Rick Warren's Purpose Driven magazine

The title, Purpose Driven, and the name, Rick Warren, go hand-in-hand. They form an easily identifiable brand.

And in my opinion, it's a brand that offers top-flight spiritual resources for the nation.

Warren, pastor of Saddleback Community Church in California, sold over 50 million copies worldwide of his book, The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan), and has become one of the leading evangelical voices in the United States.

The brand is now being enhanced with a quarterly magazine, Purpose Driven Connection, which hit news stands last month.

Like Warren's books and national media appearances, Purpose Driven Connection has an unwavering Biblical message packaged in savvy relevance.

In The Purpose Driven Life, Warren was able to 'pick the lock' of a consumerist culture and deposit a message of meaning and ... well, yes ... purpose. In television appearances, he is direct and engaging.

Likewise, his new magazine offers the centuries-old message of a resurrected Savior, but makes application of that message to topics as current as the economic downturn and "Have I Failed My Child?"

Purpose Driven Connection follows up on the purposes Warren wrote about in his best-seller. The magazine articles are organized within sections entitled Knowing, Relating, Growing, Serving, and Sharing. They range from "12 Ways to Study God's Word" (Growing) to "Fighting a Flood with Faith" (Serving) to "Compassion Cured Me of Atheism" (Sharing).

Besides Warren and his wife, Kay, some of the magazine's contributors include megachurch pastor Billy Hybels, authors Max Lucado and Lee Strobel, and bible teacher Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham.

Special features include a six-lesson DVD ("40 Days of Love"), two Purpose Driven postcards, and the address for the magazine's website (just as brimming with edifying info as the magazine).

A transcript of the interview Warren did with President Obama at the Saddleback Civil Forum is included, as is the prayer Pastor Warren offered up at the Inauguration.

In short, the magazine's 144 pages are chock-full of inspirational articles and vibrant photos. Its niche is devotional literature over against the more news-and-theological thrusts of the evangelical magazine gold standard, Christianity Today.

Rick Warren --- thankfully --- has found his purpose. His new magazine is a delightful extension of that ministry.

Tennent is Asbury Seminary's new president

Asbury Theological Seminary has selected a fine professor from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to become its new president.

Dr. Timothy Tennent, a professor of world missions at Gordon-Conwell, will take the leadership at Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky in July.

I was heartened by a quote from Tennent on Asbury Seminary's website:

"I am alarmed by the growing trend away from serious theological reflection and do not believe that the church will be adequately prepared to face the challenges of pluralism and post-modernism without a more robust theological preparation," he says. "I am also passionate about the emergence of the Majority World Church. I believe that the Western Church continues to have an important role in global missions, in partnership with the increasingly vibrant Majority World Church." The entire news release on the announcement of Tennent's presidency can be read here.

In his 2007 book, Theology in the Context of World Christianity (Zondervan), Tennent explains his choice to use the term, Majority World, versus the terms, Third World and Two-Thirds World:

"This is the best phrase currently available. It is to be preferred because it is simpler and less confusing to students just entering this discussion for the first time, and it helps to highlight the basic point that Africa, Asia, and Latin America are where the majority of the world's Christians are now located."

Dr. Christopher J. H. Wright (whose recent book was noted on this blog February 7), says this of Tennent's book:

"This is the book we have waited a long time for. We have all sampled selections from the growing menu of theological reflection in the Majority World church, but so often these have been viewed by scholars and students in the West as the theological equivalent of ethnic restaurants --- exotic and interesting but not to be taken too seriously in the dining hall of real (Western) theology ....

"This book, organized in the systematic way that Western theology likes, offers teacher and student alike a representative, thorough, constructively critical compendium of some of the key contributors to the task of global theology."

