Borrowing Brains: Music Ministry Name

Greg Habegger and I are preparing to start a new website that will make the new hymns that are somewhat buried here at My Two Cents more accessible. We have some technical and artistic gurus ready to help, and we’re hoping to have the site up and running before long. However, we’re missing something important—a [...]

Borrowing Brains: How Can We Make the Lord’s Supper a Spiritual Feast?

Christ gave the Lord’s Supper to the church as a great gift—a perpetual reminder of Himself, the greatest gift. It’s inclusion in Acts 2:42 as one of the four basic practices of the Jerusalem church (along with apostolic teaching, fellowship, and prayer) indicates that it was considered precious by the New Testament church. The attitude [...]

Borrowing Brains: Children’s Ministry Philosophy

I’m addressing the development of children’s ministries in the local church (and especially the church plant) at an upcoming conference. I’ve given the topic a lot of thought in the past, but I’d like to consider some helpful resources, as well. What have you read (books, online articles, etc.) that is particularly helpful in developing [...]

What I’m Reading: Not Even a Hint

I’m preparing for a short topical series during which I’ll be preaching on gender issues, including dating/courtship, marriage, lust, cultivating a “family” mindset toward brothers and sisters in Christ, and parenting in a sensual world. As part of my preparation, I took a couple hours today to reread Joshua Harris’ little book, Not Even a [...]

Borrowing Brains: A Question Concerning God’s Will

Here’s a good question that was submitted by Mark, a pastor-friend who is a frequent reader and occasional commenter:
I am continuing through a study of 1 Timothy and have reached chapter 2, which is turning out to be quite a challenge!
My struggle centers on verse 4 and the word “desires” (thelo). Many commentators seem to [...]

Doctrinal Precision and “Come, Thou Savior of Our Race”

One of the blogs I frequent highlighted this poem by Ambrose of Milan (originally written in Latin as Veni Redemptor Gentium) as a Christmas meditation worthy of reflection. From what I can gather, this particular version was translated into German by Martin Luther, then translated from German into English by Lutheran W. M. Reynolds. Several [...]

A Christmas Arrangement for Your Children’s Choir

In response to my recent request for Christmas music suggestions, Lyn Marshal has provided an original arrangement of O Come, Little Children. She worked on it over the weekend and is glad to make it available for us to use. The pdf is available here, and you are free to copy and distribute it as [...]

Borrowing Brains: Choral Christmas Music

I’m looking for Christmas music for our choir. In particular, I want:
1. A couple of joyous anthems.
2. A couple meditative songs that highlight the humility of the incarnation (along the lines of 2 Corinthians 8:9). Something more suited to a soloist, duet, etc. would be fine, too.
3. A simple song especially appropriate for [...]

What Does “Faithful Children” Mean in Titus 1:6?

This discussion on parenting resulted in an interesting interpretive question: the children of elders are required to be “faithful,” lest their fathers be unqualified. Does that mean that they must be born again, or that they must be well-behaved? It’s an important question, and not an easy one to settle.
Fortunately, Nathan Busenitz of Faith [...]

Borrowing Brains: Deterministic Parenting and Presbyterians

We’ve had a profitable discussion over here regarding the error of deterministic parenting—the idea that a child will know and follow Christ if only his parents do a good job of raising him. Many of the problems with that teaching are mentioned in that post.
What I wonder is this: if the idea that parents [...]