Blog - Page 171 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Greatest Rivalries in College Football

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:36-05:00November 27th, 2009|Categories: College Football|

Readers of my blog know I am a huge Alabama football fan. By now you can guess what I will be doing this afternoon since Alabama plays its biggest rival, Auburn, on national television. Whether you are a football fan or not the Southeastern Conference (SEC) rivalries are notorious for their show and passion. And good jokes are abundant in the SEC.

Earlier this year a special edition of Sports Illustrated featured several SEC football teams on its cover and then marketed these special editions to the fans of a particular school and region. I made sure that my brother got me the special Alabama issue and I have enjoyed it immensely.

In a feature on SEC rivalries the writer says: “SEC rivalries divide families, strain marriages, test lifelong friendships and inspire bloodless insults—many of which involve illumination.” He goes on to provide a series of light-bulb jokes about SEC schools. Here they are:

How many […]

Happy Thanksgiving 2009

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:36-05:00November 26th, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

Thanksgiving Day clearly has its roots in the idea of a fall harvest festival. It was traditionally, and still is, a time to give thanks for both the harvest and for life in general. In the United States it still remains the most unencumbered of all our special holidays. Little commercialization has tainted it and most of us look forward to it, unless we have painful memories of family or loss that we associate with the day. The day had religious association in American history but much of this has now been lost to secular forces of change. Still in all it retains a charm and a simplicity that most Christians can and do appreciate.

Most of us associate this day with the fall celebration of thanksgiving at Plymouth in 1621. The connection of this event with our modern celebration is as much myth as fact but the link remains in most of our minds.

Alexander Hamilton proclaimed […]

Praying for the Acts of God to Continue in Our Time

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 25th, 2009|Categories: Evangelism|

The Book of Acts is very often misunderstood, like so much of the Bible. It is a unique book. It is actually a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the narrative of the early church, from the ascension of Jesus to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the early accounts of the spread of the gospel "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). It ends with Paul's imprisonment in Rome. There is a marked parallelism between Luke's Gospel and Acts.

Christians sometimes debate how to title the book. It is rightly called "The Acts of the Apostles" though it is clearly a record of how the Holy Spirit worked through these first followers of Jesus who were the foundation of the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit is poured out in the second chapter, reversing the movement of the ascension. He becomes the major player in the drama called the church providing energy, courage and power for the mission of Jesus.

[…]

Further Ecumenical-Missional Insight from My Friend Dr. Joe Schafer

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 24th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

Yesterday, I told you about my very good friend Dr. Joe Schafer, a frequent commenter on this blog spot. I also told you a bit about his ministry with University Bible Fellowship (UBF) at Penn State University. Joe continues to encourage me as he responds to me as a friend, and to the kingdom vision of ACT 3. He is working hard to create a missional-ecumenical kingdom focused context for mission and unity in State College. I hope to somehow help in this process at the right time. For now I pray for Joe specifically, and in general for the body of Christ in this great university town.

One of Joe’s recent efforts has been to create a Web presence to foster this missional-ecumenism. I will tell you more about this in a moment but here is the remainder of Joe’s reflections upon our time this summer in a UBF conference at James Madison University:

As you have pointed […]

Dr. Joe Schafer: A Friend Who Seeks to Model the Ecumenical-Missional Vision

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 23rd, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

Long-time readers of my blog know of my deep friendship with leaders and members of University Bible Fellowship. In July of this year I spoke to a regional UBF conference at James Madison University in Virginia. My host, and dear friend, was Dr. Joe Schafer, the leader of the UBF ministry at Penn State University where he is a professor (see photo with me at left). Joe has been reading, and commenting, on my blogs for a long time so regular readers will recognize his name. When Joe invited me to speak on worship at this gathering I jumped at the opportunity because of our friendship (one of my highest values is friendship) and because of the warm reception I have received from UBF folks in Chicago. After this event in July I asked Joe to write to my board and tell them about the time we shared. With his permission I now share some of that letter with you my blog friends. There is so much here […]

What's With the Mini-Dachshunds?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 22nd, 2009|Categories: Personal|

