Blog - Page 103 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Farewell: A Spy Movie Worth Seeing

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 17th, 2011|Categories: Film|

I discovered the film Farewell (2009) this past week. I checked it out of the public library’s new movie section and took it home to enjoy an evening with what struck me as a potentially good spy movie. It blew me away. It proved to be one terrific thriller and it is based on a fantastically true story. (There are a few small errors in the film that are out of place because of context, such as music and the reference to artists of this music and their actual time in history.) But the story itself is based upon one of the greatest spy plots of all time! It is entirely factual. Believe me and do yourself a favor and watch Farewell. Roger Ebert is right in giving Farewell four-stars.

In 1981, at the height of the Cold War, an ordinary French engineer based in Moscow met with KGB agent Colonel Grigoriev (real name – Vladimir Vetrov). Grigoriev had become disenchanted with what […]

We Must “Put Butts in the Seats”

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 16th, 2011|Categories: Evangelism, Missional Church|

My son, an advocate and practitioner of missional-ecumenism, had a conversation with a staff member of a large church recently. As he appealed to this person to see the priority of reaching into the public schools to make disciples of Jesus he met resistance. This church, like so many other large churches, invests a lot of money and effort in tutoring and mentoring in the school system but without bringing the good news to those that they tutor and teach. Somehow they seem to separate their good works shown through tutoring from the actual sharing of the good news in their words and actions. This should not be an either/or choice but a both/and response. The fact is that Christians and churches can do both in public schools, as I’ve said here before. Matt’s Crossroads Kids Clubs mission demonstrates this clearly.

As Matt spoke to this person they said to him, “With our very large facility and campus our goal has to be to put butts in all our seats.” That says it very well. The building was built because of the mission but […]

Conversations with Theologians

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 15th, 2011|Categories: Biblical Theology, The Trinity, Theology|

More than twenty years ago an evangelical professor of theology at Hillsdale College, Dr. Michael Bauman (photo), decided to interview some of Europe’s leading theologians. He selected Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox and Catholic thinkers. He sought out eleven people because he thought they had in them the unmistakable marks of having lived a truly theological existence. The theologians included Hendrikus Berkhof, Alister McGrath, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Bishop Kallistos Ware, Sister Benedicta Ward, Thomas Torrance, Gareth Moore, John Macquarrie, Bishop Graham Leonard and Dorothee Sölle.

This excellent small book, now available only from out-of-print sources, was titled Roundtable: Conversations with European Theologians. As I was recently going through my library to purge several thousand books I re-discovered this little book of only 142-pages. I found it so immensely interesting that I decided not to part with it quite yet.

Michael Bauman suggests that evangelicals are often extremely insular when it comes to doing theology. We are far more likely to read authors that we already know and agree […]

Paul: Converted or Called?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:16-05:00September 14th, 2011|Categories: Biblical Theology|

Scholars debate the story of Paul’s conversion, or call, and some even question the three accounts in the Book of Acts and how they sync with the personal references in the epistles. The simple fact is clear to all – Paul, or Saul as he was initially known, was a persecutor of the church and a rigorously faithful Jew who rejected the idea that Jesus was Israel’s messiah. In Acts 9:1-31 we have an account by Luke of Paul's conversion story and in 22:6-21 and 26: 12-20 we have speeches of Paul about how he came to faith in Jesus as messiah. The final account speaks of a conversion type of experience. Is this the primary way we should think of Paul’s account of his great change?

This is what we know: Saul was a ferocious antagonist of the early Jesus followers in Jerusalem. He obtained authority to travel to Damascus to arrest the followers of Jesus. While on the road to Damascus he experienced a blinding light […]

Radical Forgiveness at the Heart of the Gospel

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 13th, 2011|Categories: Forgiveness, Gospel/Good News|

At the heart of the gospel is radical forgiveness. God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness removes the wall that separates us from God and one another. In the Roman Empire nothing could be further removed from religion and everyday life than forgiveness.

I recently watched several historical series on Rome and the Empire. This viewing was connected to my interest in all things Roman after personally seeing some of the more impressive ruins of the ancient Empire in March. I am struck by the absence of forgiveness in Roman practice and Roman religion. The teaching of Jesus and Paul challenged the very heart of the Empire regarding what was most basic to faith and life: forgiveness.

