This is a letter I’ve written to my American colleagues and friends, hoping to clarify more sharply our different contexts–and how that might shape attitudes, values, priorities and ministry. … More A Letter to My American Friends and Partners: Canada is A Foreign Country
This article will appear in The Christian Courier June 8th 2020. It involves changing faculty requirements at Calvin University, but it has implications for all Christian institutions of higher education: how best to nurture a faithful Christian faculty with a common identity and purpose? How do you navigate between the polar extremes of stifling uniformity … More Belief and Belonging at Calvin University: How Does a Denominational University stay Vibrantly Christian?
This blog was originally published in the Christian Courier April 23, 2018, but its been getting numerous views on my academia account, and so it appears people continue to seek some discernment when it comes to the powerful influence of this Australian church on global worship. I do believe this music is something to resist and use discriminately, even as I play guitar in worship bands that deeply enjoy it. … More The Hillsong Worship Industry: Praise, Performance, and Prosperity
Our COVID struggles have been compared to a “wartime” situation. Well, this week marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of The Netherlands from five years of Nazis occupation, and here I recount the story of my wife’s great-uncle Gaele Visser, who died in the last weeks of World War II. … More Returning to Holland to Liberate Family and Friends
Dr. Elmer Thiessen just uploaded a detailed review of my book The Subversive Evangelical here. He’s friendly, but still does a critical read–both of my book and its subject, Bruxy Cavey, and his church, The Meeting House. … More Bruxy Cavey and The Meeting House: a Short Photographic Introduction
In a time of COVID, socially isolating yourself is now mandated for the common good. But a book exploded on the political scene a few years ago that prescribed it as the survival strategy for a society infected by the corrosive virus of secularism. … More The Ark, the Titanic and a cargo ship to Tarshish: Social Isolation as Temptation in the post-Christian storm
I wrote this awhile ago for an Inklings conference, but COVID has me thinking about the vital role of humour in our lives and in Christian faith: humour as a window to something greater than the present scene. Note the flood of parody songs on YouTube with the world “coronavirus” in the lyrics. Laughter can … More Faithful Laughter: C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Peter L. Berger on Faith and Comedy
