Center For Baptist Renewal: Recent Episodes
Matthew Emerson, Luke Stamps, Brandon Smith, Winston Hottman
The Center for Baptist Renewal seeks to equip Baptists with the resources of the Christian tradition so they might incorporate these beliefs and practices into the life of the local church.
EVERETT BERRY: I want to offer three reflections on ideas that need attention if we are to move forward in collaborative efforts between biblical scholars and theologians.
The Bible encourages us to employ every sense we have in the worship and adoration of the God who breathed into our nostrils life and the sweetness of grace.
To know God, we must learn—and to learn, we must have a grasp of language, including speech, syllables, and grammar.
JOHN R. GILHOOLY: The chief organizing idea of Thomas's question 13 is an epistemological doctrine that Aquinas has from Boethius (and Aristotle): everything is known according to the power of the knower.
Toplady’s sentiments were no impediment to fellowship for two stalwart Baptists like Ryland and Gifford.
Backus’ approach to civil and religious matters during the American Revolution provides insights into how complex and difficult these days were for the Baptist movement.
STAFF: At the end of April, we held our second in-person event on the campus of Oklahoma Baptist University.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: Baptists can and should affirm every line in the Nicene Creed, including the baptism clause, without any reservation.
We wholeheartedly support this proposed amendment and pray that Southern Baptists will eagerly and joyfully adopt this motion through the appropriate channels, beginning at this year’s annual convention.
This year and next, we are going to read The Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity by the eighteenth-century Baptist divine, John Gill.
CBR STAFF: The Trinity in the Canon demonstrates that trinitarian theology derives directly from Scripture and should produce both right doctrine and right living.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: Despite its diversity, the consistent accent in Baptist political theology has been placed upon religious liberty.
BRANDON D. SMITH: After a fight like the Trinity debate, there becomes a danger of creating a Cage Stage Trinitarianism movement.
NEWS: This renaming of CBR and partnership with OBU also represents a shift in our ministry.
CODY GLEN BARNHART: Early Christianity functioned in a similar way to a lot of the philosophies surrounding it.
WINSTON HOTTMAN: Pastoral Care is Gregory’s most important contribution to pastoral theology and comes down to us as a definitive classic.
In this episode, CBR Directors Brandon Smith and Winston Hottman discuss Athanasius’s The Life of Antony and Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses and Life of Saint Macrina.. This episode accompanies our 2023 Christian Spirituality Classics Reading Challenge.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Catholicity as contribution—how a particular denomination or tradition adds its voice of the church catholic’s choir.
In this episode, Luke Stamps is joined by special guest Timothy George to discuss the contribution and legacy of Celtic Spirituality. This episode accompanies our 2023 Christian Spirituality Classics Reading Challenge.
In 2023, we turn our attention to the topic of Christian spirituality for the CBR Reading Challenge.
CBR STAFF: About a month ago, we gathered for our first ever Center for Baptist Renewal event at Oklahoma Baptist University. Here are a few reflections.
WILLIAM JACKSON: Antiochenes did not believe God would inject meaning beyond the capabilities of a faithful, illumined, and curious interpreter.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Five reasons to affirm Jesus’s impeccability: that he was unable and never even desired to sin.
BRANDON D. SMITH: A positive articulation of “fromness” with respect to Trinitarian theology.
In this episode, Winston Hottman and Luke Stamps are joined by special guest Nathan Finn to discuss Andrew Fuller and his work Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785). This episode is the eighth of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
Complete this short survey for a chance to win a copy of Jamieson and Wittman’s Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis.
In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps are joined by special guest Matthew Barrett to discuss John Gill and his work The Doctrine of the Trinity Stated and Defended (1731). This episode is the sixth of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Thomas Aquinas helps us answer the question, is it fitting for God to become a creature?
