1) Join us at the Larson household for a Cotton Bowl watch party on New Year’s Day. Bring some soda, a side dish, and your favorite Mizzou shirt. Email kevin@karischurch.org for more info.  Kick-off is at 10:30 a.m.

2) Rather than meeting in our C-Groups this week, we’ll all meet in one big group over at Shakespeare’s West. Bring 5 bucks or so and we’ll eat pizza and fellowship together.  Meet us there at 6:30 p.m.

What? Seriously? You’re kidding us, right? It can’t be.

Ever since this controversy hit us about a year ago, I’ve been telling people that this was just another thing that would alienate the younger generation from SBC life– those whose convictions are shaped more by exegesis than tradition.

Check out this recent article from Lifeway entitled, “Under-40 Messengers at SBC ‘Declining Precipitously’”.

Now some could argue that this just reflects the annual convention and not the denomination at large. But I’m not too sure.

And I can say that, thanks to the amazing outpouring of support we’ve received, this 36-year-old is more determined to fight for Scripture within Baptist life and not budge an inch. Here I stand.

Annie Nelson of the Columbia Tribune did another piece on us today, spotlighting the current controversy in the MBC.  The article can be found here.  Annie is a top-notch journalist, and, as usual, I think she described our current struggles quite fairly and accurately.  One thought: I have never received one question about our movie selection for Movies and MindMaps from anyone from the MBC executive board.  That aspect of the story is pretty much news to me.  We at Karis think the movie ratings are pretty arbitrary and aren’t that helpful.  But anytime we have showed a movie with a “restricted” rating (and we try to avoid them), we have, if necessary, skipped through offensive material that could potentially cause a believer to stumble.  We’ve never showed nudity at Karis.  Mr. Marr would have known that if he would have talked to me.  But, as I’ve found through this controversy, people just don’t talk to you.  They prefer to talk about you.  And, as we know from Scripture, that’s not the Lord’s intention for His church.

It looks like Mizzou might not have to play Arkansas at their best (they’re already missing their coach).  Apparently, the top runningback in college football may have done some car shopping recently.  With all the smack-talk the Razorbacks have been doing in the papers, they will really need the guy, for sure.

Read about it here.

I’ve finished up two different books in the last week or so. Let me share them with you.

First, I found Preaching: Pure and Simple in a mailer from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. This book, written by British evangelical Stuart Olyott, is a helpful introduction to preaching. His characteristics of good preaching are helpful– exegetical accuracy, doctrinal substance, clear structure, vivid illustration, pointed application, helpful delivery, and supernatural authority. In addition, his conclusion outlining his method of preparing sermons is good. This is a shorter, easy-to-read introduction to preaching. There are more extensive books out there. But the brevity of this book makes it one I might use with Karis interns in the future.

Second, Every Thought Captive by Richard Pratt was recommended to me by a good friend, John Divito. I had hoped for a bit better explanation of the holes in non-Christian arguments, how they are truly folly. Despite this, I think this would be a great book to hand to someone to introduce him or her to a presuppositional method of defending the faith.

I forgot to link to this the first time I saw it, but as I was going through older articles today, I just had to share this.  We often talk about the “Five Points of Calvinism.”  Mark Dever gives the “Five Points of Criticism.”  Read them here, along with Jonathan Leeman’s helpful sixth point here.

Tom Ascol over at the Founders Blog has these words of gospel for the NFL’s most outstanding quarterback.  You’re right, Tom.  Football was never meant to totally satisfy you.

This summarizes a key goal of “Theology at the Forge,” as well as the overall ministry of Karis:

“The renewed mind.”  The mind of Christ.”  “The Christian mind.”  Harry Blamires popularised this third expression in his book of that title, which since its publication in 1963 has had widespread influence.  By a “Christian mind” he is referring to not a mind occupied with specifically “religious” topics, but to a mind which can think about even the most “secular” topics “Christianly,” that is, from a Christian perspective.  It is not the mind of a schizoid Christian who “hops in and out of his Christian mentality as the topic of conversation changes from the Bible to the day’s newspaper.”  No, the Christian mind, he writes, is “a mind trained, informed, equipped to handle data of secular controversy within a framework of reference which is constructed of Christian presuppositions” (John Stott).

O Source of all Good,
What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,
thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
his self-emptying incomprehensible,
his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:
he came below to raise me above,
he was born like me that I might become like him.

Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace,
to raise me to himself.

Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart he united them in
indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father,
place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face,
and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart,
embrace him with undying faith,
exulting that he is mine and I am his.

In him thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.

From The Valley of Vision