Our sincere apologies to those who tried to view the videos of Steve Lutz and Michelle McCotter but could not. Those video files were corrupted. They have now been repaired.
Back in the day when I was a high school and college student (late 70’s, early 80’s), I recall young people wrestling with the issue of whether or not the opening chapters of Genesis require us to believe that the earth was created in 6 x 24 = 144 hours and that macroevolution could not possibly have occurred. Because I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and the Catholic church doesn’t seem to have a problem with non-literal reading of Genesis, this was not a burning question for me personally. But I remember young evangelicals and their friends arguing about this a lot, and the vast majority aligned themselves with either of these two camps.
1. The world was created in 144 hours, evolution didn’t happen, and if you don’t believe that, you are stepping in deep spiritual doo-doo.
2. The world is billions of years old, evolution did happen, and if you don’t agree you must be ignorant, foolish or intellectually dishonest.
Although these two positions seem like polar opposites, their proponents did agree on one thing: the Bible and Science are at odds. If you believe one, you must discredit the other.
On Sunday, June 13, Steve Lutz visited University Bible Fellowship and delivered a sermon titled Made for Mission based on Jeremiah 29:4-14. This passage is a letter that the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the Jewish exiles in Babylon. Instead of telling them to oppose the idolatrous Babylonian culture, he gave them advice that seemed counterintuitive: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer 29:7).
Steve is a full-time campus minister for CCO at Penn State who specializes in reaching out to students who are culturally distant from Christianity. Steve has been successful in forming relationships with these students and engaging them in Bible study in interesting ways and nontraditional places. He maintains a blogsite called the SENTintel where he posts articles and materials on missional campus ministry. He is also the founder of Commontary, a free online Bible commentary with user-contributed content.
Steve’s message runs about 45 minutes. We have broken up the video into five segments of about nine minutes each. Here is the first segment:
Additional segments continue below.
Tags: Campus Ministry
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) maintained a chapter at Penn State for fifty years (1941-1991), and for much of that time, it was the Christian student fellowship on campus. After nearly two decades of inactivity, IVCF is back. Two full-time staff members — Michelle McCotter and Sara Achenbach — moved to State College in 2009 to restart the chapter. After gathering a core group of interested students, IVCF is an officially recognized student organization once again.
On Sunday, June 13, Michelle McCotter spoke at University Bible Fellowship and gave a brief update about IV at Penn State. After her report, Ruthie — our current Seed President — offered a prayer for Christian unity on campus.
Tags: Campus Ministry
If you are reading this article, then it is likely that you believe in Jesus Christ. I hope that your belief is not simply a mental assent to some doctrinal statements about him (he is God; he died for my sins; etc.) but an actual commitment to trust in him and follow him as your life’s primary directive.
But what about those people who do not believe? Why don’t they accept what we have accepted? What’s wrong with them?
Tags: Faith
If you have read my previous articles, then I hope you are now convinced that what Christians think about the Holy Spirit really does matter.
But maybe you are not convinced. Perhaps you are wondering, “What’s all this fuss about the Holy Spirit?” We do, after all, identify ourselves as Christians or followers of Christ. Shouldn’t our attention be focused on Christ – to trust in him, know him, follow him and imitate him?
Below the surface, Christians have many unofficial, unstated, and untested notions about the Holy Spirit that profoundly impact their spirituality. These ideas casually spread from one person to another and become a de facto orthodoxy, a set of positions that are rarely taught but are nevertheless deeply embedded in the collective psyche of a faith community. In this article, I will try to uncover some of these assumptions and demonstrate that they really do matter. Try asking yourself the following questions.
Tags: Holy Spirit
If you are a Christian, then you ought to call the Holy Spirit “he” rather than “it.” The Spirit is not an invisible power or force, but a person who thinks, communicates and decides. And you ought to agree that the Holy Spirit is God. On that point, Scripture is very clear. For example, Acts 5:3, Peter said, “Ananias,… you have lied to the Holy Spirit.” One verse later, Peter adds, “You have not lied to men but to God.”
In the last post, I argued that the Holy Spirit plays an indispensible role in our understanding of the Christian gospel. We see abundant evidence for this in Scripture. And we see abundant evidence in the history of the Church.
One defining moment in Christian history came in 1054 A.D. in an event known as the Great Schism, when the Church split into Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) branches. The tension between these camps had been building for some time. It was exacerbated by poor communication between leaders from the East who spoke Greek and those from the West who spoke Latin. But the immediate issue that caused these tensions to flare was a seemingly obscure argument about the Holy Spirit known as the filioque controversy. Filioque is a Latin word meaning “and the Son.” The Nicene Creed, which was written in 325 and expanded in 381, declared:
Keller on the Gospel
May 28, 2010 in Commentary, Personal Experience by Ruthie | No comments
Earlier this month, another Seed contributor, Andrew, and I attended Chapter Camp with Intervarsity. It was an awesome time for many reasons, but really it was all about the bible study. That consumed our time and minds and energy. We studied the first half of Mark, aka “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We’ll study the second half next summer. It’s not that I’ve never studied any Mark before, but this time I saw God as huge and mysterious, the way he really is. I had so many questions, and so did everyone else. I am so glad that we weren’t satisfied leaving the pieces of Mark at what we’d heard that this or that was supposed to mean for us but kept digging. The great thing is that we prayerfully approached what we didn’t understand, began to understand, and were moved by it. We all came to the table leaving behind what we thought we already knew and just read what Mark had to say. God worked in that. I saw Jesus as love and a man and I was moved to tears when he cured Legion. We let Jesus be Jesus and he met me there. Too often, I don’t experience the reality and magnitude of Jesus when approaching the bible. This time was entirely refreshing.
Just today, thinking about all of this, I found an article by Tim Keller, “Preaching in a Post Modern City.” He gives an interesting perspective on how we live and fail to live gospel centered lives. He talks about how we become the changed people that we desire to be and are supposed to be. Speaking about virtue he says,” it particularly grows by a faith-sight of the glory of Christ and his salvation.” I believe that to be true, that seeing Jesus is powerful and causes us to move. He also says, “Is [the gospel] basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done?”