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Archives for November 2011

by on 11.27.11

the brandenberger reports on ETS

Kent Brandenburg has a commenter who frequently addresses him as Pastor Brandenberger, so I hope Kent will forgive my liberties with his name.

I commend to you his recent series of blogs reporting on goings on at the ETS. Very interesting. You might not agree with everything Kent says about it (I don’t disagree with much, if any of it), but if you are interested in the issues we usually address in this space, you will find Kent’s reports quite interesting. Here are the links:

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part one

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part two

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part three

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part four

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part five

My Field Trip to the Evangelical Theological Society Meeting part six

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Filed Under: Evangelicalism, Issues
by on 11.22.11

it’s a people business

Saw an interesting political clip on Breitbart the other day. It’s TV host Chris Matthews complaining about Obama. I first ran into Matthews on TV when the Clinton scandals were active. He was quite antagonistic to Clinton, but he is a liberal Democrat politically and a Catholic, so I have big disagreements with him on a lot of issues. Still, he’s a guy I like in spite of these disagreements.

And of course, I was interested in this clip because the headline talks about Matthews going after Obama. I don’t particularly like Obama’s politics either.

But take a look at the video, because I want to make a point about the ministry from something Matthews says about politics.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Counseling, Evangelism, Ministry, Pastoral Theology
by on 11.2.11

is it propaganda?

Wikipedia says that propaganda was not originally a negative or pejorative term.

While the term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples, propaganda in its original sense was neutral, and could refer to uses that were generally benign or innocuous, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging persons to report crimes to the police, among others.

Our church is located in an area of Greater Victoria that was once known as ‘the Western Communities’. Some recalcitrant old-timers (read ‘me’) still sometimes use the old term. The term has some negative connotations – our area used to be considered a little bit of ‘hicksville’, or ‘dogpatch’… not the choicest addresses in town.

All that began to change with rapid property development and population growth in our end of town. That’s when the propaganda machine went into effect.

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Filed Under: Fundamentalism, Issues