates in today’s culture.

The Importance of the Nature of Divine Sovereignty for Our View of Scripture by Stephen J. Wellum Not only is it important to evaluate views of divine sovereignty in light of whether they can uphold a high view of Scripture, but it is also crucial to maintain that in defending any view of Scripture, one cannot adequately do so unless one self-consciously thinks through one’s view of divine sovereignty. In fact, without the discussion of divine sovereignty being brought to the table in our doctrine of Scripture polemics, I am convinced that we will not make any headway in our

“You can’t…be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes. You can’t go on getting any very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it. You may

by Dan Delzell, Pastor of Wellspring Lutheran Church , Papillion, Neb “I am going to do this or that differently in the new year. And I mean it this time!” Who hasn’t set off with great intentions on January 1? By the end of the first month however, things often seem to have settled back into “status quo” mode.  So is there a solution to this “resolution riddle” and this new year’s quandary? Actually, yes.  And believe it or not, the solution is found in the Bible.  When we approach this issue from a theological perspective, we begin to see

At the beginning of another year, people will make new resolutions. But should Christians make these New Years commitments? In this lab, John Piper shows that resolutions can be deeply Christian and grace-filled. I love these points that Piper makes about how resolutions are based in God’s grace: A resolve (at least here) is a desire for God to do something in and through us. It is your resolve and your work, but it is done by “faith” (2 Thessalonians 1:11) — that is, in reliance upon God. The result of this kind of resolve and this kind of work