Bully's Blog

or The Systemic Power of Leadership

Everything you know about leadership is wrong.

The five-fold Covenant pattern is found throughout the Bible. Those who claim that Deuteronomy’s shape was borrowed from other Ancient Near East cultures need to explain how it could then be found not only in the Ten Commandments, but in the shape of every story going back to Genesis 1. Their theorizing is the result of their deluded, naturalistic worldview, and Christian scholars suck it right up.

Continue reading

Grace Agenda Conference Trailer from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

This looks like good medicine. Guess I will have to settle for the MP3s again. You know Doug and Mark. Ben preaches at Doug’s church and his messages are simple yet profound. They really stick with you. I’ve read Nate Wilson but not heard him speak. I hear he’s also very good.
Continue reading

More on baptism. Jane Dunsworth has posted some well-thought-out strikes and I figure it’s worth posting my parries here.

Continue reading

.

Edwin H. Friedman writes:

“Living with crisis is a major part of leaders’ lives. The crises come in two major varieties: (1) those that are not of their own making but are imposed on them from outside or within the system; and (2) those that are actually triggered by the leaders through doing precisely what they should be doing.”

(A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, p. 27)

The Bible is full of mediators. Creation is full of mediators. Mediation is required for relationship. The Spirit mediates between the Son and the Father because they are distinct.

Continue reading

Another gem from Tim Nichols:

Consider Daniel 9, the prayer of the just man Daniel. Go ahead and read it; I’ll wait.

Did you notice that Daniel identifies fully with his people? “We have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in His laws,” he says — although Daniel himself did, in fact, keep them.  “We have not made our prayer before the Lord our God” — although Daniel did so daily, even at risk of his life.  “Neither have we heeded your servants the prophets,” he says — although he himself was a close student of the prophets, especially Jeremiah.

Continue reading

In the Telegraph, Tim Stanley writes:

Evangelism is complex and nuanced. There are charismatics and fundamentalists, liberals and conservatives, black and white and racially mixed congregations. Its variation accords well with the free-market ethos of America, where each church is part of a thriving marketplace of ideas. Evangelicalism cannot be summarised in one glib column, or damned by the actions of one misguided branch. And while the federal government continues to break down and capitalism only entrenches divides, evangelicalism is a motor of social change.

Continue reading

Here’s a link to some free lectures given by Doug Wilson in the UK this week.

Here’s a snippet from John Barach’s review of Lou Priolo’s The Heart of Anger: Practical Help for the Prevention and Cure of Anger in Children:

Priolo presents two family models, inviting you to determine which one best matches your family.

Continue reading

Have been chewing on Covenant renewal in Communion a lot. I’m starting to think the emphasis on the Table is not so much nourishment as resurrection and commission under oath.

Continue reading