Daily Archives: May 24, 2024

(Church Times) Christopher Landau–Book review: Charismatic Christianity: Introducing its theology through the gifts of the Spirit by Helen Collins

I recently heard about the response of one vicar several years ago, upon learning that another had been appointed to lead a Charismatic-renewal ministry: “Congratulations on joining the lunatic fringe.”

In all honesty, I think such descriptions still endure in some quarters, but, in this piece of scholarly theology, Helen Collins seeks to show that Charismatic thought and practice has an important contribution to make to the whole Church.

She neither shies away from the weird excesses of some Charismatic spirituality nor proposes an academic domestication of the Spirit’s work. (There is, for example, a helpful and careful discussion of demons, with an exhortation to “remain Christ-centred rather than demon-obsessed”.) In seven tightly argued chapters, she portrays Charismatic theology “as a valid and coherent expression of the wider Christian tradition”.

Read it all.
Posted in Books, Theology: Holy Spirit (Pneumatology), Uncategorized

(Monergism) JI Packer–Expository Preaching: Charles Simeon and Ourselves

If we wish to appropriate the wisdom of Charles Simeon as theorist on expository preaching, we must first make clear to ourselves what we mean when we speak of expository preaching. This is necessary because the word expository has often been used in a restricted sense to denote simply a sermon preached from a long text. Thus, Andrew Blackwood wrote: “An expository sermon here means one that grows out of a Bible passage longer than two or three verses . . . an expository sermon means a textual treatment of a fairly long passage.”2 He went on to suggest that young pastors should preach such sermons “perhaps once a month”3 and to give hints on the problems of technique they involve.

Without suggesting that Blackwood’s usage is inadmissible for any purpose, I must discuss it as too narrow for our present purpose—if only because it would exclude all but a handful of Charles Simeon’s sermons (his texts, you see, are far too short!). We shall find it better to define “expository” preaching in terms, not of the length of the text, but of the preacher’s approach to it, and to say something like this: expository preaching is the preaching of the man who knows Holy Scripture to be the living Word of the living God, and who desires only that it should be free to speak its own message to sinful men and women; who therefore preaches from a text, and in preaching labors, as the Puritans would say, to “open” it, or, in Simeon’s phrase, to “bring out of the text what is there”; whose whole aim in preaching is to show his hearers what the text is saying to them about God and about themselves, and to lead them into what Barth called “the strange new world within the Bible” in order that they may be met by him who is the Lord of that world.

The practice of expository preaching thus presupposes the biblical and evangelical account of the relation of the written words of Scripture to the speaking God with whom we have to do. Defining the concept in this way, we may say that every sermon that Simeon preached was an expository sermon; and, surely, we may add that every sermon that we ourselves preach should be an expository sermon. What other sort of sermons, we may ask, is there room for in Christ’s church?

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Posted in Church History, Preaching / Homiletics

(CT) Marshall Allen, Christian Muckraker Who Held the Health Care Industry Accountable

In another investigation, [Marshall] Allen reported that Dignity Health, a large religious health system that described itself as carrying on “the healing ministry of Jesus,” had refused to cover the medical expenses of an employee’s three-month-premature baby. Dignity claimed the woman hadn’t filled out the necessary paperwork and that she bore sole responsibility for a nearly $1 million hospital bill, though she had enrolled her baby with the insurer from the NICU.

After Allen called the company with questions, Dignity reversed its decision and retroactively covered the baby, who survived.

“Some people might think that Christians are supposed to be soft and acquiescent rather than muckrakers who hold the powerful to account,” he wrote in The New York Times. “But what I do as an investigative reporter is consistent with what the Bible teaches.”

Allen argued that the Bible “teaches that people are made in the image of God and that each human life holds incredible value.”

A Christian journalist, he said, should be comforted by God to be a comfort to others. A Christian journalist should rebuke deception and unfair practices. A Christian journalist should get all sides of the story, in line with Proverbs’ call for hearing multiple witnesses. And a Christian journalist should admit and correct mistakes with humility. He also shared this vision of Christian journalism in lectures to journalism students at The King’s College.

“He saw this work as redemptive and Christian in nature,” said Paul Glader, a friend of Allen’s and a former journalism professor at King’s. “He did amazing work investigating the health care bureaucracy and bullies, seeking out answers and truth for the little guy—all of us consumers.”

