Blog - Page 40 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Missional-Ecumenism in Early 20th Century India

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 17th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Love, Missional-Ecumenism|

Bishop Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah (August 17, 1874 – January 1, 1945), simply known as V. S. Azariah, was an Indian Anglican bishop. He was also a very important pioneer of Christian ecumenism in India. Azariah became the first Indian bishop in the churches of the Anglican Communion when he was consecrated in the diocese of Dornakal, December 1912. Interestingly, he was considered by Gandhi to be postcolonial India’s “Enemy Number One” because he followed Jesus first, not the politics and culture of the West.

Like so many young men in his era Azariah was converted to faith in Christ through the work of the YMCA. He became a YMCA evangelist before he was made a bishop in 1912. From 1895-1909 he was the general secretary of the YMCA in south India. He came to believe that indigenization was central to the fruitful ministry of Christianity in his native country. Azariah saw that the very mission of the Church should be an expression of its unity. (This is what I mean by the term missional-ecumenism in my book, […]

Friendship, Mentors and Divine Love

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 13th, 2014|Categories: Friendship, Love, Personal|

Someone recently wrote to me about relationships – comparing the various kinds of human relationships we have in terms of our different kinds of friends; including our peers and mentors/mentees.

The dictionary says that a friend is a person known well to another and generally regarded with liking, affection, and loyalty; an intimate. It may also include an ally in a cause, or an associate. I think most of us have three kinds of friends. We generally have a few people who constitute a small group of our intimate friends who become very, very close to us. This may, on one level, include only three or four people, perhaps a few more. These people share life with us at the deepest level through bonds of affection that are without sexual overtones in any sense of the word. The second kind of friendship is one that I personally enjoy with scores of people, maybe even a hundred or more if I stop and count. These are friends that I regularly communicate with via meals, telephone and the social media. I […]

Visions of Vocation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 12th, 2014|Categories: Apologetics, Books, Culture, Current Affairs, Discipleship, Ethics, Ideology, Kingdom of God, Philosophy, The Future|

Author Steven Garber wrote one of those rare modern books that I have read twice. Some years ago I developed an answer that I cleverly gave to folks who, upon seeing my immense library (before I sold nearly 15,000 books over the last few years), would gasp at my floor-to-ceiling library shelves and ask me, “Have you read all of these?” I calmly answered, “I’ve read some of them twice.” This was true. Hoping I could read them all was only a pipe dream but unless pressed hard I did not admit to that until I gave up reading them all in my late 50s and realized I should break up the Armstrong collection sooner than later.

Steven Garber’s book, The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (IVP), was one of those books that I actually did read twice. It is a truly magnificent book. I recommend it to everyone who reads this blog.

Steven Garber taught for many years on Capitol Hill in the American Studies Program and then became scholar-in-residence for the Council of Christian […]

Bishop Tony Palmer and Pope Francis on Christian Unity

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 10th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Current Affairs, Missional-Ecumenism, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

The recent informal video of Pope Francis, made on a smartphone by the British charismatic Anglican bishop Tony Palmer, has now become a viral phenomenon. The seven-minute greeting by Pope Francis, seen by millions of viewers, called upon all Christians to set aside their differences to pursue a deep “longing” for Christian unity.

I prayed for this January 14 private meeting @ the Vatican in early January when Bishop Palmer asked some friends to privately pray for this one-to-one meeting. I also knew that the first airing of the video would be at the Kenneth Copeland Ministries center in Texas. I privately expressed my concerns about this “context” to Tony but when he explained his friendship with Copeland, and his relationship with Pope Francis, I knew that he was right in what he did and why he did it in this context.

As you will see in the now-edited version of this presentation, made available last week by Bishop Palmer, the pope urges all Christians to put aside their divisions and to pray that the Lord “will unite us.” […]

Blogging and Writing

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 7th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Personal|

I confess that I generally enjoy writing my blogs. I think I would have quit this if I merely wrote blogs out of a sense of duty. I write because I enjoy it. I also write because it seems that these posts are edifying and useful to some readers. At the same time I need to take a break now and then. The time to take a break for me is now.

There are several reasons why I will write fewer blogs, and comment less, in the coming weeks. (I expect, and sincerely hope, to return to a daily blog writing pattern after a few weeks of rest.) Here are some reasons for my time away from daily writing.

1. I am working on my manuscript for a book: Our Love Is Too Small. This demanding work is far more important to me, and to those that I seek to serve, than these daily blogs. It has more permanent importance and demands much more of my mind and body than blogging.

