July 4, 2008

Weekly Round-Up: Ugandan Preaching, the State of Apologetics, A Theologically-Driven Missiology, and Witnessing to Mormons

Here's this week's round-up:

1) Caroline Mbabazi, "The good old sermon" in the Sunday Monitor newspaper (Uganda). Wow. A woman writes about how poor preaching usually is in Uganda, appealing to Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, T.D Jakes, and Rod Parsley as good examples. How desperately churches in Uganda need to grow in biblical knowledge and discernment!

2) William Lane Craig, "God Is Not Dead Yet: How current philosophers argue for his existence" and "Recommended Reading: Books on the existence of God;" Troy Anderson, "A New Day for Apologetics" in Christianity Today (July 2008). Finally, an issue of Christianity Today magazine focusing on the defense of our faith. Whatever one may think of Craig's methodology, these articles are very helpful. I pray that a growing interest in apologetics will spread to East Africa!

3) Bruce Ashford, "A Theologically-Driven Missiology," Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 on the Between the Times blog. Ashford is a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary who is writing a series of blog posts for Southern Baptists on the relationship between theology and missions. So far he has covered Revelation, the Triune God, and Christ. While I just came across this series, I am very impressed so far. He says, "Our tendency is to affirm Christian Scripture as being inspired by God and without error, and then to ignore Christian Scripture in forming our strategies and methods. It is as if we are saying that 'what' we believe about God is important, but 'how' we practice is not. We think that we can 'bank on' inerrancy and then do whatever we’d like." May many more missionaries see the importance of theology in their service to God.

4) Brett Kunkle, "Getting Mormons to Explain Why," Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 on the Stand to Reason YouTube page. A must-watch video series on witnessing to Mormons. As a former Mormon myself, I heartily recommend it.