I liked this article from Ligonier Ministries. Let me know what you think:

We must remember that there is but one institution in this world that will also exist in the world to come. It is not one’s country; it is not even one’s family. It is the church of God. It is disloyalty to Christ not to revere, serve, and prove loyal to His kingdom, His house, and His body, which is to say, His church.

Read it all.

From Reuters:

Among Catholic-Protestant splits on display during Pope Benedict’s visit to Germany is a disagreement over whether Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer who launched the split in western Christianity, has now been rehabilitated.

Pope Leo X cast Luther out of the Roman Catholic Church in 1521 with a vociferous decree branding him “the slave of a depraved mind” and calling his followers a “pernicious and heretical sect.” But his present-day successor, Benedict, spoke so positively of Luther’s deep faith during a visit to the monk’s old monastery in Erfurt on Friday that Germany’s top Protestant bishop announced Luther had effectively been rehabilitated.

“Luther has experienced a de facto rehabilitation today through this appreciation of his work,” Bishop Nikolaus Schneider, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), announced to journalists on Friday after talks with Benedict. “We heard this very clearly from the mouth of the pope,” he said. “What follows now formally is another question … but that’s not so important for me.”

Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi begged to differ on Saturday. “To say that would be exaggerated,” he told journalists in Freiburg, the last stop on the pope’s four-day tour of his homeland.

Read it all.

How wise of an idea is cohabitation? Is there a track record to examine? These are critical questions to ask because many millions of people are doing it and in dramatically increasing numbers.

Well, the good news is we don’t have to wonder about strong, reliable answers to those questions. An absolute wealth of social science research by leading sociologists and demographers of the family are telling us much about the consequences of living together before marriage. Here are some of the most startling findings:

Read it all.

Postings will return mid-week, next week.

This was sweet (H/T: Caitlyn):

As one who lives life with a particular perspective I find that the greatest challenge I face is the ability to engage people who do not share that perspective in a constructive manner. My particular perspective is a worldview shaped by a particular narrative – the Christian narrative. Increasingly in our culture, the western culture, anyway, the mulitiplicity of individual and group narrative is often a barrier to genuine conversation. Sadly, the consequence is an of our inability to communicate produces caricatures of people and people groups which we then engage rather that the real life individual.

My experience, my own and observed, is that when faced with competing narratives we tend to move between two poles: criticism/condemnation and avoidance.

In the following interchange, now almost two years old but brought to mind by Mariann Edgar Budde’s election as the next bishop of Washington DC. As you’ll see (and hear) she and Kendall Harmon have a good back-and-forth, on a difficult topic. I have found Kendall, repeatedly, to be an exemplar of a non-defensive, attentive listening and an conversationalist. Listen to his affirmations and gentle but clear and unwavering engagement.

Here’s an excerpt:

Harmon: This is exactly the kind of argument I think we need to have, by the way. The difficulty here is the context that becomes the trump card, notice in her remarks, is the modern context. And so the Biblical context in the ancient world gets derated and we somehow suddenly know better how the Holy Spirit works in this modern era.

What’s so crucial to point out is there is such a thing as the history of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit works through the church, especially the church globally and the church historically through time. And the church historically through time that has always understood that this kind of behavior is out of bounds and marriage is the context and what’s the height of the arrogance is that you impose this new understanding on the shoulders of the all the Christians we now understand, all the Christians around the world who haven’t been persuaded by these arguments.

Here’s the rest.

Hope all you fathers out there have a great day!

Here’s a nice article about celebrating the Dad’s in your life (H/T Greg):

I’ve learned a few things about you dads over the past few years, because I’ve gotten many amazing letters from you since my book, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, came out. To honor you this entire month, I want to share some of what you said to me so that the women in your lives can help give you what you really need.

Read the rest.

I’m leaving this afternoon for London. The Alpha International Conference, which happens every other year, is being held this week at Holy Trinity, Brompton. I’ll be speaking as a part of the Sr. Leaders Track.

Then on Sunday I’m off to preach at Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing’s church plant, the Latimer Minster. Frog, heads up the work of planting the Latimer Minster while Amy is the UK Director of RZIM Trust and Curriculum Director for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.

I’d welcome your prayers!

Following is a promo clip on the International Week.

Thanks to Matt Kennedy over at Stand Firm for passing this article by D. A. Carson along.

As is normative with Carson’s writing, I find his clarity of thought and expression helpful. Carson offers here a valuable explanation and correction of an often misunderstood and misapplied text.

Here’s a snip:

Several years ago I wrote a fairly restrained critique of the emerging church movement as it then existed, before it morphed into its present diverse configurations.1 That little book earned me some of the angriest, bitterness-laced emails I have ever received—to say nothing, of course, of the blog posts. There were other responses, of course—some approving and grateful, some thoughtful and wanting to dialogue. But the ones that displayed the greatest intensity were those whose indignation was white hot because I had not first approached privately those whose positions I had criticized in the book. What a hypocrite I was—criticizing my brothers on ostensible biblical grounds when I myself was not following the Bible’s mandate to observe a certain procedure nicely laid out in Matt 18:15–17.

Doubtless this sort of charge is becoming more common. It is regularly linked to the “Gotcha!” mentality that many bloggers and their respondents seem to foster. Person A writes a book criticizing some element or other of historic Christian confessionalism. A few bloggers respond with more heat than light. Person B writes a blog with some substance, responding to Person A. The blogosphere lights up with attacks on Person B, many of them asking Person B rather accusingly, “Did you communicate with Person A in private first? If not, aren’t you guilty of violating what Jesus taught us in Matthew 18?” This pattern of counter-attack, with minor variations, is flourishing.

To which at least three things must be said:

Read the rest.