From the chairman of the Slavic Reformation Society:

“Greetings in the Lord Jesus Christ! As chairman of the Board of the Slavic Reformation Society, I wanted to give you a year-end update on our ministry in Russia. In September, ten pastors from Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan attended our pastors’ training session in St. Petersburg. Another six ministers applied for this two-week intensive course but for one of the first times we had to turn qualified men away because we were unable to pay their travel/living expenses.

Currently, we have 18 pastors applying for our March 2010 session! This as an encouraging endorsement of our teaching and mentoring. The American professor who taught in September reported that these men were the most mature men he had witnessed in his fifteen years of ministry in Russia. The pastors we are mentoring represent more than 1,000 congregants, so your investment in the ministry multiplies 100 times. As you may know, Blake Purcell is in Texas this year and is visiting churches and supporters with a goal of raising our ongoing monthly support. But, we have a special need to raise $25,000 by the end of this year to meet our short term budget requirements.

This amount will cover our operating costs in St. Petersburg and meet our obligations to the Purcells. Additionally, it will provide the foundation to expand the March 2010 intensive course to include the 18 pastors desiring to attend. Help SRS see the Word of the Lord multiply and prevail in the Russian-speaking world by giving a special end-of-year gift of $100 to $1,000 or more.

You may mail your tax-deductible contributions to SRS PO Box 794 Louisville, MS 39339 or contribute via PayPal on our website.

If you have any questions or would like to have Blake share the ministry with your congregation, you may call him at 940.613.9611 or write blakepurcell2000@yahoo.com.

Yours in Christ, Mike Forster, Chairman Slavic Reformation Society

My brother has started blogging.   His latest post on loving our wives is quite good.

The last few paragraphs of this article by Carl Trueman summarize some of the reasons I don’t blog more (besides the sheer lack of time!).  I find that the more time I put into real people (my wife, my children, my students, fellow church members), the less time I have to blog.  That might just be my limitations, but read Trueman’s arguments for yourself …

I found this article quite helpful in developing a Reformed Catholic view of Halloween – “Is Halloween a Witches’ Brew?” by Harold L. Myra.

Here is something I wrote a few years ago on the subject. 

And here are some more developed thoughts that I didn’t have time to write then!

“Reformation Day Thoughts (09)” - a talk I plan to give to at a church gathering on Oct. 31.

Stop Child Trafficking Now! – Slavery still exists.  Sexual exploitation of children is rampant throughout the world.  Each year, thousands of enslaved and sexually exploited children are brought into the USA!  Virtually no one in the US has been convicted of child trafficking in the last 10 years.  Get involved–your salvation may depend on it (Matt. 25:31-46; Rev. 20:11-13).

Mother Kirk: Essays and Forays in Practical Ecclesiology by Douglas Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I may be biased (since Wilson was my teacher at New St. Andrews College, as well as my pastor during those four years), but this was my second time through this book, and I still found it incredibly helpful.

Yes, all the theological insights were great, and the writing was typically witty and humorous. But, what was most striking was how Wilson addresses huge theological and Biblical topics with a consistently practical and pastoral approach. The sub-title says it well: “Essays and Forays in Practical Ecclesiology.” This is not a book for armchair theologians. Wilson is controversial at times, but he is also writing to real problems in the modern, American evangelical church. Even if you don’t agree with him, he is a great debating partner! He will challenge you to defend (from the Bible!) your fundamental notions of God, His Word, and what His Church should be doing.

I can also say, because I have some background knowledge of the actual circumstances that led to the writing of some chapters, that Wilson is writing out his own pastoral experience. He has been able, by he grace of God, to lead a large congregation through many major changes in how they understand the Bible, how they worship, how they educate their children, and most importantly, how they live as Christians every day and every hour of the week.

Many things have been said about Douglas Wilson, and many are untrue, or only half-true. Jesus said something helpful: “By your fruits you shall know them.” God has grown some remarkable fruit through Wilson’s ministry. I think many people read him, and are offended by his biting wit and sarcasm. I read him differently because I hear his chuckle in between the lines, and I see the huge grin he would always have when he was saying the most unsettling things. I would encourage other readers to keep that image in mind!

View all my reviews >>

Here are two Topical Studies from the Christus Rex Study Center.  I hope they are helpful for churches exploring Scripture’s teaching on Church Discipline and Church Architecture.  (These studies have both grown out of issues confronting our own local church.  They are by no means exhaustive studies, and I welcome any suggestions on how to improve them!)

Church Discipline: A Theological & Practical Primer

 Priorities in Architecture: Being the Church

Speaking of Socrates and Plato, Joseph Heller captures the delightful irony in the philosophies of the two intellectual giants and the complexity of Plato’s relationship and portrayal of Socrates: 

“[Socrates] was a dedicated philosopher who had no philosophy, an educator without curriculum or system of education, a teacher without pupils; a professor who professed to know nothing; a sage with faith that a knowledge of virtue exists unborn inside each of us and might, perhaps, be brought to life through persevering search.

“He did not like books, which should have nettled Plato, who wrote so many.

“He had low regard for people who read them.

“He mistrusted books, he said in the Phaedrus, because they could neither ask nor answer questions and were apt to be swallowed whole.  He said that readers of books read much and learned nothing, that they appeared full of knowledge, but for the most part were without it, and had the show of wisdom without its reality.

“He said this in a book.

“The book, though, is by Plato, who denounced dramatic representations as spurious because the writer put into the mouths of characters imitating real people whatever the author wished them to say.

“Plato said this in a dramatic representation, in which he put into the mouth of Socrates and other real people exactly those things Plato wanted them to say”

(Joseph Heller, Picture This, 94).  This novel is fantastic!  That is, if you like history … It takes a painting by Rembrandt of Aristotle contemplating a bust of Homer as its starting point, and then ranges over the vast fields of Greek, Dutch, and modern history, drawing an astonishing number of connections and parallels between the eras.  It’s rough going, if you don’t know much history, but it’s well worth it!

“In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, ‘Please God, don’t let me look poor.’  In the year 2000, they prayed, ‘Please God, don’t let me look old.’  Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled.  The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility” (Tom Wolfe,  Hooking Up, 9). 

Speaking of the literary philosophy Deconstructionism, Wolfe waxes brilliant:  “They began with the hyperdilation of a pronouncement of Nietzsche’s to the effect that there can be no absolute truth, merely many ‘truths,’ which are the tools of various groups, classes, or forces.  From this, the deconstructionists proceeded to the doctrine that language is the most insidious tool of all.  The philosopher’s duty was to deconstruct the language, expose its hidden agendas, and help save the victims of the American ‘Establishment’: women, the poor, nonwhites, homosexuals, and hardwood trees. 

“Oddly, when deconstructionists required appendectomies or bypass surgery or even a root-canal job, they never deconstructed medical or dental ‘truth,’ but went along with whatever their board-certified, profit-oriented surgeons proclaimed was the last word,” (Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up, 13).