blogging

so, what did y’all do in life before blogging came along? how did we ever get along?

NT Greek Resources

These are the books (tools) I have for the study of Koine (NT) Greek:

Bauer’s A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University Of Chicago Press; 3 Sub edition, 2001). I got it when it first came out and was less than $100 at the time (before ebay and things). It’s the standard lexicon.

Machen’s New Testament Greek for Beginners (Prentice Hall, 1923). If I taught Greek I might use this one, though I really like Black’s too. I learned Greek from Machen and it is still my “baby Greek.” I would say Machen’s approach is more the “old style” but sometimes, older is better! Also, it has Greek to English and English to Greek sentences!

Black’s Learn to Read New Testament Greek (1994 Expanded Edition) (will have to beg God for a way to convince my wife to let me purchase the recently updated edition when it comes out later this year – with the workbook). Black approaches Greek from a linguistic perspective.

Black’s It’s still Greek to Me: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Intermediate Greek (Baker 1998). More of a quick reference guide than Wallace – though very useful and funny!

Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Zondervan, 1997) (Green Cover). The standard Intermediate Grammar – no one should be without it – even if one does not always agree with his conclusions and slight tendency to over-categorize.

I need to get Blass-Debrunner-Funk (BDF) Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature for serious grammar work. It is the Scholar’s grammar.

Aland’s The Text of the New Testament, Revised and Enlarged (Eerdmans 1995 Paperback edition translated by Erroll F. Rhodes). My prof at the time said this and Metzger’s 3rd edition were pretty much on the same level but I think I would have preferred him for us to get Metzger’s edition. This is thick heavy reading on textual criticism of the Greek NT.

Aland’s Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1996). A must for Gospel studies, especially the Greek edition – you simply cannot see the similarities and differences in the English edition. Also, consider Scot McKnight’s, Interpreting the Synoptic Gospels (Guides to New Testament Exegesis) for a decent color coding system when working in the Synopsis.

Fee’s New Testament Exegesis, 3rd edition (WJK 2002). A must have for basic Greek exegesis (so you don’t exit Jesus from your exegesis!) Also good for diagramming and such.

Dean, Scott, and Sparks’ Reading New Testament Greek: Complete Word Lists and Reader’s Guide (Hendrickson, 1993). This is very useful for learning and building vocab.

Kubo’s Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, (Zondervan, 1975) (got this when I audited a Greek class at Fuller NW before I followed the Lord to aGts). It hasn’t been terribly useful for me though I suppose it has for some, it is still in print.

Bible Works 7.0, which has the BDAG/HALOT module, concordances, parsing tools and the like.

and of course the UBS 4th ed Greek NT and Nestle-Aland 27th ed Greek NT (one prof said the 25th is preferred) and Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed.

I was a biblical languages major more than anything else – so more or less I would do theology and biblical studies through the languages. As you can clearly see, I have a spread of “crutches” and actual tools and resources… I don’t use the crutches that much, honest!

Next up is Hebrew tools I possess.

Think I have enough?  If you have any comments or suggestions for other tools, feel free to comment.  

Harran

Not sure if you all read the TNIV blog or not but I was looking over and the latest post by Rick Mansfield writes about the spelling changes made in the updated TNIV. This post is on the spelling differences between Abraham’s brother Haran and the city Harran where Abraham heard God call him to the promised land. Well, that is all interesting but even more so is a comment he made regarding a Wikipedia article (Jim West’s favorite reference resource! ) and made this comment: he writes:

One final interesting tidbit about Harran. According to the Wikipedia article on Harran, legend has it that this is the location where Adam and Eve first stepped when they were first expelled from the Garden. Granted it’s just legend, but isn’t it fitting that it was in Harran where Abraham first heard his call from God to go to the promised land? From the point of expulsion and alienation from God, the journey began to enter into God’s rest. I find this very appropriate–regardless of how one spells the location.

I cannot say much about this (as I knew nothing about it until now) but I did think it was quite interesting, quite interesting indeed!

What say you?

Book Review: The Competent Pastor – Ch1

I have been reading through Ronald Sisk’s recent work: The Competent Pastor: Skills and Self Knowledge for Serving Well (The Alban Institute, 2005) and have found it both challenging and useful.

Sisk seeks to answer two key questions: What does it mean to say a pastor is competent? How does a competent pastor function?

Sisk defines competence as “the ability to do what needs to be done.” He writes:

Sometimes that means understanding yourself and others. Sometimes it means getting some task completed in the church. Always it means keeping a realistic perspective on your own life as a human being, a Christian, and a minister – what works for you and what doesn’t.

