Blog - Page 147 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Welcoming the Stranger : A Church Leaders’ Conversation on Immigration

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:34-05:00July 25th, 2010|Categories: Immigration|

One of the most complicated issues the church faces today is immigration. Is it legal for your church to minister to immigrants without legal status? And, what is the biblical response to the immigration debate? This thorny issue will be the subject of a wonderful event only three minutes from my home on August 12. This event will feature a panel of local pastors, lunch with immigrant families, and teaching by two wonderful leaders. It begins at 9:00 a.m. and ends at 3:30 p.m. You are invited to attend and get involved. I hope some of you who live in this area will join me for the day.

The two plenary speakers for this event are Dr. Daniel Carroll (photo left), the distinguished professor of Old Testament at Denver Seminary and […]

Grandchildren Say the Cutest Things

By John Armstrong|2010-07-24T04:00:00-05:00July 24th, 2010|Categories: Humor|

Eight-year-old Abbie spent the night at our house all alone recently. When I (Anita) went in to check on her after she went to bed, I saw her leafing through John’s latest book, Your Church Is Too Small. (John dedicated the book to her.) I asked her, “Are you reading Grandpa’s book?” She replied, “No, I’m just reading the Dedication!”

Inception: Freud on the Big Screen

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:34-05:00July 23rd, 2010|Categories: Film|

The popular film Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is a complex and engaging pop-culture romp through Freudian dream theory and the metaphysical view of life and even life after death. The story line is not perfect but the entertainment value is very high, at least as far as summer films go. Newsweek correctly said:

Leonardo DiCaprio and friends are ninjas of the subconscious, dashing through the landscape of other people’s dreams, in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. This endlessly fascinating swirl of a film could have come only from Nolan, who blends the cerebral twistiness of Memento (his thriller that moves backward in time) with the spectacular action of his Batman megahit, The Dark Knight.

That last sentence, and the reference to The Dark Knight (a favorite of mine), made me want to see Inception on opening day, something I rarely do. I enjoyed a rest from research and writing and was enmeshed […]

Dead Man Walking: The Quest for the Impossible Life

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 22nd, 2010|Categories: Death, Spirituality|

Today’s post is a guest blog by my good friend Dr. Monte E. Wilson, the President of African American Self-Help Foundation. Monte resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything. –Carlos Castaneda

One of the strongest of human instincts is self-preservation: maybe the strongest. We will do most anything to save our lives. On one hand, this is a healthy impulse for it keeps us from playing Russian roulette with .45 caliber handguns, drinking poison or telling our boss what we really think of him. On the other hand, this instinct can go from preserving our life to defending our ego.

The ego prefers remaining in its intellectual-psychological comfort […]

Did Our Missionaries Lose Their Chariots of Fire?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 21st, 2010|Categories: Evangelism, Missional Church|

Brad A. Greenberg, author of the God Blog, contributed a recent article to the Wall Street Journal in which he wondered aloud if the Edinburgh 2010 meeting, which I devoted six posts to last week, offered “a modern master plan [that] was less ambitious [than the 1910 version].” The 2010 version of Edinburgh was a call to global missions and “to witness and evangelism in such a way that we are a living demonstration of the love, righteousness and justice that God intends for the whole world.” Greenberg see this as a dramatic shift from 1910. In 1910 those who came to Edinburgh thought of taking over the world by preaching the gospel but in 2010 they “wondered if they should even try” (quoting the words of C. Douglas McConnell, dean of Fuller Seminary’s School of Intercultural Studies).

Greenberg makes a serious point but one […]

Baseball's Second Half: A Wild Ride Ahead

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 20th, 2010|Categories: Baseball|

I suppose you have to be a real fan to appreciate this year’s baseball season but it has to rank as one of the most interesting first-half seasons in a long time. At the All-Star break, which is actually a little more than half a season in terms of the games played, the leaders in the National League (NL) were not the favorites coming into the season. And in the American League (AL) two of the leaders were not the favorites. And one of the more amazing things about this season has been that pitching is back and I mean really good pitching. Two perfect games and one no-hitter, plus another perfect game lost to a blown call by a very good umpire who just messed up. As a lifelong fan I love it. Great defense and good pitching wins ball games and the real drama of the game is back without the taint of drugs and drug-juiced home run hitters. “Chicks may dig the long ball,” as the corny ESPN ad put it, but real fans dig great pitching!

In the NL the San Diego […]

A Championship Ring: The Symbol of Success

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 20th, 2010|Categories: Baseball, Humor|

I love sports humor. I am not a Chicago Cubs fan so I particularly love Chicago Cubs humor about their futility. A friend recently sent me these photos, which tell enough in pictures to say it all well.

Here is the 2008 World Series ring won by the Philadelphia Phillies.

Here is the 2009 hockey ring won by the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team.

Here is the Super Bowl winning ring of the Pittsburgh Steelers won two seasons ago. One can get the feeling that diamonds are a players best friend when it comes to championship rings.

And my favorite baseball ring is the one shown below, won by the really good team in Chicago, the Chicago White Sox. This was their 2005 World […]

What Is Missional-Ecumenism?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 19th, 2010|Categories: ACT 3, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Unity of the Church|

No single idea is more important to my vision of the church and to its future than what is meant by the hyphenated word: missional-ecumenism. I am not sure how I came up with this term but in working with the ideas of missional church, and with the development in the early twentieth century of the ecumenical movement and its concerns for the unity of the Christian church, I put the two words together to describe what I saw going on in John 17:20-23.

I mention in the book that I had never previously seen the two words put together in this form but since the book was published in April I have discovered some online places where the term seems to predate my use. I never claimed originality to this word choice so this is fine with me. What I did claim is that these […]

Loving Your Neighbors or Dividing the Church: The Immigration Issue in a Missional-Ecumenical Context

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 18th, 2010|Categories: Immigration, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church, Unity of the Church|

I have written a good deal about the present immigration debate. I will continue to write about it because it resonates so deeply with faith and Christian mission. I would be willing to argue that no issue, at least one that presently concerns so many American Christians, has more direct bearing on missional-ecumenism than this one. I further believe that the polarization we know in the church regarding this issue is real and it is deeply felt. Some of you have been directly hurt by illegal immigrants in your own personal lives. I respect these painful realities but I also believe that unless we get beyond the political debate, and the anger and deep hurt, we will never get to the question of what it means to “love our neighbors” regardless of whether those neighbors are here legally or illegally.

Pastor David Moorhead serves as the pastor of a new church plant (CRC […]

Hate Speech: Could One of Our Most Basic Rights Be Curtailed Because of the Homosexual Debate?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:35-05:00July 17th, 2010|Categories: Free Speech, Homosexuality|

I confess that the whole debate about hate speech troubles me a great deal. In no way do I want to promote angry, bitter or vindictive speech. I think some forms of speech are dangerous in some, narrowly defined, contexts. But the definition of hate speech is itself a very slippery slope at best. Celebrated cases in Canada have already brought down government opposition against Christians who oppose homosexual practice. Now we have a powerful case of the same problem developing in Illinois, my own state.

The University of Illinois recently fired an adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism after a single student accused the instructor of engaging in hate speech. What did the faculty member actually do to bring his firing? He told a class that he agreed with the official Catholic Church position that homosexual sex is immoral. The professor, Ken Howell, taught two courses: Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought. Howell says […]