This past Sunday, Russian author and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed away in his native Russia at the age of 89. Solzhenitsyn was a dedicated Orthodox Christian who is famous not only for his criticism of Stalin-era gulags - in books like The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - …
Facebook Friendship?
One of my side interests in this day of ours is the concept of social networking and virtual friendship. Not too long ago, I preached a sermon on the idea of friendship and what it means at Brooklife (see April 27 sermon here). My opening illustration was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the ways in which …
Those Puritans! (Packer’s Quest for Godliness)
Recently I've spent time reading J. I. Packer's book A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. In one way, I'm embarrassed to admit I'm reading a book about the Puritans! How entirely out of fashion and out of step with these 'emergent' times. How fond so many contemporary advocates of the …
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“To the Suburban Churches of America” (Eugene Peterson)
It's no secret that I love the writings of Eugene Peterson. I was scouring through Christianity Today's web-site looking for an article on another topic altogether when I ran into this 1999 article by Eugene Peterson entitled "To the Suburban Churches of America." As a pastor of a basically suburban church, all that I can …
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Tell It Slant
I just found out that the latest installment of Eugene Peterson's series on spiritual theology has a publication date. Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers is set to hit the shelves on September 29, 2008. The title of this fourth book comes from a poem by …
Matthew Erickson 