Modern Christian scholar Miroslav Volf has written: "Forgiveness places us on a boundary between enmity and friendship, between exclusion and embrace. It tears down the wall of hostility that wrongdoing erects, but it doesn't take us into the territory of friendship. Often, that's all we can muster the strength to do, […]

All Good Things

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 12th, 2011|Categories: Film|

The movie All Good Things is a spell-binding love story wrapped in a true crime riddle that keeps you on the edge of your seat for 101 minutes. It is actually bio-fiction based upon one of the most notorious missing person’s case in New York state history. Add on an unsolved murder in Texas and other painful sequels involving bizarre behavior and you have the story of real estate heir Robert Durst.

All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling (Robert Durst) and Kirsten Dunst, as the now missing and presumed dead Kathie McCormack (Durst’s young and bright wife), is a real spellbinder. Rotten Tomatoes, which I generally find extremely helpful, says in its lead review of the movie: “It's well-acted, and the true story that inspired it offers plenty of drama — which is why it's so frustrating that All Good Things is so clichéd and frustratingly ambiguous.” I did find it ambiguous but the nature of the crime, and the fact that the lead […]

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 11th, 2011|Categories: Film, Politics|

How does an attorney general of the state of New York become the governor by a vote of 69% in his favor, go to Albany to clean up the state’s mess, and end up being forced to resign because of a high-class prostitution sting run by the federal government? This is, for those who remember, exactly what happened to former-governor Eliot Spitzer, who in 2006 was a strongly favored person of interest in the Democratic party in discussions about the next candidate for President of the United States. Spitzer rose like a rocket and came down almost as fast.

I followed the Spitzer story when it broke like many of you probably did as well. But I had never investigated the sordid tale with any degree of objective interest. Then I saw the incredibly well-done documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is a documentary directed by Alex Gibney, an award winning documentary producer. It is, of […]

Lessons on Life from a Hall of Fame Pitcher

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 10th, 2011|Categories: Baseball, Discipleship, Leadership|

Many of you already know I am a huge baseball fan. In particular, I am a life-long Braves fan. I loved them when they were in Milwaukee and when they moved to Atlanta in 1966 I was a 17 year-old kid who found ways to drive four hours to Atlanta to see them play several times a summer. I have followed them over all these years and seen them play in at least nine different cities as the visiting team. I watch some of their games and listen to them on my MLB App now and then.

A few days ago I listened to one of those rare moments when a baseball analyst talked about pitching. The announcer asked him how a young guy could learn to be a big league pitcher. The commentator was Don Sutton, a Hall of Fame hurler who won over 300 games. Sutton is a regular on Braves radio and an astute student of the game. His subject was what about […]

The Amazing Story of Congressman Bobby Rush

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 9th, 2011|Categories: Civil Rights, Gospel/Good News, Kingdom of God, Politics, Race and Racism|

U. S. Congressman Bobby Lee Rush was born November 23, 1946 in Albany, Georgia, but grew up on Chicago’s North Side, where his mom was a Republican precinct captain. Today he is the U.S. Representative for Illinois' 1st congressional district. Rush worked as a medical clinic director during the early 1970s, and as an insurance agent in the late 70s and early 80s. In 1983 he was elected a Chicago City Alderman, and the following year became a second ward committeeman in Chicago. He began serving his congressional constituency in January, 1993, and is a member of the Democratic Party, the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. His district is located principally on the South Side of Chicago and is a minority-majority district that has the highest percentage of African Americans (65%) of any congressional district in the nation. Bobby Rush has the distinction of being the only person, at least to date, to ever defeat President Barack Obama in an election for office. Obama challenged […]

Mission Must Be Contextual

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:17-05:00September 8th, 2011|Categories: ACT 3, Missional Church|

Each Monday morning ACT 3 publishes an online article of 1,000 to 1,600 words (usually, but not always, written by me). We call this the ACT 3 Weekly. This article is also turned into a podcast.

I am amazed at how many regular readers of my blogs do not receive these free weekly articles. While the blogs offer my shorter thoughts on a variety of issues and themes related to the church, mission and ecumenism (along with some personal stuff that I like to share with friends), these ACT 3 Weekly articles are my most serious writing. Here I generally develop a subject in more depth and write things that may, and in some cases will, be turned into published books.

I recently concluded a series of sixteen on “The Church and Her Modern Mission.” I consider this material to be at the very core of my call and vision. Here is a sample of what I wrote in the August 15 issue title: “Mission in the […]