Can You See It?
Posted in Musings on Oct 6th, 2008
Category Archive for 'Musings'
Best English Translation
Posted in Bible Study, Musings on Sep 20th, 2008
Sometimes church members ask me what is the best translation to use. For a short answer I like the Holman Christian Standard Bible for readability and understanding and the English Standard Version for study and accuracy. The King James is good if you like to read your favorite passages in the version you most often [...]
I am astonished. A politician said we should pray that our actions are in fact God’s will. This politician said that we should seek God and try to discover his will regarding a decision to go to war. Can you believe a politician would make such a disturbing claim? Can you imagine the audacity that [...]
Jesus Is a Friend of Mine
Posted in Musings on Sep 5th, 2008
I don’t know if this is a joke, or serious. But it is strangely appealing even to me. I’ve often been critical of today’s Pop Christian music because it denigrates the most important message in the world to the “bubble gum for the brain” music that is pop. This does that too, and yet I [...]
It seems democratic Presidential hopeful Barak Obama may have put his foot in his mouth again with regard to people of faith. According to an article at Baptist Press he miserably failed to properly interpret the Old Testament law and the Sermon on the Mount.
At issue is a 1996 speech in which Obama said that [...]
Is Book and Mortar Seminary an Outdated Mode of Theological Education?
Posted in Musings on Jun 13th, 2008
As a seminary student I spent about a third of my time away from my family on the road. While in Louisville at Southern Seminary, I traveled from Falmouth, KY to Louisville one day a week for my first four semesters and three days a week my last semester there. After we moved to North [...]
Sometimes God Gives You Exactly What You Want
Posted in Entertainment, Musings on Jun 13th, 2008
Case in point …
Found this video by Sara Groves, a Christian artist who took a trip to Rwanda and then wrote this song. It is beautiful. The tragedy that is Rwanda should be remembered. What if the world ignored what was going on in Germany during WWII and let them exterminate all the Jews in Europe? That is [...]
Persecution of American Church
Posted in Musings on Apr 16th, 2008
The persecuted church in many parts of the word is subjected to imprisonment, torture and sometimes death because of their faith. So far that is not really happening in America. But the American church is facing another kind of persecution.
Case in point is a church in Carlinville,IL. The local WalMart built a super WalMart and [...]
Pay Your Taxes?
Posted in Musings on Apr 16th, 2008
I was thinking this morning as I listened to all the talk about taxes yesterday. April 15 is Tax Day in America, or as we call it around the Purcell house, Birthday — my older son was born on that day.
Some people have compared paying taxes to paying the tithe. That is a fair [...]
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This Month
The Digital Pulpit- Visual Outline of the TextHere is where the real fun starts in preparing a message. Up to this point all we’ve really done is decide what passage to rely on for our message. Now we begin the actual study process by creating a visual outline of the text. Our preliminary work gave us a good start. By this point we [...]
- What Will Be the Last Verse In Our Text?Last time we discussed the reason for starting our passage at verse one of chapter 12. Now let’s look at the ending of the passage. How far will we go? Obviously, we will not be going through the end of the book or even the end of the chapter. We could, but there is just [...]
- Update on Delineating the PassageOne of the blogs I read regularly is the Biblical Preaching blog. In their March 3rd post they discuss this concept a little. The posts asks, “Who put them there?” It talks about how the chapter and vers divisions can get in the way sometimes of good text selection or as I call it Delineating [...]
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