In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps are joined by special guest Jesse Owens to discuss Thomas Monck and his work A Cure for the Cankering Error of the New Eutychians (1673). This episode is the fifth of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
In this episode, Matt Emerson is Joined by special guest Jonathan Arnold to discuss Benjamin Keach and his work Gold Refined (1689). This episode is the fourth of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
CBR Staff: We have created several brief explainers over the years, so we created a brief one-stop shop here for some of these big questions:
BRANDON D. SMITH: The doctrine of inseparable operations is one tool that helps us affirm the unity and distinction of the triune God that is present in the biblical text.
In this episode, Luke Stamps is joined by special guest Sam Renihan to discuss Nehemiah Coxe and the contribution of his work A Discourse of the Covenants (1681) to Baptist theology. This episode is the third of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
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In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps discuss Roger Williams and his work The Bloody Tenent of Persecution (1644). This episode is the second of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
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In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps discuss Baptist Confessions of Faith, a collection of the most important Baptist (and Anabaptist) confessions of faith in history. This episode is the first of the CBR Baptist Classics Reading Challenge.
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NOAH SENTHIL: The Son is not eternally subject to the Father because the divine Person was not always united to a human nature.
MATTHEW AARON BENNETT: For contemporary missionaries seeking to address the innovative heresy of the Islamic Jesus, retrieving the tried and true answers of our orthodox forebears is necessary.
Have you ever wanted to read the classics of the Baptist tradition but didn’t know where to begin? This list takes you through a baker’s dozen of some of the most important Baptist works ever written.
MICHAEL A. G. HAYKIN: Evangelicalism may have crystallized in the Anglophone world of the North Atlantic in the 1730s, but it is now a global phenomenon.
BRANDON D. SMITH: If we are willing to read and understand premodern exegesis, we may be able to retrieve premodern exegesis for the benefit of evangelical churches today.
In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps summarize and discuss several classic Baptist and Reformed works from the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge, including: Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin), 1689 Confession, Orthodox Creed, Catechism (Keach), Our Reasonable Faith (Bavinck), and Church Dogmatics (Barth).
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book II), 1559: The touchstone of Reformed theology, this book is grounded in the conviction that to truly know ourselves we must know God. Book II lays out Calvin’s biblical theology from the fall of humanity to our redemption in Christ. Buy here.
Baptist Confessions of Faith, 1689 Confession, Orthodox Creed, Keach’s Catechism, 17th Century: Contrary to popular opinion, early Baptists were deeply rooted in the Great Tradition of the church while maintaining a commitment to the supreme authority of the Bible. These early confessions highlight the orthodox pedigree and unique features of Baptist life and teaching.
Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, 1921: Also published as Our Reasonable Faith, this work is one of the greatest single-volume systematic theologies of all time. In it, Bavinck scripturally and methodically unpacks the fundamental doctrines of the Reformed tradition while guided by the principle of his opening sentence: “God, and God alone, is man’s highest good.” Buy here.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (a selection), 1932-67: Compiled from lectures delivered over the course of his career, Church Dogmatics represents Barth’s crowning achievement. The work builds on the thought of the Fathers and Reformers to call Christians back to the Trinitarian faith of the Scriptures. Buy here.
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CODY GLEN BARNHART: Some sixty years before the Council of Nicaea, a significant group of bishops condemned the use of “ousia language” to describe God.
ANDY MESSMER: The Christian faith has been “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jd 3), but not all agree on what we are supposed to do with it.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Eternal generation was a deeply scriptural concept for the pro-Nicene theologians.
In this episode, Luke Stamps and Channing Crisler summarize and discuss the main points of Luther’s Large Catechism, the eighth recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
Large Catechism
Martin Luther, Large Catechism, 1529: Organized around the Ten Commandments, Apostle’s Creed, and Lord’s Prayer, along with an extended treatment of the sacraments, this work was created to help churches and families faithfully hand down Christian doctrine and moral teaching. It represents one of Luther’s most enduring contributions. Buy here.
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MICHAEL COOPER: According to Calvin, the Reformation was a movement of retrieval for the sake of renewal, achieved by the Word.
BRANDON D. SMITH AND MADISON N. PIERCE: The mystery of the Incarnation always has been a source of wrestling.
