Author Archive

  • 4
    Keep Your Emails!
    I was in St. Louis a few weeks ago and was given a tour of the PCA Historical Center by its director, Wayne Sparkman. The Center is situated on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary. While he was showing us some of the collections, he noted that some major figures in Presbyterian history had kept all of their correspondence and writings, while others had requested...
    by Jake Belder at July 29th, 2009 at 06:07 am
  • 3
    Bookstores on Twitter
    I work at the bookstore at the Orlando campus of Reformed Theological Seminary, and we’ve been slowly experimenting with using Twitter as a way to send out notices about promotions and sales.  We’re slowly building up our number of followers, and we’ve started to garner some business with it. Aside from RTS and Westminster Bookstore, I’ve had...
    by Jake Belder at July 1st, 2009 at 03:07 am
  • 1
    Ministry in a Rural Context
    There is a book at the RTS Orlando Bookstore called Rural Evangelism: Catching the Vision. I haven’t read it yet, though I want to. The author’s intention is basically to help rural congregations avoid stagnation and decline by engaging in evangelism methods tailored to the rural context they find themselves in. Christians in rural settings have some unique...
    by Jake Belder at June 26th, 2009 at 03:06 am
  • 24
    Who Are You?
    When I visited the site this morning, I noticed the little Feedburner reader count on the right side. At that time it said we had 277 people subscribing to this blog. That’s a pretty impressive number. It then occurred to me that with that number, we’ve probably got quite a diversity of readers. We’re glad that we can reach out this big of an audience. That...
    by Jake Belder at May 23rd, 2009 at 03:05 am
  • 4
    Is Seminary Relevant? A Professor’s Perspective
    We had a good discussion here in the last week as we talked about the relevancy of seminary education for today. Tyler Braun told us why he thinks it is still important, and Matt Cleaver offered some suggestions as to why it has lost its relevancy. Yesterday I was browsing through some blogs and came across this post from Professor John Stackhouse, the Sangwoo Youtong...
    by Jake Belder at May 19th, 2009 at 03:05 am
  • 4
    Is Seminary Relevant? A Professor’s Perspective
    We had a good discussion here in the last week as we talked about the relevancy of seminary education for today. Tyler Braun told us why he thinks it is still important, and Matt Cleaver offered some suggestions as to why it has lost its relevancy. Yesterday I was browsing through some blogs and came across this post from Professor John Stackhouse, the Sangwoo Youtong...
    by Jake Belder at May 19th, 2009 at 03:05 am
  • 17
    Is Seminary Relevant? The Contra Argument
    It was entirely coincidental that within about a week of each other, two seminarians would write blog posts on the relevancy of seminary education, one arguing in favor of it, the other against it. I contacted them soon after to see if they would be willing to submit their posts to the site so we could engage a wider audience on the issue, to which they agreed. Yesterday...
    by Jake Belder at May 11th, 2009 at 06:05 am
  • 15
    Is Seminary Relevant? The Pro Argument
    It was entirely coincidental that within about a week of each other, two seminarians would write blog posts on the relevancy of seminary education, one arguing in favor of it, the other against it. I contacted them soon after to see if they would be willing to submit their posts to the site so we could engage a wider audience on the issue, to which they agreed. First...
    by Jake Belder at May 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
  • 1
    Sermons: Illustrations and Analogies
    As far as I can remember, I never once heard a sports-related illustration in a sermon when I was growing up. However, since I have moved to Florida, I have lost count of how many times I have heard them used. My tendency has been to react to this in two ways, and not necessarily in this order: first, to acknowledge the effort of these pastors to contextualize; second,...
    by Jake Belder at April 14th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
  • 10
    Ministry in a Dying Church
    About a month ago, I was sitting in my Tuesday evening class, and of the ten students in the class, there was one I didn’t recognize. During a break I went over to introduce myself and found out that this guy is a pastor in a small church in northern Switzerland and is here on sabbatical for a few months.  I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the past...
    by Jake Belder at March 24th, 2009 at 06:03 am
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