Four Workshops for the Conference “Iron Sharpens Iron”

Friends:

The “Iron Sharpens Iron” conference, which will be held at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa, May 23-25, is an excellent opportunity for church leaders to network with other leaders and be challenged on this year’s topic “The Glory of the Gospel.”  The conference website for registration and further information is here.

The plenary speaker is Dr. Don Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  Don has produced much work on this topic and his sermons can be found here.

I’m scheduled to present four workshops which I want to describe to you in the next few posts.  Here are the titles of my workshops:

The first workshop, “None Dare Call It Heresy: Substitute Gospels and Their Evangelists,” is a study of the concept of heresy in the Scriptures.  Some of the material in this workshop will come from my four Emmaus Journal articles entitled “Whatever Happened to Heresy?”  Those four articles are being published as a small book and will be available soon.

Just one thought on this first workshop:  We live in a culture addicted to choices.  But as Dr. Barry Schwartz points out in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, having numerous choices is not always best.  The term “heresy” means choice.  Those who choose to believe alternative gospels need to be challenged from the Scriptures.  The Apostle Paul warns Timothy:

¹⁶ Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. ¹⁷ Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, ¹⁸ who have departed from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some. ¹⁹ Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” (2 Tim. 2)

Questions:

1.  What contemporary Christian writers come to your mind when you think of the term “heresy”?

2.  While violence against heretics is not condoned in the Scriptures, what are some steps we can take to minimize the damage such teachers do?

Here is a great blog about the Boston tragedy.  Please read it.

 

 

What Are You Working on Now?

Sometimes I have friends or colleagues ask me, “What are you working on now?”  It’s a great question — one that assumes I’m trying to stay active and productive for the Kingdom.  And I really do want my life to count for the Lord.  For those interested, here are several projects that are keeping me out of trouble!

“Iron Sharpens Iron” Conference 2013

1.  I have the great privilege again this year of participating in Emmaus Bible College’s “Iron Sharpens Iron” conference.  The theme of the conference this year is “Defending the Gospel” and our plenary speaker is D.A. Carson.  You can learn about the conference here.  The workshops that I am doing are entitled “Abandon All Hope: Let’s Stop Being Embarrassed about Hell!”, “Made for another World: The Gospel and the Loss of Transcendence”, “None Dare Call it Heresy: Substitute Gospels and Their Evangelists,” “Whose Job is it? Defending the Gospel in a Postmodern, Truth-Decayed Culture” and descriptions can be found here.

2.  I have had a contract for a book entitled something like Twelve Atheists Who Have Trusted Christ for a while — and I really need to make some progress on that project!  My plan is to interview a wide variety of people who would describe themselves as former, serious atheists who came to believe the Good News about Jesus and moved from death to life!  Know anyone I should interview?

3.  This summer I have several workbooks I want to complete.  I’ll be teaching my course “Eternal Destinies” in the Fall semester, so I want to produce something that would help my students understand and respond to the views of heaven and hell held by several world religions (Islam, Judaism, Buddhist, Hinduism) and a variety of cults (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Unitarian Universalists, etc.).  We will also look at some of the so-called “Evangelical” re-tooling of the doctrine of eternal lostness (such as Sharon Baker’s Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment and Rob Bell’s Love Wins).

4.  One of the great privileges of my teaching career has been that of co-teaching a course entitled “The Integration of Theology and Psychology” with Dr. Allan  McKechnie.  We’re both going to be developing a workbook for the Fall offering of this course.  The ten areas of systematic theology (technically known as Prolegomena, Bibliology, Theology Proper, Christology, Anthropology, Hamartiology, Soteriology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology, and Eschatology) provide the outline for the course.  The great thing about this course is that I get all the free counseling that I want — but it is from counseling students!

5.  My first novel, entitled Abandon All Hope: A Novel about Lostness, will be available in a couple of weeks.  This is new territory for me, but I believe I’ve produced a good story.  It’ll be less than 50 pages long and I will be selling copies for $5 + postage to any who would like to read some “theological fiction”!  Let me know if you’re interested.

What are some projects that you are working on?