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Book Review: The Bible and Other Faiths

In our current global milieu, we live in a “world of religions,” and increasingly, Christians are confronted with how to relate to these religions. Ida Glaser approaches these issues with clarity and authenticity in her book The Bible and Other Faiths: Christian Responsibility in a World of Religions. As a Jewish Christian who reaches out to Muslims, Glaser has firsthand experience in how crucial and delicate these matters can be. With an important contribution to Christian theology, Glaser helps Christians distinguish between primary and secondary questions, focusing believers on what we can genuinely know and cannot know from Scripture. In…

Why Read Commentaries?

Regarding biblical study and the use of commentaries, Eugene H. Peterson uses a captivating illustration to demonstrate the reason why Christians should read commentaries. It is our way of entering into the vibrant conversation, of hearing many other voices and eventually expressing our own. I read this years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it. Since he says it better than I could, I’ll simply share his own words: “…biblical commentaries have for too long been overlooked as common reading for common Christians… Among those for whom Scripture is a passion, reading commentaries has always seemed to me analogous to the…

God Provides

I think Jesus may have hacked into our bank account. Somehow, he always seems to know when my wife and I are low on cash. Now that I am a seminary student, our cash supply is often limited, and at times, nearly nonexistent. But when we reach the bottom of the barrel, we are always provided for. This has happened over and over again. God knows all along what we need, and He is always there to help. TV and prosperity preachers give such a bad rap to the ideas of blessing and prosperity. In the guise of fancy suits…

Lyric Formatting for Worship

In many churches, there has been a subtle change over the past decade. When we started using PowerPoint for worship, the majority of churches would use a slide for a verse, another slide for the chorus, and so on. Today, however, the trend is to use a slide for 2 to 4 lines — more like a snippet — in order to display larger font, include artwork, or show video of the band. While this generally looks better and in a few cases is helpful, we should not accept it without question. One downside of fewer lyrical lines being displayed…

What is a Hymn?

A friend recently asked me to explain what a hymn is, and it is a great question. Here are a few observations. Feel free to comment and add any of your own. 1. A hymn is not determined by when it was written. The date is irrelevant. Many hymns are being written today — usually more modern in style and easier to sing. 2. Hymns often consist of a progression of lyrics, thus the need for multiple verses. (e.g., progressing from the incarnation to the consummation) 3. Hymns are generally more eloquent and theological, and for that reason, they appeal…

Intervention Needed

Driving through various parts of Chicago, I was reminded of how scattered and isolated we have become as a nation. This is nothing new, of course, but I realized again how many social and economic barriers we have created amongst ourselves. One block is home to one ethnicity, while across the street is another. As a society, we are not united as much as we think, but broken. Admittedly, it is easy to criticize the Christian church for not being more multicultural and diverse. While there are usually good intentions within our churches, in actuality, very little is done. This…

Spiritual Appearance vs. Spiritual Substance

Partially due to the rise of the internet, our 3rd millennial lifestyles often lead us towards selfish, self-image spirituality. The emphasis isn’t on who we are on the inside, but who we present ourselves to be on the outside. We are judged by the content of blogs, MySpace and Facebook pages, personal websites, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Unfortunately, all of these can be edited. I say “unfortunately” because in the midst of editing photos, blogs, videos, and the like, we are leaving part of ourselves behind. The more we edit, the easier it is to overlook the ugly parts of…

There’s soft rock in heaven?

Whether it’s verbalized or not, a church’s music style communicates doctrine — or at the very least, it communicates values. That’s not something that we often think about. Unfortunately, we are usually more concerned with the sound than the substance, and we don’t stop to contemplate the greater implications of our style choices. What does style communicate? For the hymn-singing church, it may be that “Church tradition is inherently valuable.” For the blended church, it may be that “Everyone should get along.” For the contemporary church, “Sunday morning ain’t so bad.” For the modern church, “Newer is better.” And for…

Let the Children Come…

I recently led worship for 300 children.  You never quite know how kids will respond, but they all like to have fun.  So I began by asking them, “Are you guys ready to have some fun?”  And of course, that was all they needed to hear.  All of them were excited and ready to go. The projector wasn’t working, so there were no lyrics; but we laughed at that.  Most of the kids couldn’t read the words anyways.  I invited the children to sing if they knew the songs and to sing the echo parts after me. From the first…