Shadrack Khumalo is not your ordinary pastor. For one thing he stands just over 6 feet 7 inches tall but that is just the beginning of what I’ve come to love about this very special man. He is a rare breed in South Africa: He is a Zulu who speaks Zulu and also fluent English; he pastors a church that looks like the community: 80% black, 15% white and 5% Indian and he clearly isn’t in it for the money. The so-called “Prosperity Gospel” is ubiquitous in South Africa. Every day I meet someone…

One of the things you will have to wrestle with as a Bible reader is what to do with the conquest of Canaan. Some progressive scholars suggest that we should understand the conquest as telling us a great deal about the theological understanding of the ancient Israelites but not much of value about the actual identity and character of God. Basically, they argue that the Israelites ASSUMED that God wanted them to make war on the Canaanites, when in fact, God would never have ordered that. Excep…

In a recent interview discussing his landmark article and subsequent book “Young Restless And Reformed” Collin Hanson was asked about the challenges being faced by groups like T4G and TGC. He replied that one of the greatest threats presently was being posed by “reformed fundamentalists” operating from inside the boundaries of the movement. That caught my attention. What is a reformed fundamentalist? As I continued to listen to him and to others discussing the same phenomenon, slowly but…

I don’t imagine that anyone sets out to become a legalist and yet a great many God-fearing, Scripture-loving, holiness-seeking people inevitably seem to end up there. It happened to the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. They didn’t set out to miss the heart of the law; they didn’t set out to become blind guides to the blind or to take away the key of knowledge, and yet, according to Jesus, that is exactly what they ended up doing. Obviously legalism is something we need to maintain a constant guard…