Read it all.
Posted in Evangelicals, Health & Medicine, Media, Religion & Culture

Greenough White–Jackson Kemper: An Apostle of the Western Church

In the same report a “Catholic feature” of the mission is noted,–classes of adult catechumens, conducted by the brethren; and an intention of having weekly communions, “according to primitive practice,” is recorded. To this end the brothers had sought to secure the services of the good missionary priest, Richard Cadle, and to convert him into the Father Superior of their order,–but the worthy man shied at the novel honor. With funds that Hobart had obtained at the East a beautiful tract of land was bought about Nashotah (signifying “Twin Lakes”), and thither, in August, the mission was moved. The following October, Adams and Breck were advanced to the priesthood, and the latter was made head of the religious house. A few theological students answered to the lay brothers of Vallombrosa; they supported themselves by farm work, etc., according to the primitive method at Gambier. The community rose at five o’clock, had services (lauds or prime) at six and nine in the morning, on Wednesdays and Fridays the litany and on Thursdays Holy Communion at noontide, and services at three and half-past six o’clock in the evening, answering to nones and vespers. Now at length, as Breck wrote home with glee, he began to feel that he was really in a monastery. But within a year from that hopeful start it seemed as if the community would be dissolved. Adams had a severe attack of pneumonia, felt unequal to bearing the business burdens of the house, and returned to the East; Hobart lingered a few months longer, and then followed; and Breck began to think of moving further west.

At this period Kenyon College was in such financial straits that it was in imminent danger of being lost to the church,–but a mighty effort was made, collections were taken for it on a large scale among congregations throughout the eastern dioceses, and it was saved; but the extraordinary exertion resulted in a deficit in the missionary treasury that reduced many a poor minister on the frontier to pinching poverty.

One is startled to hear that in 1843 a medical department was annexed to Kemper College and already boasted of the formidable number of seventy-five students. The attention of the church was called to this Protestant Episcopal University west of the Mississippi, which “promised a rich return for its fostering care,” and seemed destined to “hand down the name of its beloved founder to other ages.” There were but a score of students, however, in the collegiate department, at whose first commencement the bishop presided that summer.

The good example set by his young itinerants in Wisconsin moved him to urge the appointment of two or more missionaries of similar type to operate in Indiana. That diocese now made another attempt to perfect its organization, electing Thomas Atkinson of Virginia as its bishop–but he declined. Its leading presbyter, Roosevelt Johnson, waived a like offer. Missouri diocese had similar aspirations and electoral difficulties, which it solved by throwing the onus upon the general convention, entreating it to choose a bishop. In 1843, Cicero Stephens Hawks accepted a call to the rectorate of Christ Church, St. Louis; and the favor with which he was received determined the choice of the convention. On the 2oth of October, 1844, (the day of Cobbs’ consecration), and in Christ Church, Philadelphia, he was consecrated bishop of Missouri by Philander Chase, now presiding bishop, assisted by Kemper, McCoskry, Polk, and DeLancey.

With this event terminated what is in one way the most interesting period of our hero’s life,–the dawn, or morning of his episcopate, with its wide and long vistas, its freshness and promise. Wonderful indeed was the accomplishment of those nine mystic years, especially when we consider that it was before the days of railroads,–that he had to toil painfully in wagons, on horseback or afoot along wretched roads over boundless tracts that the traveler now crosses smoothly, gliding at the rate of a mile a minute in a palace car.

Read it all.

Posted in Church History

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Jackson Kemper

Lord God, in whose providence Jackson Kemper was chosen first missionary bishop in this land, that by his arduous labor and travel congregations might be established in scattered settlements of the West: Grant that the Church may always be faithful to its mission, and have the vision, courage, and perseverance to make known to all peoples the Good News of Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer, Uncategorized

A Prayer for Pentecost from Daily Prayer

O Holy Ghost, giver of light and life, impart to us thoughts higher than our own thoughts, and prayers better than our own prayers, and powers beyond our own powers, that we may spend and be spent in the ways of love and goodness, after the perfect image of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Posted in Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Bible Readings

And he went on from there, and entered their synagogue. And behold, there was a man with a withered hand. And they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, whole like the other. But the Pharisees went out and took counsel against him, how to destroy him.

–Matthew 12:9-14

Posted in Theology: Scripture