Blog - Page 161 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Whither Brian McLaren?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:11-05:00March 3rd, 2010|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Emergent Church, Missional-Ecumenism, The Future|

The journey of pastor, leader and author Brian McLaren is one that has attracted a lot of attention. He has sold a lot of books and spoken to thousands of people around the world. Over the years traditional conservative evangelicals have often reacted against Brian. This growing mistrust, sometimes for good reason, has only grown over the last five years in particular. Others, who are more liberal (some are anti-evangelical and anti-confessional) have followed each new book by Brian with incredible interest and profound appreciation. Consider the endorsers of Brian’s book, first a list of respected evangelicals and now, generally speaking, a list of fairly liberal Christian leaders and authors. I started reading Brian when his first book came out years ago. On the whole I would describe my view back then as one of appreciation. I encouraged missional thinkers to read him and to wrestle with his ideas, especially what he wrote in his first book: […]

Ancient Christian Doctrine (5): We Believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:11-05:00March 2nd, 2010|Categories: Church Tradition, Missional-Ecumenism, Unity of the Church|

InterVarsity Press (Downers Grove, Illinois) has given the church some of the finest academic resources, and they are often quite accessible to serious (non-technical) readers. Their various dictionaries on the disciplines of biblical theology come to mind, as does the well-established and surprise best-seller, the multi-volume Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. There is an observable hunger for serious Christian scholarship and this hunger portends for better days to come. If we are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37) then such a recovery of scholarship for the people of God is a time for celebration. Several Christian publishers have very intentionally fed this growing hunger for solid, readable academic resources; e.g. Baker Academic and Brazos Press, Zondervan Academic and Eerdmans come to mind. But InterVarsity may lead the way, at least in terms of early church resources.

The most recent series of early […]

Celebrating 61 Years of Life

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00March 1st, 2010|Categories: Personal|

Today I celebrate, on a very modest private scale I assure you, my 61st birthday. It honestly does not seem possible that I have reached this age. I suppose it is impossible to truly imagine oneself being 61 when you are 21 or 31. Somewhere, after age 50, I began to think about the length of my life differently. At 60 (as seen in this photo at the Sox game with my daughter Stacy and son-in-law Jason) I began to think about life in terms of how a team approaches a football game. After 60 we are in the fourth quarter, with the major difference being we have no idea when the buzzer will sound ending our earthly life. (One could also think of being in the ninth inning I guess, but you have no idea when […]

More on the Launch of the New Book

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 28th, 2010|Categories: ACT 3, Missional-Ecumenism, Unity of the Church|

As I mentioned yesterday the new book, Your Church Is Too Small, will be delivered next Friday. If you have ordered a copy it should arrive within two or three weeks as it takes some time for the publisher to ship to the supplier and then for the supplier to get the book out to those who have pre-ordered it.

If you live in Chicago I invite your to attend the book luncheon on Wednesday, March 17, at 11:45 a.m. at the Holiday Inn in Carol Stream. It is best that you register for this event at www.act3online.com but if you simply show up you should be able to join us for lunch. The cost is $20, almost all of which is for the lunch itself. I will make a brief presentation about how and why I wrote the book and […]

A Personal Update on Your Church Is Too Small

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 27th, 2010|Categories: ACT 3, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Unity of the Church|

Readers of this blog are aware that my new book, Your Church Is Too Small, will soon be released. The formal date is the First of April, but copies will actually be delivered to Zondervan on Friday, March 5. I will get my copies the following week. I can’t begin to express how thrilled I am to finally see this book in print.

I have written or edited twelve books but never have I been filled with such hope and excitement about a book and what it represents as this one. Simply put, “The vision God gave me for the last stretch of my life is in this book.” I hope it is not my last book, since there are many things related to this book I would like to explore in greater depth. Two follow-up books are in my mind at this moment. One book, on the relational Trinity, seems to press […]

Sharing Your Opinions Is Risky Business

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 26th, 2010|Categories: Uncategorized|

Sharing your opinions with others is risky business. I have learned this truism far too often for my own good. I like to think that I am not a very opinionated individual but this is a myth I still too often tell myself.