I appreciate this definition mostly for what it doesn’t say than what it does say. Competence doesn’t mean one has to be Rob Bell to be a good pastor. Instead, he is saying a good pastor is one who has a strong sense of self-awareness and self-understanding/knowledge. So long as a pastor has a solid sense of identity and calling he or she will serve well.

He then addresses the question of how does a competent pastor function?

A competent minister functions, then, by moving forward toward understanding, resolution, and self-fulfillment. She will be happy in her job or able to find out shy she is not happy, and will be capable of moving forward. He won’t get stuck. Or, at least, when he does get stuck, he’ll know some specific steps to take to get unstuck.

For Sisk, this is his job description in sum, to ensure that the graduates of the Seminary where he teaches as professor of homiletics and Christian ministry graduate at least on track to becoming and functioning as competent pastors.

The first chapter deals with the role of family systems in being a pastor. Our family or origin is a significant factor in understanding how one functions in nearly any capacity – pastor or other. If a pastor is from a family that fought a lot and he or she hates confrontation and avoids conflict then it might explain why his or her church is out of control and run by one or two over controlling people. Does this mean this person should not be a pastor – Sisk would say no, it does not mean this person should not be a pastor. Instead, this is where understanding and awareness comes in. Is this person aware of the tendency to avoid conflict and that it is why the church is out of control? If not, then he or she will probably remain unable to move forward in ministry until he or she comes to awareness of the problem. Once aware, he or she can begin to move forward in resolving the issue of avoiding conflict and regaining control of the church.

Sisk is good to observe that many might try to explain the situation as related to sin and that the pastor needs to repent and change – well, it is not that easy. According to Sisk, in discrediting the power of the past, folks often fail to deal adequately with the conjunction of emotional, behavioral, and spiritual factors in personal and or ministerial development.  This risk is real regardless of one’s spiritual commitment and sincere desire to follow Christ.  As a Pentecostal, I want to affirm Sisk’s comment here and say a pastor can even be baptized with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and still risk not functioning well as a competent pastor due to the influence of family of origin issues on his or her life.

Competence has little to do with how spiritual one is or how sincere one is about that spirituality – it has to do with openness to self knowledge and a willingness to address areas of weakness. Now, this is where Craig S. Keener has a good point in that praying in tongues can help a person receive from the Holy Spirit wisdom and guidance a to areas in a person’s personal life that need addressing. Now the question would be is that person willing to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit? I want to be careful here and not get off track – but I think a combination of understanding family systems and how they influence our lives and our ability to function and spending time in intense prayer with the Lord can bring a lot of growth in a persons ability to function well in ministry.

Will the move forward help the person I used as an example become perfect in dealing with conflict? Not necessarily – but it will help him or her be more aware of his or her personal feelings and responses in the midst of the situation so he or she can act accordingly. He or she will probably always have problems with conflict and or confrontation, but to function will he or she will need to maintain a level of self-awareness and understanding so as to work through these issues. This is how a competent pastor functions – doing what needs to be done so as to be effective in shepherding a church and leading it in the way the Lord has directed.

More to come. Feel free to comment.

a million

how to make a million by age 65…

additions

I am adding Celucien L. Joseph of Christ My Righteousness to my blogroll – he has good things to say.

Since I have become a pastor of a small church I have been doing to researching and have compiled my own “pastoral ministry bibliography” but it grows as I find new books or resources I want to add to it. Presently it is mostly books. So I am adding John Frye’s Jesus the Pastor (Zondervan 2002). Here is a quote: “While we may lift Christ up as Savior, as we bow down to him as Lord, as we marvel at his offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, as we walk with him as Friend, we seem to ignore him as the supreme Senior Pastor.” It is enough of a teaser that I have to read the rest of the book now! Ha!

If interested I will post my bibliography for al to see and use as a resource.

AGTS Spring Lectureship – Craig S. Keener

The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary has posted Dr Craig S. Keener’s lectures on New Testament Missiology on their website for all to hear. You can also hear the lectures via podcast.

A brilliant scholar and passionate evangelist, Dr. Craig S. Keener (M.Div. 1987; 2006 AGTS Alumnus of the Year) is one of the most prolific New Testament scholars today. He has written seven commentaries and six books including Gift and Giver (Baker Academic, 2001), Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Hendrickson, 1992), and Defending Black Faith (IVP, 1997). His 1995 publication of the IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (IVP 1994) has sold over 350,000 copies in nine languages. He spoke at AGTS during the Spring Lectureship Series.

Dr. Craig S. Keener serves as professor of New Testament at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa. He earned his Ph.D. in New Testament and Christian Origins from Duke University in 1991. His passion for racial reconciliation is seen in his commitment to pastoral ministry in inner-city Philadelphia.

Good stuff! Let me know what you think!