2. I can write something every day but this […]

Thomas Merton on the Catholicity of Ecumenism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 6th, 2014|Categories: Discipleship, Love, Mysticism, Personal, Poverty, Religion, Roman Catholicism, The Church, Unity of the Church|

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a writer and Trappist monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, not too far from Louisville. His writings include such classics as The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Merton is the author of more than seventy books that include poetry, personal journals, collections of letters, social criticism, and writings on peace, justice, and ecumenism.

When I first encountered Merton I had no earthly idea how to understand him or to make sense of his voluminous writing. (It strikes me that I am still working on this project and will never finish it.) Initially, Merton struck me as a liberal Christian because he embraced views on certain political and social views that were not conservative as such. Further more, I had no comprehension of how to make sense of his mysticism. Merton said, “The theology of love must seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the world, and not merely to compromise with sin.” That sums up his overall perspective well.

Merton […]

The Cross of Christ & the Love of God – What Saves Us?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 5th, 2014|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Christ/Christology, Jesus, Liturgy, Love, Orthodoxy, Personal|

I am currently writing a book on love, both God’s love and our love. In writing the first half of my book I have sought to deal with the cross. I do not know how you can talk about God’s love and not go to the cross. Every reader of the New Testament can readily see that the cross is central to the story of God’s love and redemption.

“Christ died for our sins” is central to the earliest confessions and is a bottom line teaching of the New Testament. But how we understand what happened on the cross, in terms of God’s saving us through the death of Christ, is another matter. Several theories of the atonement have been debated and embraced by various Christians over the last ten-plus centuries. (The early church also held a view and in general I do not fully agree with this view either as I shall show in my book.)

I have decided to make my way into this controversy, with fear and trembling in one way, precisely because I believe that […]

Dialogue vs. Dogma?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:44-05:00March 4th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, American Evangelicalism, Apologetics, Church Tradition, Creeds, Culture, Current Affairs, Evangelism, Ideology, Love, Personal, Philosophy, The Future|

The word dialogue is very important to me, and my view of truth, at least in terms of the way Christians live with one another, and with non-Christians, in the modern age. What do I mean by dialogue? Could it be that the very idea behind this word is deeply flawed, as some cultural and religious conservatives maintain?

Back in 1971 I was in the candidate process for the assistant pastoral role in a church near Wheaton, where I had begun graduate theological studies in mission and theology. The senior pastor preached a sermon one Sunday that fatally finished my intent to work with him. The title of his sermon is one I shall never forget: “Dogma or Dialogue?” He made the case, rather poorly I thought, that dialogue was always the enemy of Christian dogma and true belief. I could not tell you why he was wrong, at that time, but I knew that he was. I began a journey to figure out why I thought that he was wrong. I was only a twenty-one year old […]

Can Money Buy Happiness? The Real Answer Might Surprise You

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:45-05:00March 3rd, 2014|Categories: Culture, Current Affairs, Economy/Economics, Money & Stewardship, Personal|

One of the most misquoted verses in all the Bible must be 1 Timothy 6:10, which says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (NRSV).

The text says “the love of money” is the root of “all kinds of evil.” It does not say money is evil in itself.

People say money cannot buy happiness. This is true, at least on one level, but it is a truism and thus it only truly works up to a point. Let me explain.

People’s emotional well-being–what we call happiness–increases along with their income up to about $75,000 (U.S.) according to research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (September 2010). For those making less than $75,000 Angus Deaton, an economist at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University, said “Stuff is so in your face it’s hard to be happy. It interferes with your enjoyment” (quoted by AP, September 2010).

Deaton and Daniel Kahneman […]

God Has Loved Me to the End of My Sinfulness, Pride and Self-Interest

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:14:45-05:00February 28th, 2014|Categories: ACT 3, Love, Missional-Ecumenism, Personal, Renewal, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

Friends who read my posts and emails (you can subscribe to the emails at www.act3network.com to the ACT3 Weekly and receive a free pdf copy of my small book The Unity Factor ) know that I wrote a major book titled Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church (Zondervan, 2010). This book reveals a story, really a personal narrative, of my coming to a crisis point in my life when John 17:21 gripped me at the center of my being. Over a few years, this experience of God’s love for the whole church profoundly changed me. I have been living out this change for 22 years now. It did not come as one single thunderbolt but as a crisis point that led to a long, God-drenched process. That process continues in the mission of ACT3.

Now I am writing my first major book since 2010: Our Love is Too Small. I am about halfway through the draft stage. This book is in two parts: (1) God’s love (John […]