study . live . teach
My calling is not so much to “teach at a seminary” as it is to help the church better read and apply the teaching of Scriptures to every day life. So I’m glad whenever I get the chance to teach or preach in the local church. Even better are opportunities to help pastors hone their Scripture reading and preaching skills. I recently had the opportunity to lead a preaching seminary for about 15 Slovak pastors or teachers.
[Read more…]I’ve just recently completed my second preaching series at our home church in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. This series is thematic, dealing with the importance of the Word of God and especially our understanding of its authority, necessity, sufficiency and clarity.
I recently got a question from one of my Slovak seminary students who was wondering if Old Testament prophets went into some state of ecstasy or “prophetic awareness” when God’s will was revealed to them. His question was based specifically on the Slovak Ecumenical version’s translation of Numbers 24:4. Here’s his question.
In the Roháček (a Slovak) version of Num 24:4 we read that Balaam, “fell into a sleep” while the Ecumenical version reads that he was in “a state of ecstasy.” Does this mean that the author is expressing some kind of physical sleep but that during the sleep the person is in a state of (prophetic) awareness?
Beyond just answering his question, walking through the exegesis of this text turns out to be a fruitful exercise for demonstrating why we need to be careful as we interpret small segments of text.
[Read more…]
I always look forward to preaching opportunities. In Slovakia I get to preach on a pretty regular basis but I do enjoy the chance to preach in my native language every once in a while. Since I’m involved in the Creation Project at Trinity I was given the opportunity to preach on Gen 1 as a part of the Scripture and Ministry series at chapel. This sermon is on Gen 1 and it’s tied into the theme of sojourning that they have for this semester in chapel.
At the end of October I also had the chance to preach at our sending church in Davis, IL. There I preached a sermon on the Word of God from John 1:1-18. Click through to see a video of that message.
Here’s the sermon from Genesis 1, preached during chapel at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
In November (just before I left for the theological conference in Atlanta) I completed a sermon series on Proverbs 1-9 that I started way back in October of 2012. Since I don’t preach every Sunday I’d never preached a whole series but shortly after moving to Banská Bystrica
My homiletics professors probably won’t believe this but I just got invited to a conference on the book of Psalms to “preach for preachers.” I never thought that would happen and I’m pretty sure my homiletics professors didn’t either.
Recently I read this blog post by Greg Strand, the Director of Biblical Theology and Credentialing for the EFCA. In the post he challenges us to reflect on the dichotomy of theological academia and ministry. In my post dissertation phase of life–teaching at a seminary and serving as an elder in our church, that tension between theological academia and ministry is where I live.
I sure do appreciate everyone’s prayers.
I felt kind of sure that the foreign police would handle my case this past week but it’s the end of the day on Friday and we’ve still received no word. I can’t imagine it will take any longer than the beginning of next week.
Unfortunately, last week I couldn’t have imagined it taking longer than this week.
In the meantime, some interesting things have happened.