RHYNE PUTMAN: Theology is the critical study of doctrine because the teaching of the church needs checks and balances.
TY KIESER: What do John Owen’s strange statements about the Son mean about Owen, his theology, and our own view of God?
In this episode, Matt Emerson, Luke Stamps, and Tyler Wittman summarize and discuss the main points of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, the seventh recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (a selection), 1265-74: The magnum opus of the “Angelic Doctor,” this work leaves almost no topic relevant to theology untouched. This massive summary of Christian learning is one of the most important works of theology in the Western church. Buy here.
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In this episode, Brandon Smith, Winston Hottman, and Gavin Ortlund summarize and discuss the main points of Anslem’s Why God Became Man, the sixth recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
Why God Became Man
Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, c. 1098: One of the most influential treatments of the doctrine of the atonement in Christian history, Anselm’s thesis is just as compelling today as it was almost a millennium ago: only God can satisfy God but only a human can be a substitute for humans; therefore, the Christ, the God-Man, is the only means of repairing the breach. Buy here.
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Theology Classics: Cyril of Alexandria
In this episode, Matt Emerson and Luke Stamps summarize and discuss the main points of Cyril’s On the Unity of Christ, the fifth recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
On the Unity of Christ
Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, c. 444: What does it mean to say that the Word became flesh—that God lived among us as Jesus of Nazareth? This book defends the doctrine of the incarnation against the heretical belief that the man Jesus Christ was somehow a distinct “son” from the eternal and unchanging divine Son of God. Buy here.
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Manifesto V: Catholicity
We encourage a critical but charitable engagement with the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ, both past and present. We believe that Baptists have much to contribute as well as much to receive in the great collection of traditions that constitute the holy catholic church. We believe that we are “traditioned” creatures and that we should move beyond the false polarities of an individualistic modernity and a relativistic postmodernity.
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Theology Classics: Augustine of Hippo
In this episode, Luke Stamps and Winston Hottman summarize and discuss the main points of Augustine’s Enchiridion, the fourth recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
Enchiridion
Augustine, Enchiridion, c. 420: St. Augustine is arguably the most influential figure in the history of the church after the time of the apostles. This little book is lesser known than some of his other classics (e.g., The Confessions or The City of God), but it is a helpful primer from the great bishop of Hippo on the basics of Christianity: faith, hope, and love. Buy here.
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Theology Classics: Gregory of Nazianzus
In this episode, Matt Emerson and Brandon Smith summarize and discuss the main points of Nazianzus' Five Theological Orations, the third recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
Five Theological Orations
Gregory of Nazianzus, Five Theological Orations, c. 381: These five “orations” or sermons were delivered in Constantinople during the height of the fourth-century Trinitarian controversy. Taken together they are a masterful biblical, theological, and spiritual exploration of the doctrine of the Trinity. Buy here.
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Manifesto IV: Baptist Distinctives
We affirm the distinctive contributions of the Baptist tradition as a renewal movement within the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. These distinctives include the necessity of personal conversion, a regenerate church, believers’ baptism, congregational governance, and religious liberty.
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Manifesto III: Always Reforming
We affirm the fundamentals of reformational theology, especially as they are expressed in the great solae of the Reformation: fallen humanity can be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone on the basis of Scripture alone to the glory of God alone.
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MATTHEW WIREMAN: We should pay attention to the spiritual realities that are taking place when we worship God.
Theology Classics: Athanasius of Alexandria
In this episode, Brandon Smith and Luke Stamps summarize and discuss the main points of Athanasius' On the Incarnation, the second recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
On the Incarnation
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, c. 319: Written by the young Alexandrian priest several years before the Arian controversy that would make him famous, On the Incarnation remains one of the best explanations of why the one who would redeem fallen humanity to God must be both God and man. Buy here.
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Manifesto II: The Centrality of the Gospel
We affirm the centrality of the gospel—the good news of salvation through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God—for Christian faith, life, and worship.
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Theology Classics: Irenaeus of Lyon
In this episode, Matthew Emerson and Brandon Smith summarize and discuss the main points of Irenaeus's On the Apostolic Preaching, the first recommended read for the CBR Theology Classics Reading Challenge.