An opinion, says Webster’s New World College Dictionary (1997) is “any belief not based on absolute certainty or positive knowledge but on what seems true, valid or probable to one’s own mind.” Face it, most of us have opinions, some of us have a lot of them. If we are alive we have opinions. These opinions influence almost everything we see and do in life. What seems true to us actually informs us and these opinions guide us. What we fail to do is to put all our opinions to the real test. Are they truly valid? On what basis did we form them? Do we have all the facts at out disposal to really support them?

Assuming our opinions actually do line up with what is true, at […]

The Erosion of Religious Freedom Is Real

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 25th, 2010|Categories: Uncategorized|

George Weigel is one of the very best contemporary Christian non-fiction writers in our time, especially on issues related to faith and culture. Weigel is not only insightful, and a careful scholar as well, but a wonderful writer whose style easily engages you in his prose. His biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope, is my favorite biography of the late pontiff. It is a long book but worth the time and effort to read it. Weigel explains Karol Wojtyla, before and after his election to the papacy, as well as any volume I have read. Weigel has authored a number of other very useful books including:

Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God

God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church

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Why No Comprehensive National Health Care?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 24th, 2010|Categories: America and Americanism, Ethics, Politics|

I have a number of friends from both Canada and Europe who express considerable amazement at how we in the U. S continue to debate the subject of single-payer, comprehensive health care. For them it seems like a slam-dunk argument in favor of such a system. I read and hear that we are just being a selfish nation that doesn't care enough for the poor among us. We have been ruined, some argue, by our crass love of free markets and capitalism. And, I have heard American Christians from the political left argue that Christians who do not support national health care are even more culpable since we should be the very ones who are deeply concerned for our weaker, poorer fellow Americans. Indeed, the Christian left touts this entire issue as one of Christian compassion and love for the weak and marginalized. Who could argue with this point if this is the real case? The problem is that I strongly disagree with both the analysis and the reasons behind it. But it is admittedly not as easy to explain why in simple and […]

The Gift of Dan Jones as an ACT 3 Associate

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 23rd, 2010|Categories: ACT 3|

One of the greatest joys that I experience is teaching students, especially my Wheaton College Graduate students. I have met so many wonderful men and women in the M.A. in Evangelism and Christian Leadership program over the last few years. I have been able to enter into mentoring friendships with at least 10-12 former students over the past five years. One such student is Dan Jones. Dan was in my apologetics class in January, 2009. After a week long intensive class we began to build a friendship by enjoying meals together. We shared many hours talking, praying and just enjoying the love of Christ as friends. Just before Christmas, Dan (with the full support of his lovely bride Judy) offered to work with me as my associate at ACT 3. When I told him that there was no money for the job he was not deterred. He said that he actually believed that he could work for one year. We could then see how the Lord provided for him and how we were able to […]

Gnosticism: The Heresy That Keeps on Troubling the Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:12-05:00February 22nd, 2010|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Spirituality|

We can not be absolutely certain about the origins of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism but it may have been birthed as a pseudo-Christian heresy in the first century by the man named Simon Magus, a Samaritan sorcerer (magus actually means magician) who is named in the Book of Acts. Some church fathers, in a type of prophetic way, referred to him as the progenitor of all heresies. He had a consort named Helen and had about thirty disciples who traveled with him. He attracted significant crowds with special revelations, esoteric insights and various kinds of "signs and wonders." So impressive was his reputation as a miracle worker that the Romans made a statue in his honor which said: "To Simon, the Holy God." Arland Hultgren, in his scholarly book The Earliest Christian Heretics (Fortress Press, 1996) says that many of his fellow countrymen in Samaria regarded him as their deity. Simon even prophesied that he would rise on the third day thus prompting church fathers to see him as the "false messiah" warned about in Matthew's Gospel.

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