What I Read Online - 08/24/2012 (p.m.)

• Russell Moore: Student-Loan Debt and the Future of Seminaries – WSJ.com

  • That bleak view of the future is misdirected. First of all, solid theological education, steeped in the classical disciplines, has a long history; so does low-quality religious education by unaccountable schools offering credentials to the lazy and unqualified. Churches and future ministers know the difference. The technological revolution may empower dumbed-down schools, but no more so than the dubious correspondence programs of the past.
  • online programs supplementing rather than supplanting the life-on-life classical theological education.
  • More important, the sorts of questions raised by student debt and ministerial career instability may help reattach ministerial education to its real-world moorings: education with churches in mind, not just theology. In order to train ministers, Protestant communities must abandon the current system in which future pastors discern, almost in isolation, a call from God and then seek out training ad hoc.
  • The seminaries most closely tied to churches would be those most likely to thrive. Churches that have an existing relationship with their young potential pastors will be more likely to support them financially, and to tie their learning to the life of their churches. That would be an improvement over the current education model, an artificially supervised one in which students do pastor-like tasks and are evaluated by strangers. The churches would be better able to discern a call to ministry the way the church always has: by watching ministers minister and, to use biblical imagery, fanning flickering gifts into a flame.

• Church and the College Years – The Gospel Coalition Blog

  • A People, Not a Place
  • Something Jesus Loves
  • The Body of Christ
  • God’s Main Weapon in this World
  • The Only Eternal Institution in the World
  • The “local” church has a more specific definition, but it does not belong to a completely different category than the universal church. The local church is a localized and organized manifestation of the universal church. This means that everything we’ve been saying about the “church” can also, in general, be applied to the local church. We can’t obey the Bible’s instructions about life in the universal church unless we live them out in the context of a local church body.
  • Observing this pattern, we understand the local church as a localized manifestation of the universal church that meets regularly for the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments, under the leadership, direction, and discipline of elders.
  • Go to Church
  • Join a Church
  • Serve a Church

• Aphoristic writing advice from famous authors [15 pictures] – 22 Words

  • 
    • Some great quotes from writers on writing…

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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