One of my favorite preachers was a man named Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the long-time pastor of Westminster Chapel in London.  Last week (1 March) marked the 29th anniversary of his death.  Below is a nice 10-minute  introduction to his life:

Iain Murray, his official biographer and former assistant, has written wonderful biographies:

• D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939
• D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Fight of Faith 1939-1981
• Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace

If you wish to read a collection of his personal correspondence here’s a nice link: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Letters 1919-1981.

If you’d like to hear him preach you may do so online (for free) at Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recording Trust.

Crossway Books continues to publish new volumes by Dr. Lloyd-Jones.  These volumes were edited from transcribed sermons by his daughter, Lady Elizabeth Catherwood. You can find these works here.

Lastly, a few years ago Mark Dever interviewed Lady Elizabeth and her husband, Sir Fred Catherwood, about her father: D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Reflections on His Ministry with His Family.

Jacqui and I had a nice walk on this crisp clear evening – stars above and a star beside me.  I was reminded of one of my favorite poems.  Can you guess the poet?

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Watch it all – pretty creative:

As you may have observered, every Thursday in “Around the Horn” I list a collection of links to the week’s most interesting articles, well, to me anyway.  They range from religon, to the arts, to sports, or simply to something that caught my eye.  Some I liked because I agreed with the writer.  Some I liked because I disagreed and needed to work through why I disagreed.  All made me think.  I find critical thinking to be a fading quality and so I offer these articles to serve as thoughtful grit that just may produce an oyster of an idea.

Where is Katie Spotz?
22 year-old Katie Spotz (Mentor, Ohio native) is trying to become the youngest person to row a boat across the ocean.  Learn more about her cause and track her location at her site.

Years Beyond the Rabbit Hole, Alice Looks Back
From NPR: Charles Dodgson, a shy and awkward mathematics teacher in Oxford, England, spent a good deal of his free time with the Liddells: a family with three sisters who lived just across the street. At the age of 10, Alice, the youngest of the Liddell girls, requested that Professor Dodgson write down one of many the stories he told her. A few years later, he sent over “Alice’s Adventures Underground,” a manuscript dedicated to the real little girl he spent so much time with . . . . Dodgson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published shortly thereafter, under the pen name Lewis Carroll. In the back of the book was a photograph Dodgson had taken of Alice Liddell.

Uncle Jay Explains the News
Not heard of Uncle Jay?  Watch this clip of his weekly explanation of all things news.

McKnight on McLaren
Writing about McLaren’s new book, A New Kind of Christianity, friend and professor Scot McKnight writes: Unfortunately, this book lacks the “generosity” of genuine orthodoxy and, frankly, I find little space in it for orthodoxy itself. Orthodoxy for too many today means little more than the absence of denying what’s in the creeds. But a robust orthodoxy means that orthodoxy itself is the lens through which we see theology. One thing about this book is clear: Orthodoxy is not central.

What’s an Anacoluthon?
From Monday with Mounce: Whatever the historical reason, the biblical writers are human and God in his sovereignty worked through them, and that included not always finishing their sentences.  Statements of the doctrine of Inspiration should not be based on how we think God should have done it, but on what we can see of how he did.

Gore, the Greens and a Pimped-out Panic
From Sp!ked: Former US vice-president and Nobel laureate Al Gore, writing yesterday in the New York Times, is just the latest high-profile climate alarmist to have a bash at damage limitation in the wake of a series of gaffes and revelations that have undermined the credibility of the official view of global warming. In particular, a claim made in 2007’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – that half of humanity will be starved of water in 25 years time – was more than just a typo. It was a huge blunder that reveals much about the scaremongering and belligerent tactics of the environmentalist movement.

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe
From Mark Driscoll at TheResurgence: To answer any significant question about where we come from, why we are here, what is right and wrong, who God is, and where we are going when we die requires doctrine. Subsequently, everyone has doctrine. The only question is whether it is truthful, biblical, and helpful.

Explanation, Implication and Application?
What is the role of the preacher?  What makes good preaching?  One of the best, John MacArthur, offers this response to the critique that he’s short on application: It’s not for me to do that.  Application belongs to the Spirit of God. All I’m interested in is explanation and its implications. And the power comes in the implication and the Spirit of God takes the implications of what I’ve said tonight, all these things I’ve said, I don’t need to say all kinds of little scenarios to you and paint all kinds of little individual circumstances. All I need you to know is this is what the Word of God says and the implications are powerfully brought to bear with authority on your life and I exhort you to respond to those implications, it is the Spirit’s work to drive those implications into direct and personal application.

Steve’s February 2010 Congregational Letter

Encountering God – Ashley Early (video clip)

What is Anglicanism?

A Word About Augustine (video clip)

Around the Horn – 2.04.10

Mark Galli, in the article below, takes on the preacher as entertainer mentality so prevalent in so many churches.  I have to look no further than St. Andrew’s to see the rootedness of this wishfulness.  I was talking to one of our members, one of our long time leaders, recently and she was commenting about how she missed the preaching style of a former staff member.  ”What did you like?” I asked.  ”He made me laugh and his illustrations were so memorable.”  She then proceeded to name a few of the more memorable illustrations.  When I asked what point the illustrations were illustrating she had no answer.  What became memorable, then, was not Jesus – or His Gospel – rather, the preacher.  When I pressed her a bit she candidly commented, “I’d rather have a humorous presentation and remember that I liked going to church that day even if I can’t remember what the preacher spoke about.”  Tragic.

Here’s a clip from Galli’s article.  Make sure you read it all – especially if you are a preacher:

My friend says he’s slowly become aware that the medium has become the message—the sermon has inadvertently become a showcase of the pastor’s life and faith—and this by a pastor who my friend describes as humble and desperate to win people to Christ . . . Phillips Brooks once described preaching as “Truth through personality.” Indeed. But with the flowering of the personal illustration, preaching often morphs into “the truth of my personality” . . . It was just a generation ago that the personal illustration was suspect. Homiletics professors frowned on the preacher bringing himself or his family into the sermon. It was unseemly, not serious exposition. But the 1960s introduced the therapeutic age. Today, the personal illustration is de rigueur. If you don’t use personal illustrations, people wonder whether you are authentic.

Read the rest.

St. Augustine once wrote that each of us is created with a God-shaped vacuum. Only God can fill this void within us. God said through Jeremiah that He wants to fill our emptiness with His spring of living water. That means that He is like that spring of living water: constantly bubbling up, flowing forth, giving life. He alone is able to fill us completely and satisfy us completely as He pours His life into us. But all too often we’re like the people of Israel to whom Jeremiah spoke: We forsake Him – the spring of living water, and we dig our own cisterns – we try to come up with substitutes to fill the emptiness. The tragedy is that like the Israelites, our cisterns, our substitutes are cracked. They can’t provide life and they can’t hold life.

continue reading "March 2010 Congregational Letter – In the Midst of Lent"

Just saw this book at Barnes & Noble and now today I run across a CNN story/interview with the author.  The book?  “Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. In the CNN interview Gottlieb says:

There’s a survey in the book where men and women are asked, “If you got 80 percent of everything you wanted — of your ideal traits in a mate or partner — would you be happy?” The majority of women said, “No, that’s settling,” and the majority of men said, “Eighty percent? I’d be thrilled; that’s a catch.” So the question is: Is getting less than everything we want truly settling?

Read the rest.