Postcards from Palookaville

Todd’s post of last week points towards an important aspect of the YRR movement which explains the ubiquitous multitasking of key figures: the highly limited gene pool of its self-perpetuating leadership. For a movement beset by scandals among some of its key players over the last few years,...

This autumn is proving a vintage season for books on ministry. Jason Helopoulos’ book arrived a few weeks ago, and Kent Hughes’ massive tome is about to be published. Plus the redoubtable Jim Garretson has another gem on a Princetonian due for publication in October. If it is anything...

“It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls.” Thus did the Scottish theologian, Peter Taylor Forysth, begin his Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale in 1907. The book that emerged from those lectures,...

Anyone who has a child at a college or university will know the huge pressure that is put on students these days to conform to the sexual mores of the age. The Love and Fidelity Network is an organization desgined to promote sane views of sex on campuses, with an appropriately thoughtful philosophy...

Yesterday I was given a copy of Jason Helopoulos's new book, The New Pastor's Handbook: Help and Encouragement for the First Years of Ministry . It looks excellent, with short chapters on a whole collection of important themes, from the nature of a call to the difference between lectures...

Rod Dreher has a typically pungent piece on the matters that have apparently caused much hilarity and Scotch drinking in Moscow, Idaho. I wonder what Rod's particular problem is? Is he an idiot incapable of reading English? A buffoon who doesn't understand the brilliance of self-published...

Over at his blog, Douglas Wilson has an interesting post on why Christian women are prettier . I was particularly struck by this paragraph: "Unbelieving women either compete for the attention of men through outlandish messages that communicate some variation of “easy lay,” or in...

Can Christians vote for Carly Fiorina for President? If so, aren't the questions of whether women should lift weights in the gym or how they should give traffic directions to men a bit of a non-issue? Or am I missing something here? I think we should be told...

The return of Tullian Tchividjian to a ministry role is scarcely surprising, though the speed would no doubt make even Jimmy Swaggart green with envy. It is the logical outcome of the culture of celebrity which has been consciously cultivated most disappointingly by some in reformed evangelical...

The return of Tullian Tchividjian to a ministry role is scarcely surprising, though the speed would no doubt make even Jimmy Swaggart green with envy. It is the logical outcome of the culture of celebrity which has been consciously cultivated most disappointingly by some in reformed evangelical...