Introduction Racism is a scourge upon the human race and a prominent theme in today’s social conversation. Racism is a hate-sin and a hate-crime. Its history is as old as the human race andas intractable as evil itself. Its prominence in American history, from slavery to de jure segregation in the South to de facto segregation in the North is a blight upon ournational record. Its eradication is an...  Read More

If anyone qualifies as the godfather, or better, the midwife of contemporary Christian music, it would be Chuck Fromm. From 1975 to 2000 Fromm was the head of Maranatha Music in Costa Mesa, California, the birthplace and source of the contemporary genre in the early 1970’s. He was in the middle of organizing and promoting the hugely popular Friday and Saturday night Christian concerts that were at...  Read More

Francis Schaeffer once encouraged us to imagine walking down the street and encountering a young thug beating up an elderly woman. He is striking her again and again as she clings to the purse he is attempting to snatch. Schaeffer asks, “What does it mean to love my neighbor in that situation?” Unquestionably, loving my neighbor means that I use the force (righteous wrath) necessary to subdue the ...  Read More

It is not uncommon for families to be convinced that they ought to do family worship, to want to do family worship, to talk about doing family worship, and yet fail ever to establish a consistent pattern of actually doing family worship. Men in particular seem easily intimidated, seeing themselves as inadequate, fearful they won’t know what to do, or that they won’t know what to say. We assembled ...  Read More

We did not practice family worship in the house in which I was reared. My parents were good people, Christian people, and church–going people. Yet regular family devotions were not a feature of our home. We didn’t pray together, or read Scripture together, or sing praises together.Consequently, when first exposed to family worship it came to me as a new idea. I had practiced personal devotions for...  Read More

here is my accounting for my sabbatication  Read More

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From 1998 - 2022...  Read More

This year we will follow the same basic calendar of hymns as we have in previous years. This is the second year of the “learn the psalms” format. Last year we sang our favorite 26 psalms (list “A”) four times throughout the year. This year we will sing those 26 psalms once, and add to them 26 new psalms (list “B”), which we will sing three times, once in the morning and twice in the evening. Other...  Read More

Were the Jehovah’s Witnesses right? Among their central boasts is that they have revived the covenantal name of God, the Hebrew YHWH, sometimes pronounced Yahweh and sometimes Jehovah, that Jesus came to restore. Ancient Hebrew has no vowels so the precise pronunciation may never be known. Given the growing practice among Evangelicals of referring in sermons and lectures to Yahweh, one would think...  Read More

For many years I have sensed that our Sundays feel rushed. When years ago the evening service was at 6:30 PM, the time between services was more restful. The extra hour turn-around time made a significant difference. During the pandemic we experienced a few Sundays with a 10:00 AM service (to avoid the on-line congestion at 11:00 AM, you may recall). Many of our members loved it. They thought it w...  Read More

I grew up in a typical evangelical church of the 1960s and 70s. Specifically, it was the First Baptist Church of Dominguez, a Missionary Baptist Church nestled between Carson and Long Beach, California. It was a Bible-believing, gospel-preaching, altar-call-featuring church connected denominationally with a number of churches in Southern California and the farm-rich California central valleys. The...  Read More