Tennent's chapter titles spell out his approach:

• The Emergence of a Global Theological Discourse
• Theology ... Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?
• Bibliology ... Hindu Sacred Texts in Pre-Christian Past
• Anthropology ... Human Identity in Shame-based Cultures of the Far East
• Christology ... Christ as Healer and Ancestor in Africa
• Soteriology ... Is "Salvation by Grace through Faith" Unique to Christianity?
• Pneumatology ... The Holy Spirit in Latin American Pentecostalism
• Ecclesiology ... Followers of Jesus in Islamic Mosques
• Eschatology ... Jonathan Edwards and the Chinese Back to Jerusalem Movement
• The Emerging Contours of Global Theology

Tennent, whose undergraduate work was done at Oral Roberts University, caught my eye with this paragraph in the chapter on Pneumatology:

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"There are, of course, glaring inconsistencies and theological problems within Pentecostalism. The so-called 'prosperity gospel,' which weds an American consumer culture with outlandish interpretations of certain biblical texts, is well known. Moreover, several prominent Pentecostal figures have brought embarrassment and shame not only to Pentecostalism but to the broader cause of Christ in the world. If, in this study, I have neglected the 'mote' in the Pentecostal eye, it is only because I am so painfully aware of the 'beam' in my own eye. In other words, I maintain that despite the incongruities, Pentecostalism remains the most important corrective to the blind spots in our pneumatological theory and practice on the planet today."

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Bill Mounce's website, BiblicalTraining.org, offers six audio courses by Dr. Tennent for free. You can access those courses, which include studies of Buddhism and Hinduism, here.

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The Louisville Courier-Journal's coverage of Tennent's appointment can be read here. Two YouTube videos of his acceptance can be seen here and here, plus the Asbury website has posted a video interview with him that can be seen here.

Provan lectures on the Book of Daniel

In the introduction to his commentary on Daniel, Tremper Longman says,

"Daniel is a book of paradoxes .... While children resonate with the lessons of Daniel 1 - 6, seasoned bible scholars scratch their heads over Daniel 7 - 12 with the move from simple stories to obscure apocalyptic visions ...." NIV Application Commentary: Daniel (Zondervan)

Beginning Tuesday, internet surfers will have good help available to sort out that Old Testament book when the first of Iain Provan's 20 audio lectures on Daniel is posted.

Regent College, the theological graduate school in Vancouver, will broadcast the lectures for free (one each day, all day long) on its Regent Radio website. The series will conclude March 8.

Provan has established himself as an Old Testament scholar by writing commentaries on the books of 1 and 2 Kings, Ecclesiates and Song of Songs, and Lamentations, as well as, co-authoring A Biblical History of Israel (Westminster John Knox Press) with V. Philips Long and Tremper Longman III. He also provided the notes on 1 and 2 Kings for the new ESV Study Bible (Crossway Bibles).

Readers who are going to take in the Daniel lectures, may also want to have access to the 11 pages of commentary Provan wrote on Daniel for the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible. Those pages can be sampled here.

The God Chris Wright doesn't understand

Theodicy: A term coined by Leibniz to refer to a theoretical justification of the goodness of God in the face of the presence of evil in the world. --- Alister McGrath, in Christian Theology: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishing).

A perfectly good, righteous, and holy God with evil --- seemingly --- running rampant in His world. A conundrum; and one that theologians have wrestled with for centuries.

Best-selling evangelical author and columnist Philip Yancey wrote on the subject in 1997 in his book, Where is God When It Hurts? (Zondervan).

More recently, Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright tackled the topic in Evil and the Justice of God (InterVarsity Press).

We can, of course, ignore the topic altogether, throwing it, as it were, in our theological 'junk drawer', only ruminating on it if we are visited by catastrophe.

Today, I stumbled onto the topic once more when I learned that Christopher J. H. Wright, an Old Testament scholar and biblical ethicist, has written a new book called, The God I Don't Understand.

To promote the book, Wright's publisher, Zondervan, has posted online short video clips of the author giving a synopsis of each chapter.

Although my current stack of reading is far off the topic of theodicy, Wright won my attention in the first video by suggesting that part of the difficulty with evil is that we try to make sense of it. Wright says maybe sense cannot be made of evil, because that would, in a sense, legitimize evil --- giving it an undeserved, legitimate place in our world. God allows us to lament evil (even in His presence), Wright says, but reiterates that it is evidently in the wisdom of God that we aren't to understand evil.

