Thoughts from Mark Farmer

Our friend Rachel has lived in a Muslim society for years. She knows Muslims as friends and loves them and they love her. She is worth liste...

The September 5, 2012, issue of Christian Century has an interesting article in which contributors are invited to put the gospel message in ...

The "slippery slope" may not be so bad after all!  http://rachelheldevans.com/they-were-right-about-slippery-slope Many of the c...

This is the title of my Easter season sermon series, borrowed from the book of the same name by Rob Bell. (I added the exclamation mark.) Be...

Wisdom from Rachel Held Evans as she encourages Christians to give each other space to each other to differ in our readings of the Bible. No...

TIME has brought an in-house conversation among Evangelicals onto the public square. I am delighted, not only because I believe that Bell is...

Here is a wise and gracious post by Brian McLaren on questions raised by John Piper's blog on God's role in the Japan tragedies. h...

The Jesus-Shaped Life – Church 2011 Our goal as followers of Jesus is to become more and more like Christ, the image of God (Luke 6:40; Rom....

This from Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog: I was asked what are my top three books on leadership and, well, I wrote this in the middl...

a time to tear down | A Time to Build Up » The Benefit of Doubt: Coming to Terms with Faith in a Postmodern Era Peter Enns expresses well ...

Here is a superb overview and explanation of the Christian year, which is the basis of our church's spiritual formation/discipleship min...

Gabe Lyons discerns some fresh, exciting traits of the next generation of Christians in the U.S. and describes them in his book with the abo...

From Scot McKnight on JesusCreed, November 9. The punch line is at the end: One of the reasons I wrote  One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow  ...

Many of us desperately want to change our world. But is an illusion to think we can change anybody else but ourselves. The truth is that w...

On November 7 we experimented with an "open worship" format patterned on 1 Corinthians 14:26 in which each person has the opportun...

It's an interesting discussion on the book Razing Hell at  http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2010/09/29/beyond-the-abyss-2/com...

The hero of this article was the daughter of Libby Gay, a member of ABCW. First Person: Classical sounds call friend to mind

This season between Memorial Day and July 4 lends itself to thoughtful discussion and seeking of what is most pleasing to God in the interfa...

Here is my (not) short list of words of Jesus that convince me that he is worth following. (“Convince” come from two Latin words that mean ...

In October 2001, Paolo Ricca, then leader of the Italian Baptists, presented a wonderful two-day conference on telling people the "evan...

Phyllis Tickle has edited this book that consists of the sayings of Jesus - all 203 of them - from the four gospels and the book of Acts. Wh...

Yesterday on his jesuscreed blog, Scot McKnight raised this question: If you could tell a new follower of Jesus the five most important elem...

I strongly identify with this exhortation by Pastor John Robinson (1575-1625), to the Pilgrim Fathers before they left on the Mayflower in 1...

These thoughts by Brian Larson motivate me in my preaching ministry. They may do the same for those who listen. Before there were Bibles, bo...

Here are some thoughtful questions for conversation from one of the good people in Ann Arbor: http://www.annarbor.com/entertainment/parentin...

...for the movie Up . It is animated, but isn't for kids. The children at the early showing we attended were constantly asking the adult...

I have added a link to Christianity Today . The flagship of evangelical magazines, CT was founded by Billy Graham and provides excellent, th...

I have a post today at jesuscreed: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/06/friday-is-for-friends-joey-spi.html#preview . The topic is...

Isaiah 6:1-8 has long been seen by Protestants as a model for worship. Not that it is complete or unchangeable, but the stages of Isaiah...

See you in a week or two, after surgery and recovery. Mark

I have found a love for the last book in the Bible such as I have never had. The turning point has been Richard Bauckham's The Theology ...

I John 3:2 contains this puzzling statement: [W]e know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. How c...

It has been about ten years since I first read Dallas Willard's claim (see the last three posts below) that asking is the way God has g...

Today we finish the passage from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. He is discussing the well-known verses in the Sermon on the Mo...

Dallas Willard describes what happens as we "back off" from trying to fix or improve others and they begin to open up (see yesterd...

One of the best books I have read on the Christian life is Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God ...

A friend brought to my attention the following You Tube video by a Christian group, Go Fish, taking a stand for the old tradition of saying ...

You can read my short post about the Gospel today at  http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/ . Note that this is a new address for jesuscreed...

Scot McKnight teaches Bible at North Park University in Chicago. His jesuscreed.org blog is a major internet hub for evangelicals and pastor...

I received a forwarded e-mail with a subject line about Barack Obama's "Not Exactly's", claiming to have been penned by Bi...

There is a post today on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed site that I wrote regarding Alan Jamieson's book, Chrysalis . Here is the link:...

That's the title and theme of a book just out written by two 19-year-olds, Alex and Brett Harris. (Yes, they are twins.) The subtitle is...

Thanks to Laurel for this excellent interview with the son of a Hamas leader who has decided to follow Jesus. Mosab Hassan Yousef is refresh...

For years I have been experimenting with different ways of presenting the gospel in a way that is both simple and complete enough to be sati...

I find that complaining begins in my head. Why do I think complaining thoughts? The truth is, it is because of what the apostle Paul calls...

I googled "Why do people complain", and this is by far the most enlightening response I found.People  have had to deal with compla...

A small group of pastors was talking the other day about how many significant and stressful trends and events are in the news now that affec...

At our weekly men's conversation over Saturday breakfast this morning, we talked about our fathers.  We talked about the impact they had...

One of the best things in life is to hear the story of how Christ has turned a person's life around. In this 8-minute video, a creative ...

Edward Hopper was the grandson of an American Baptist church planter and pastor in Nyack, New York. As a young man he spent several years (...