To say that one thing is not another thing is not to register a complaint against either.

To say that the sun is not the moon is not to criticize the moon, and to say that the land is not the sea is not to file a complaint against the sea. God establishes differences in the world with the intention of them complementing one another, and not so that his variegated world would try to melt itself down into one great indistinguishable mass. A pine cone is not a cheesecake is not a covered bridge. A man is not a woman, but God bless them both.

And so to exhort my brothers in the ministry to remember that they are not sisters is in no way a form of disdain, either open or disguised, toward t…

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As I have been thinking about the theme of an upcoming conference we are hosting — on Makers — a number of thoughts have occurred to me. One of them is that God makes things for his pleasure, and so should we. This edifying thought is complicated both by our finitude and by our sinfulness, but we have to work through those complications. Giving up on the imitation of God because of our sinfulness is not resisting that sinfulness, but rather succumbing to it.

Why is it that we take such satisfaction in a job well done? We can see this particular pleasure rise up in ourselves in virtually any task — from a well-mowed lawn up to the high end of doing fancy tricks with a super-collider. Why is…

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Because evangelicals have not seen real revival for over a century (e.g. like the Welsh revival of 1905), as a result we have been slow to recognize our active cultivation of an ongoing culture of revival. By this I am not simply referring to a week of nightly scheduled meetings at a church in the Bible Belt (although that is one manifestation of this phenomenon). Rather I am speaking of how we tend to do things in waves, whether they are a real revival or not. Some of those waves have been helpful (the Jesus movement) and some have been pernicious (the emergent church).

The Jesus movement in the seventies might even qualify as an under-radar mini-revival, but it occurred against t…

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