While gentle and assured in his demeanor, Wright does tell in subsequent videos of anger with God and resultant tears. His is not a mere clinical assessment of evil, but a believer's struggle.

I sense that this work will take its place among the serious works on theodicy that are consulted --- with profit --- over and over again.

A review of Wright's book by Denver Seminary professor M. Daniel Carroll Rodas can be read here.

"OT Exegesis" gets a new edition

[Update March 20 --- This book can now be sampled here.]

What an author meant roughly 3,000 years ago can be difficult to determine. Of course, readers are seldom called to such a task ... unless they are reading Homer or the Old Testament.

Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart equips Bible students for the task in his popular, Old Testament Exegesis (Westminister John Knox). The fourth edition will hit bookstore shelves this spring.

Stuart has made a career of trying to help folks interpret the Scriptures. In addition to being a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, he co-authored the best-selling How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zonderan) with Gordon Fee, and has written widely-acclaimed commentaries (Exodus, Ezekiel, Hosea-Jonah, and Malachi).

In Old Testament Exegesis he walks readers through --- literally step-by-step --- the process of analyzing and interpreting passages. He takes time explain each of 12 steps:

• Text
• Translation
• Historical context
• Literary context
• Form
• Structure
• Grammatical data
• Lexical data
• Biblical context
• Theology
• Secondary literature
• Application

In the Preface, Stuart spells out the usefulness of his book: "It is for the vast majority of all seminary students and pastors. It is predicated on the conviction that even the most intelligent people cannot understand procedures and concepts that are not somehow explained to them, and that there is no shame in seeking such explanations inspite of the fact that most seminary professors do not volunteer them. Old Testament exegesis has regular procedures and concepts, and these can be taught to almost anyone willing to learn. It is a tragedy that so few seminary students ever really feel sure of themselves in doing OT exegesis --- and most pastors apparently abandon the practice altogether."

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Sensitive to the time-crunch that many pastors operate under, Stuart also provides instruction on how to shorten the 12-step process. Most valuable are his many reference work recommendations (one of the features requiring a fully-updated fourth edition).

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Fee, professor emeritus at Regent College in Vancouver, wrote the companion volume, New Testament Exegesis (Zondervan).

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The audio presentation of an OT Survey course by Stuart can be accessed here for free.

REVIEWED: James Beall's "Straight Talk about the Holy Spirit"

I used to work with a man who, shortly after being saved and baptized, had a very jarring church experience. In short, the pastor of his church went 'off the rails' morally.

My friend stopped attending church. But, he didn't give up on Christianity entirely --- he watched it on cable TV. He used to come in to work and ask me, "What in the world is going on with these TV preachers?" From eccentric dress to eccentric practices, my friend was no more impressed with church on television than he had been in his short stint in church.

Veteran pastor James Lee Beall has written a book for people like my friend. He's called it, Straight Talk about the Holy Spirit.

Now, to be entirely accurate, this treatise on the work and person of the third member of the Trinity will be appreciated by a much wider audience than just the disillusioned. There will be many mature believers who will enjoy Pastor Beall's surveying of the scriptures that arrives at orthodox and well thought out doctrinal positions. New believers seeking power to live out their new life in Christ will appreciate his explanations (both scriptural and anecdotal) of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But again, the disillusioned observers of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity are going to find a friend in Pastor Beall.

"... people who have the idea embedded in them that opening their life to the Holy Spirit could very well make them off-center, weird, and spiritually strange. For they have witnessed odd and questionable goings on by people who professed to be moved by the Holy Spirit. This has made them wary and disconcerted. This is precisely why the Incarnate Jesus must remain in our biblical picture and framework."