On the Apostolic Preaching
Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching, c. 180: The first biblical theology in Christian history by the church’s most important second-century theologian, this book explains how all of biblical history—indeed all of human history—reaches its climax and resolution in the coming of Jesus Christ.
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Manifesto I: The Triune God
In this episode, Matthew Emerson and Luke Stamps discuss the first article in the Manifesto for Evangelical Baptist Catholicity (EBC): the triune God. The CBR staff will discuss all the Manifesto articles in future episodes.
Article I:
We affirm the ontological priority of the Triune God and the epistemological priority of his inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word. Christian faith begins, is carried forth, and ends in God—in his being and works—and is made known to us in Holy Scripture. Watch the explainer video.
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Have you ever wanted to read the classics of Christian theology but didn’t know where to begin? This list takes you through twelve of the most important theological works ever written.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Kenotic Christology is ultimately a novel view that undercuts classical Christian theism.
WINSTON HOTTMAN: The Fathers regarded prosperity as a far greater threat to the church than destitution.
GRIFFIN GULLEDGE: Nicaea was not ultimately a set of doctrines to check the box on before rejecting its foundations, implications, and related doctrines.
JOSHUA BOWMAN: Catholicity is concerned with both the preservation and the proclamation of all the Scripture reveals.
CODY A. CUNNINGHAM: Basil a valuable resource in cultivating a rich communal fellowship.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: Commitment to sola Scriptura did not mean for the Reformers nor for the earliest Baptists that traditional interpretations of Scripture should be jettisoned.
WALTER STRICKLAND: Reading the Bible and doing theology in a homogeneous group limits humanity’s ability to understand all that God is doing in Scripture.
TRAVIS MONTGOMERY: Can’t we just stick with Bible words? Isn’t jargon simply linguistic arrogance?
AARON LEWIS: I do not find sacramental language, when properly understood, to be out of step with Baptist modality.
ANDREW MESSMER: These “non-biblical” elements are three ways of reinforcing our understanding of the Gospel, and thus justifies their use, both at a personal as well as at a church level.
JOSEPH RHEA: Ancient Christian spiritual writings offer us both means to discern this sin in ourselves and suggestions on how to fight it.
MATTHEW WIREMAN: Knock on the door of the church of that other denomination and ask if the pastor would like to go to coffee.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Because the Spirit is God, he inspires human authors to write in such a way that their human intention contains his own intention.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Benjamin Keach’s view of baptism is orthodox, Reformed, and radical, and it is an example of how Baptists can pursue catholicity without surrendering their distinctives.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: The Baptists, or baptistic congregationalists, simply carried the logic of congregationalism to its necessary conclusion.
BRANDON D. SMITH: The early church needed language about the Trinity, and Gregory of Nyssa provided some help.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: The Cappadocians were instrumental in solidifying Trinitarian orthodoxy in the fourth century.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Despite modern ambivalence toward it, the descent was vital to early and Medieval Christian faith, and it is my belief that we can retrieve its importance today.
D. JEFFREY MOONEY AND ADRIAN MARTINEZ: Creeds provided a core set of beliefs for our congregation so that, regardless of the distinctions of other Christians around us, we could cling to these core elements and celebrate the fact that we were one family in Jesus.
DAYTON HARTMAN: The particulars of our eschatological convictions ought never contradict nor supersede the uniting Christian hope of Christ’s assured return and victory.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We believe that all Christians should pray for and seek Christian unity across ecclesial and denominational lines and that Baptists should not reflexively reject principled, ecumenical dialogue with other Christian traditions.
MATTHEW WIREMAN: The Church Calendar provides anticipation and expectation and prepares our hearts every season as we wait and continue to wait for our redemption.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Is there a Baptist contribution to political theology? Yes. And it should be called, “Baptist Prophetic Witness.”
MATTHEW WIREMAN: Because the Lectionary has us read from four passages of Scripture each Sunday, we see the value of poetry, history, prose, prophecy, and epistle.
