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Christianity and Politics

(Note: This post is adapted from a talk Joel gave November 1st, 2015 at Mountain Brook Community Church)   People are losing their minds over the disaster that is otherwise knows as US presidential...

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Pop-Christian Spirituality and Leadership Culture: Normalizing the Exceptions

I teach New Testament. I also teach ministry leadership. In my preparations, I am finding that the bestselling contemporary books on the latter stand curiously at odds with much of the material in the...

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The Noise of Pentecost

[Adapted from my sermon this morning at Bethany City Church on Acts 2:1–13. A couple of more posts will follow…]   The first Pentecost was loud. It was an interruption. Today, we may prefer a quiet,...

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Pentecost and the Marvel Universe

[This piece continues a brief series on Pentecost premised on a sermon I preached on Acts 2 at Bethany City Church. See the first installment here.] Jesus told the disciples just days before Pentecost...

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The Only Two Words You Need When You Are Tired of Words

“How Long?!”  These words reverberate. They ring out. On a normal day from my lips they’d sound shrill and tinny like the impatient nagging of a four-year-old on a road trip. Addressed to the Heavenly...

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‘hoi polloi’: Populism, Elitism, and Jesus

“Hoi polloi” is Greek for “the people.” In a post launching a series of other posts on populist anger and elitist aloofness, use of a Greek phrase may seem a bit out of turn. Only an elitist would...

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Jesus: Neither Elitist nor Populist

I have been thinking lately about populism, spurred largely by the “surprise” of Brexit and the “shocking” rise of one Donald Trump. Pundits (a vocation of ill-repute these days) are astonished by both...

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My Doctoral Thesis is Now Published

Six years ago my wife and I were returning to Birmingham, Alabama after a week-long scouting trip to Durham, England. There were two goals: register the kids for school in the UK, and find a place to...

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Writing for both Academy and Church (and Gospel Writing as an Act of...

[My PhD thesis/dissertation has been published, and here begins a multi-post discussion about its content (after a bit of throat-clearing about the book’s audience). See the previous post for a bit...

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Humbled by these endorsements of my book

Writing a doctoral thesis is a journey through rough seas and dark lands. There are moments of oasis, of course, as insights emerge and connections are made. For me, there were also moments akin to...

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