I am frequently asked, "What's with the miniature dachshunds in your personal photos?" The short answer is that the adorable pooch (on right in photo above) is our eight and half year-old dog Neo. (She was named Neo since she was "new" and we wanted an easy, cute name. I tell friends that she is also named Neo because she reminds me of "neo-ortho-doxy.") She is our fourth mini-dachshund in nearly 39 years of marriage. The doxie on the left is Latte, our daughter's 18 month old mini-dachshund. They have become friends after a period of adjustment for our much older Neo, who now seems to be a bit more lively with "the little pest" around quite often. Latte is a sweet dog too but so different and she sometimes drives Neo to moderate distraction.

Anita was the real dog-lover when we first met. She had German Shepherds as a child. When I married her she had a special pal named Duchess. […]

One Day You'll Understand

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 21st, 2009|Categories: Film|

The acclaimed Israeli film maker Amos Gitai gives us a truly haunting and sympathetic portrayal of the Holocaust from a perspective that I do not think I have seen presented so well on film. The movie is a moving and powerful meditation on the power of memory, identity and personal reconciliation. How do you live with horrible memories? How do you forgive yourself when you wonder all your life if you did everything that you could to save the lives of others?

The film centers around the historical context of the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie. Victor (Hippolyte Girardot) is taken with the trial's importance and begins to review old family documents and discovers a distressing "Aryan declaration" written by his late father. This causes Victor to dig deeper and deeper into the past. His mother, Rivka (legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau), tries to keep a deep silence […]

Is It a Real Translation or Just Radical Ideology?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 20th, 2009|Categories: American Evangelicalism|

Most readers, at least those over thirty, have heard of Phyllis Schlafly. Mrs. Schlafly has been widely known in the culture wars for over fifty years. She is a strident, oft published, conservative activist. She became well known in the 1964 ill-fated Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. She became best known for her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Many believe she was the leading voice in helping to defeat the amendment when 30 of the needed 38 states had already voted to accept it. Personally, I have always found it quite ironic that when the U. S helped Japan write its constitution, following their defeat in World War II, we made sure they adopted an ERA. We wanted the idea of "equal rights" under the law built into their political DNA.

Until recently I did not know much about Mrs. Schlafly’s six children. I certainly knew nothing about her best-known son, Andy Schlafly. Andy is a staunch […]

John R. Mott: Why Christians Must Rise Above Separatism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:37-05:00November 19th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

My good friend Lon Allison, director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, edited a small book titled: John R. Mott: That the World May Believe. This 95-page gem is worth the time of every Christian I know. It sells for only $3.95 and I urge readers to get a copy from EMIS (Books & Resources Tab) through the Billy Graham Center. Read it several times. It even makes for great devotional, daily reading. If you want to fire your own heart for mission and Christian unity it is a marvelous resource.

Allison introduces Mott’s life and then breaks his main contributions down into four parts: Evangelism, Student Mobilization, Cooperation and Spiritual Formation. He provides a very brief introduction to each of these four parts and then gives the reader a number of quotations from Mott’s various out-of-print books. There are gems and treasures here for those who embrace mission and unity, or what I call missional-ecumenism.

[…]

Why John R. Mott is My Role Model for Missional-Ecumenism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:38-05:00November 18th, 2009|Categories: Unity of the Church|

Yesterday I referred to the life and witness of John R. Mott (1865–1955). Mott personifies the vision and passion of my life. He is, as I indicated, my most important role model for what I call missional-ecumenism in my forthcoming book, Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church (Zondervan, April).

Oliver Tomkins says a plausible legend exists that Mott laid out a railway line as a boy that formed a vast continental railway system. This was, of course, long before such existed. I can identify. I recall sneaking into the attic of my boyhood home and playing with maps and globes and photos of the world and reaming about how to reach the multitudes. (I still regret that I could not have been a foreign missionary!)

While a student at Cornell University John R. Mott moved from agnosticism to vibrant living faith in Christ. Shortly after his conversion he signed the Student Volunteer Declaration, a commitment to world missions. I too made a commitment at age […]