MICHAEL MCEWEN: There are salient connections between Kant’s ideas and the spirit of our culture.
STEPHEN O. PRESLEY: If only for a few moments, it will unite the entire church in a communal act of listening and engaging the word of God.
JOSHUA HEDGER: At our church, it is our desire that our liturgy would celebrate Jesus and his gospel from beginning to end.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Proverbs 8 indicates how methodological commitments informed the early church’s exegesis of this particular text.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: These three theological assumptions guided the way the early church read the Bible and formulated doctrine.
EMERSON, STAMPS, AND SMITH: Catholicity says, “You swim in a different stream of Christianity than me, but instead of cutting you off, I want to learn from you where I can.”
CHRIS BRUNO: Many Baptists don’t give much thought to what is actually going on when we come to the Lord’s Table.
JUSTIN WAINSCOTT: Most Christian traditions sing the psalms, and most Baptists did too up until the last century.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the continuity of God’s works of creation and redemption. Therefore, we affirm the goodness of all honorable vocations, the importance of embodied habits and rituals, and the value of aesthetic beauty for Christian life and worship.
STEFANA LAING: What can the contemporary church learn from the ancient church of the Lord Jesus Christ?
RAY VAN NESTE: A guided time of corporate confession has been a staple for Christian worship through the ages.
JONATHAN PARNELL: We need to read some very old books, sing some very old lyrics, and recite some very old creeds.
SHAWN J. WILHITE: Why would we even dare to consider reading something a bit more antiquarian?
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the two ordinances or sacraments instituted by Christ, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and believe that they function as signs and seals of God’s grace, expressions of individual faith, and bonds of the church’s covenantal unity in Christ. As such, these ordinances are not empty signs or mere symbols but tangibly demonstrate our union with the risen Christ and with his body, the church. Other Christian practices, such as confession of sin, confirmation in the faith, the ordination of church officers, Christian marriage, and the prayerful anointing of the sick may also frame a life of Christian faithfulness, but should not be considered sacraments.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: When we encounter opposition to the descent, the reasons given are more accurately called myths, since they don’t accurately describe the doctrine.
PATRICK J. SCHREINER: The images that Christ gave to his people most explicitly are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We believe that Baptist worship should be anchored in Holy Scripture and informed by the liturgical practices of the historic church. We believe that Christian worship should be Word-centered. In worship, we read, preach, sing, pray, and show forth (through the ordinances) the Word of God. We further believe that Baptist worship could benefit from incorporating historic practices such as lectionary readings, the liturgical calendar, corporate confession of sin, the assurance of pardon, the recitation of scriptural and historic prayers (especially the Lord’s Prayer), and the corporate confession of the faith (expressed in the ecumenical creeds and other confessional documents).
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: The calendar is not used because it is commanded in Scripture; it is used because it helps the church throughout space and time organize its exposition of God’s Word to his people.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We encourage the ongoing affirmation, confession, and catechetical use of the three ecumenical creeds and the scriptural insights of the seven ecumenical councils. We believe these confessional documents express well what Thomas Oden called the “consensual tradition”—the deposit of faith taught in Holy Scripture and received by the church throughout space and time.
BRANDON D. SMITH: A short list of Baptists doing patristic theology and retrieval well.
BRANDON D. SMITH: We should teach Christology with the Bible as our authority and the councils as our fundamental resource.
SCOTT JAMES: Open the Word of God with your children and let it dwell richly in your home.
BRANDON D. SMITH: A new book on the church's mission gives Baptists much to think about.
TIMOTHY GEORGE: Theological education over the next decades of the twenty-first century will need to be increasingly personal, incarnational, global, and gospel centered.