Beall's presentation of Jesus being the prototype of a man filled with the Holy Spirit was my favorite part of the book. Looking at any other man (or, woman) filled with the Spirit --- no matter how mature --- I will see someone still in-process, someone with a few rough edges yet. Reading scriptures that tell about praying and singing in the Spirit, being gifted by the Spirit, and walking in the Spirit are, of course, of supreme importance. But, I still have the need to see it walked out. I want to know where we are headed, and not simply out of curiosity. I need it to arouse faith for the journey. In Jesus, we see the full glory of Spirit-empowered living.

"The Scriptures clearly reveal that Jesus, the Christ, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and this infilling did not make Him a religious eccentric or divorce him from reality. Jesus was the most balanced, poised man who ever walked the earth and was always in touch with the real world."

Always of importance when discussing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is the matter of identity; questions posed on the back cover of the book, "Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit? Is it God or a Force?" are answered on the inside.

In keeping with the teaching of the scriptures and the historic creeds of the Church, Pastor Beall teaches that the Holy Spirit is as certainly God, as the Father and Son are.

"The Spirit is so prominently presented in the Bible that it is impossible to ignore the fact that He possesses divine attributes and exercises divine prerogatives and those who admit His personality have never denied His divinity."

The book's 189 pages present a comprehensive view of the Holy Spirit's person and work, while never lapsing into an arid rehearsal of facts. In fact, Beall shows awareness and sensitivity of the potential for such:

"The doctrines and teachings of Christianity are many and some of them more complex than others, but there are few doctrines more perplexing to the average man than the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This is deeply regrettable because the Holy Spirit in early Christianity was not a puzzle but a convincing power --- the heartbeat of the Christian faith."

The bulk of the book's limited anecdotal material is kept to the end, where the author tells, interestingly, of his mother's Pentecostal experience, specifically, speaking in tongues (Beall also devotes an earlier chapter to glossolalia). His mother, Myrtle Beall, came to experience this same phenomenon that first-century Christians knew ... without prompting --- she had never heard that such things happened to people. She went on, through a series of remarkable experiences, to pioneer a church that continues to this day --- the large Bethesda Christian Church in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Straight Talk about the Holy Spirit is a serious --- and edifying --- study of the Holy Spirit; one that sets out proper understandings for the committed, while providing proper perspective for the disillusioned.

Beall's writing style is inviting. The book can be leisurely read in a couple of evenings. While the prose of the following passage is not representative of the entire book (for effect, Beall drives his points home here like a hammer steadily hitting a nail), it summarizes well the message of Straight Talk about the Holy Spirit:

"The Christian faith can rightly be called a religion of the Holy Spirit. The scriptural account informs us: the Spirit conceived Jesus in Mary; the Spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the Judean wilderness to be tempted by Satan for forty days and nights and He came out of the experience in the power of the Spirit. Jesus began His ministry in the synagogue of His hometown, Nazareth, and declared His manifesto by saying, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ...' (Luke 4:18). He cast out evil spirits by the Spirit of God and was offered up as a sacrifice through the Eternal Spirit. The Spirit of Holiness raised him from the dead. He issued commandments to His disciples after His resurrection by the Spirit. John the Baptist foretold that Jesus would baptize believers in the Holy Spirit. The Church of Jesus Christ was born of the Spirit at Pentecost. Only those led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. We are changed from glory to glory by the work of the Spirit. The Church forms a habitation for God in the Spirit. His Spirit guides us into all truth. His Spirit strengthens us in the inner man. The fruits of the Christian life are the fruits of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit quickens (makes alive, energizes) our mortal body. The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the Law of sin and death. We receive new power and authority when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit. From first to last, the Christian faith is a religion of the Holy Spirit."

[James Lee Beall is pastor emeritus of Bethesda Christian Church. He has authored several books, including, Laying the Foundation: Achieving Christian Maturity (Bridge-Logos Publishing). A five-minute video of him teaching from Laying the Foundation can be seen here. In the NKJV New Spirit-Filled Life Bible (Nelson), edited by Jack Hayford, Pastor Beall wrote the notes on the Pastoral Epistles. Copies of Straight Talk about the Holy Spirit can be purchased from the Bethesda bookstore at 586-264-2300 x102.]