A great and godly servant has gone to glory. James Inell Packer knew how to serve his risen Lord through both the spoken and written word, and also through sage advice shared with others. He taught in theological colleges in both Britain and Canada. This British born, Oxford D.Phil. was a church scholar rather than…

I first met Bruce Fields in 1988 when I relocated from Southern CA to Arlington Heights, IL to become Sr. Pastor of the Orchard Evangelical Free Church. Bruce had just moved from teaching and coaching at Trinity College to teaching theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Within a few moments of meeting, we quickly became…

For reformers such as Martin Bucer (1491-1551), a true response to the Word of God involved incorporation into the church, the body of Christ on earth. Soteriology and ecclesiology were inseparable, and the Christian life could not be undertaken without becoming part of into the community of believers. Integration in the body evidenced true faith,…

Despite the upheaval of the Reformation, the need for the people of God to gather regularly was never questioned, even by those seeking the most drastic changes to late medieval piety. Here, the importance of church meetings is attested by Austrian Radical elder Leupold Scharnschlager (d. 1563), who argues that the community should come together…

For the reformers, the first mark of the true church was the faithful preaching of the Word of God. Lutheran pastor and theologian Johannes Brenz (1499-1570) argues in this excerpt from his commentary on Galatians that as a minister of the Lord, a true church leader is distinguished by the ability to speak the truth…

I benefited from reading Cabal and Rasor’s book in a variety of ways. It is written in a clear and accessible style and covers a lot of ground in an admirably concise fashion. Its particular strengths in my view are: 1) its attention to the history of these discussions in the church, 2) its focus…

  “Lord, you know the hopes of the helpless. Surely you will hear their cries and comfort them. You will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed, so mere people can no longer terrify them.” Psalm 10:17–18   Stop Child Witch Accusations (SCWA) was formed in 2012 and is a coalition of predominantly Christian,…

In a previous post I mentioned that I drafted an “Elder Affirmations about Creation & Evolution” to articulate for the leadership of our church a set of convictions that we share in common and that might provide an outline for a teaching position for our church. I received several inquiries about this document and thus…

I came to know John Webster partly because I moved in the wide orbit of Barth studies, where he was an acknowledged master, and partly because I was his successor teaching theology at Wycliffe College. Even after his departure for Oxford John would return to Toronto from time to time to connect with friends, including…

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from C. Christopher Smith’s book, Reading for the Common Good, now available from IVP. Reading is a practice that is formative for communities of God’s people, especially when we learn to read in ways that are not driven merely by a desire for entertainment or for self-improvement. (Certainly,…

“You have to understand how shocked I am to be in this interview.I assured my husband, when we were engaged, that I would never join a church staff.” Stacie was a vibrant, passionate, highly gifted thirty-something. We were pursuing her as our Associate Pastor of Disciple-making. She was currently a doctoral philosophy student, a veteran…

This post continues the thoughts from my previous post on Discussing the Church. It is the second in a series of posts that will consider how the church has thought about its role and membership in history. Throughout the history of the Christian church, there have been several ways in which the church has understood…