BDAG

Is BDAG infallible?  

What say you?  

coveting?

I have a problem….I like trucks. Okay, I know I have a little Mazda B2300 SE that is a 4banger and paid off and will probably last a lifetime…. but still I really like the FORD F150!!

meanwhile…

Is Iran really the threat the President and Media says it is?  

What do you think of Doug Pagitt’s claims about “spreaching“?  

shalom,

The Holy Spirit

Bryan L has a post in which he argues for the tendency of those prescribing to calvinism to have a low view of the Holy Spirit in relation to their doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints (P in the TULIP acronym, which describes the salvation process in calvinist theology).

I think he is right in many cases (there are some charismatic calvinists). He is arguing that the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints seems to not “really take into account the experience of the Holy Spirit in the believers’ lives as evidence of their salvation.”

I would like to take it a step further if I may (at some risk), I think the same can generally be said of Evangelicalism at large – here it is dangerous to generalize because once you do – someone breaks the generalization.  I think Evangelicalism tends to downplay the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Why do I think this? Well, there are several reasons.  

1. First off, open just about any Evangelical Systematic Theology book (with the exception of Grudem and maybe Grenz) and you find only short sections on the person and work of the Holy Spirit – Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology has only 36 pages on the person and work of the Holy Spirit as compared to 181 pages related to Christ and 298 pages on Knowing God.  Though this is only one example, I think it is fair to say that the Holy Spirit often gets the short end of the stick in much Evangelical theology.
2. Evangelicals have a problem with the role of “experience” in faith life and practice.  The is probably largely due to the excesses of the Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave/Apostolic movements – though I say more toward the excesses of Charismaticsand Third Wavers than the Pentecostals per se.  For many evangelicals use of the “e” word (as I call it) is not valid in most conversations regarding receiving the Holy Spirit (otherwise they say that for Charismatics experience trumps scripture).  Rightly so, many believe a new believer receives the Holy Spirit at salvation, but wrongly so, they insist that experience has little if any factor in the receiving of the Holy Spirit – so it is by faith and not by sight.  Part of this lies in a cessationist point of view that what happened on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4ff) was a transitional event and meant only for starting the church and ending with the last of the Apostles.  In my opinion, I see no basis for this claim whatsoever, though Cessationist base this on their interpretation of “when perfection comes” in 1 Cor 13:10 (they see it as the Cannon of Scripture, I and others see it as related to the Parousia).   This is pretty much a never ending debate.  
3. Other Evangelicals may not be completely cessationist yet will want to know where the tongues of fire and the wind are if the event in Acts 2:1-4 is still normal or normative.  
4. There is also the worry of being too over focused on emotionalism (media video footage never helps in this case) which is confused with experience.  Emotionalism and experience are not synonyms.  I think the claim to emotionalism is more rhetoric than fairness – how one responds to experience is going to be different for each person and is to be guided by Scripture.  
5. Many evangelicals (and calvinists) will insist that the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit is to give witness to Christ – so a truly Spirit-filled person and assembly will be a Christ-centered – Christ exalting person/assembly.  I agree with this completely.  At the same time I believe the role of the Spirit in the life of the believer and the church is multi-faceted.  He will teach us all things and remind us of Jesus’ teachings (Jn 14:26);  He will guide us into all truth (Jn 16:13); He will make Christ known to us (Jn 16: 14-15); he will tell us what to say when we are under pressure or when we are persecuted (Mk 13:11). Even so, there is also the issue of charismatic empowerment.  The individual believer will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on him or her – power for what?  Power for witness to Jesus (in both word and deed) – this is the essence of Spirit Baptism (cf. Acts 1:8 realized in Acts 2:4ff).   With this empowerment, I believe, comes the gifts of the Holy Spirit as seen in Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, and Ephesians 4:11 (these are offices but still gifts – “he gave some to be…”).  

I recognize I am not complete and may be inaccurate in my assessment but I think I am on the right track – both Reformed and Evangelical Theology, in general, tend to play down the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer and the community of faith.  

In Reformed Theology it is the Sovereignty of God.  In Evangelical Theology it is the Supremacy of Christ.  In Pentecostalism it is the Power of the Holy Spirit.  I think each have their pluses and each have their own excesses.  Instead of pitting them against each other I think there is plenty of room for blending all three in to a solid Biblical Theology of our Triune God.

However, the blending has yet to take place and is presenting many problems for Pentecostals because Evangelicalism has infused the movement and is causing much doubt and uncertainty in exactly who the Holy Spirit is and how he works in a person’s life.

Please don’t get me wrong, there many good and excellent aspects of Evangelical Theology – they are just weak on the person and work of the Holy Spirit and I think to a fault.