In light of this weekend’s 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, as would be expected there are a lot of blogs and news stories devoted to remembering that tragic event this weekend. Below, I’ve included a couple, with some other followup news.
9/11 Fueled N.Y.’s Church Planting Movement – The Baptist Press discusses some of the Church Planting and Church growth increases that took place after 9/11. Personally, I remember the prayer services in the days after and the focus on returning to “religion”. The article states that 40% of Manhattan’s churches were started after 2000. The article goes on to say that while the “spiritual temperature” of New York hasn’t increased, attention has definitely been on N.Y. church planting post 9/11.
9/11 and the Rise of New Calvinism – Trevin Wax poses the question of whether 9/11 played a role in the resurgence of Calvinism and Reformed Theology. Among his rationale for this discussion is that 9/11 “forced the ‘problem of evil’ to the forefront of theological discussions.” A worthwhile read.
Evangelicals left off 9/11 Memorial – Justin Taylor shares a link to a post by Carl Trueman which responds to the outcry of Frank Page, President of Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee who shared disappointment over the lack of Evangelical inclusion in the 9/11 “interfaith” memorial at the Washington National Cathedral. Trueman asserts that evangelicals, more pointedly Southern Baptists, should be thankful they were not included, for they would’ve had to “compromise their orthodoxy and Protestant identity.” I agree, the other groups represented (Episcopals?) there are not praying to the same God of the Bible that “evangelicals” do. Unless of course Rick Warren was leading the prayer, then he could make it all inclusive, like he did here. But he has his own service planned just blocks away.
A word about Bible translations – Here is an excellent post on translation philosophies. Remember we looked briefly at these differences in this post . This article goes more in-depth. Here is an excellent summary statement from the article on “What are the advantages of a church choosing an essentially literal translation?”
“The primary advantage is that preachers, teachers, and church people will have the confidence that their Bible gives them the equivalent English words for what the authors of the Bible actually wrote. They do not need to wonder at every point where translation ends and commentary begins. They do not need to worry that important material has been omitted from the original.”
In that post I linked above, I made reference to a booklet written by Kevin DeYoung on why his church switched to the ESV. Here is the online .pdf version of that booklet. http://static.crossway.org/excerpt/why-our-church-switched-to-the-esv/why-our-church-switched-to-the-esv.pdf
Finally, a video with Paul Washer discussing what it means to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.”
Isaiah 40:15a “Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales.”