SAMUEL PARKISON: As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to teach members how to worship in seasons of extreme grief and suffering.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, are created in God's image and, if they have repented and believed in Christ, are brothers and sisters together in the one body of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Because of this shared imago dei and because of Christ's saving work among all nations, peoples, and tongues, we believe that one major task of Baptist catholicity is to promote racial unity, especially within the body of Christ.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We encourage a critical but charitable engagement with the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ, both past and present. We believe that Baptists have much to contribute as well as much to receive in the great collection of traditions that constitute the holy catholic church. We believe that we are “traditioned” creatures and that we should move beyond the false polarities of an individualistic modernity and a relativistic postmodernity.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the distinctive contributions of the Baptist tradition as a renewal movement within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. These distinctives include the necessity of personal conversion, a regenerate church, believers’ baptism, congregational governance, and religious liberty.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the fundamentals of reformational theology, especially as they are expressed in the great solae of the Reformation: fallen humanity can be saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone on the basis of Scripture alone to the glory of God alone.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the centrality of the gospel—the good news of salvation through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God—for Christian faith, life, and worship.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: We affirm the ontological priority of the Triune God and the epistemological priority of his inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word. Christian faith begins, is carried forth, and ends in God—in his being and works—and is made known to us in Holy Scripture.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON AND R. LUCAS STAMPS: Over the next several weeks we plan to blog through each of the eleven articles in the manifesto that we’ve been using as a kind of guiding document here at the Center for Baptist Renewal. In this introductory post, we wish to make a few preparatory comments to set up the series.
EARON M. JAMES SR.: The sacred desk comes with responsibility. One aspect of this responsibility is to speak prophetically in confronting sin.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Eternal generation is largely a mystery, but it helps us make sense of the relationship between the Father and Son.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Early British Baptist life exhibited two different ways of relating to the creeds and confessions of earlier Christian thought.
TREVIN WAX: We are not the first to encounter these texts. And our Christianity stretches back through the ages, where a tomb is still empty.
JOSHUA HEDGER: Implementing a biblical and historical liturgy for our church is theologically weighty and immensely practical.
DAVID RATHEL: Baptists are not exactly known for their catholicity, but John Gill sets a good example.
BRANDON D. SMITH: Biblical concepts and judgments about God's identity helped the early church formulate the creeds.
R. LUCAS STAMPS AND MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Substitution, recapitulation, and victory go hand-in-hand.
STEPHEN O. PRESLEY: May we also hand down this faith entrusted to us to every new member that walks through our doors.
NATHAN A. FINN: Find ways to let folks tell their stories of Jesus and his love as one way to encourage the whole body in their public worship of the Risen King.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: These four affirmations function as some of the main arguments for the full, equal, shared divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit.
BRANDON D. SMITH: We should be careful not to forget the God who speaks through the Bible's pages, in the Old and New Testaments.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: Thomas Aquinas helps give us some basic terms when discussing the Trinity.
DAVID RATHEL: Here's a bibliography to introduce interested readers to noteworthy works in this field.
JOE THORN: The environment of the pulpit is not only formed by the Word, but also filled with the Word.
MATT DAMICO: As your church gathers for worship, appreciate how the strange rituals are making you more faithful and more fruitful.
BRANDON D. SMITH: These five truths still echo in our world and our lives today, if we’re willing to listen.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Reading Scripture consists largely of paying attention to what is repeated and what stands out as extraordinary.
TIMOTHY GEORGE: Fences have their place, but without a solid foundation the fences will not long endure.
DAYTON HARTMAN: We have Scripture as our authority and 2,000 years of wisdom from those who have faithfully served, suffered, and persevered before us.
BRANDON D. SMITH: We should reap the long-lasting benefits of deep community, sound doctrine, and knowing the saints before us.
R. LUCAS STAMPS: In recent years, many evangelicals have started to expand their embrace of the church year.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: Liturgical acts help us see and love reality, instead of seeing and loving what is illusory and transitory.
NATHAN A. FINN: Baptists will best thrive in American Babylon by self-consciously framing ourselves as an ecclesiological renewal movement within the Great Tradition of catholic Christianity.
BRANDON D. SMITH: At the table, we look at our brothers and sisters in Christ, and remember that we’re one family, one body, with one Head.
MATTHEW Y. EMERSON: What are the benefits of reciting the Creeds on a regular basis in public worship? At least three come to mind.