Cal Newport's book A World Without Email explores the problems that email has brought upon the world of knowledge and how to counteract them. While the book puts "email" in the title, the bigger problem is what Newports calls the "hyperactive hive-mind": having your mind bound back and forth between various messages and therefore constantly…
It's been about a year of COVID. To put the year in perspective, this past Sunday (March 14th, 2021) was the first time that LBC was all together for one service in person indoors since March 15th, 2020. That date will forever be burned into my memory because it was the weirdest Sunday service I've…
When you're leading a ministry, you only have a compass, not a map. You can't predict the future and trying to plan out every little thing often does not work. Yet the allure of planning runs strong in many leaders. Map-Based Planning We often treat planning for ministry like we have a map in our hands: a…
At Centratel, the staff wage scale is 50 to 75 percent higher than our competitors'. How do we measure whether this elevated pay scale is a smart thing to do? That's an easy question to answer: we don't measure it because we can't measure it. Too many variables and too much subjectivity preclude analysis. Instead,…
Stephen Dempster takes a literary approach to the Hebrew Bible in his book, Dominion and Dynasty. By retelling the storyline of the Hebrew Bible with a focus on location (dominion) and kingship (dynasty), Dempster is well-suited to discuss the Davidic covenant which brings both of these themes together. Reflecting on the importance of 2 Samuel…
Thomas Schreiner unpacks the Davidic covenant in his chapter on it in his book, Covenant and God's Purpose for the World. Schreiner sees the Davidic covenant standing in continuity with both the Abrahamic and the Sinai covenant. As king, David and his sons would "represent Israel, and the nation would be blessed through their obedience…
Robert Saucy attempts to provide a mediating position on the Davidic covenant between traditional and revised dispensationalism on the one hand and non-dispensationalism on the other in his chapter on the Davidic covenant in his book The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism. Saucy first examines the Davidic covenant in its Old Testament context and summarizes the…
Walter Kaiser, in his article "The Blessing of David: The Charter of Humanity," seeks to explicate the meaning of the phrase, "this is the torah of man" in 2 Samuel 7:19. Kaiser examines the context of the passage to highlight the unconditional nature of the Davidic promise (305-07). While individuals in David's line can break…
I have learned a powerful lesson from my refrigerator (yes, the appliance) over the years that has helped me navigate difficult situations: "If it smells weird, it is weird." If the smell of a food in the refrigerator is off just a little bit, that probably means that it is going bad. And if it…
After the Mosaic covenant, the next major covenant in the Scriptures is the Davidic covenant. While the word "covenant" does not appear in the classic passage of the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7:1-14), the concepts of covenant-making are clearly there. It may be that classic features of covenant-making ceremonies, such as a sacrfices, do not…
Raising Lazarus 