My good friend, Stan Harstine, is a professor at Friends University in Wichita KS.  He and I were Ph.D. students in New Testament together at Baylor. Stan is visiting Zagreb this summer, on his way to Helsinki for the international Society of Biblical Literature meeting.  He will be with us at Biblijski institut for two … Continue reading Discussion of the Gospel of John in Zagreb, 17-19 July

I have posted the first of two lessons on God's covenant with Abraham, and how it serves as the basis for understanding our relationship with God. If you asked me what piece of doctrine can have the greatest impact on your faith and life, I would answer: "Your relationship with God is not a contract, … Continue reading Over at NarrativeDiscipleship.com, …

Over at NarrativeDiscipleship.com, I have posted links to YouTube clips that show three different approaches to making videos of lectures. Just in terms of looks--be as shallow as you want--which of the three looks better?

This excursus, "Disciplemaking and the Problem of Transparency," is the fourth part of my series, "Programming for Discipleship."  This is the second post in the excursus, which I expect to take four posts. In part 1, I talked about the necessity of transparency for disciplemaking. Deep, character-level personal change happens best in very small (3-5 … Continue reading Disciplemaking and the Problem of Transparency, pt 2: Obstacles

This excursus, "Disciplemaking and the Problem of Transparency," is the fourth part of my series, "Programming for Discipleship."  I think the excursus will itself have four parts. I wrote earlier that one essential element of discipleship programming is the accountability group, a small group of 3-5 people including the facilitator, who share honestly and transparently … Continue reading Disciplemaking and the Problem of Transparency, pt 1: Necessity

Beth and I moved to Croatia on 28 February 2017, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY.  Wow; it's been an amazing time. We have spent the past twelve months in prayer, study, and discussion, trying to figure out what I'm doing here.  The sense of calling developed quickly, from the moment I arrived in Zagreb in October … Continue reading Sharpening Our Sense of the Task

Over at Narrative Discipleship, I have just posted the videos of the lesson I taught from Genesis 2-3 on 25 February at Kristova Crkva Kušlanova in Zagreb. Genesis 1 answers the Big Question, “Who is God? What is he like?” Genesis 2: “Who are WE? What does it mean to be human?” Genesis 1 & … Continue reading “I made this”; Genesis 2-3 Answer Big Questions

Croatian culture is a fascinating blend of western and non-western facets, or scripts.  In many ways, it is very Mediterranean (and thus closer to the cultures that the Bible was written in).  One particular cultural script heavily impacts Christianity here, and the presentation of the gospel.  That script is honor and shame. I noticed shortly … Continue reading The Gospel in Non-Western Cultures

Since I posted the first three parts of this series a couple of weeks ago, I've been working on a fourth post that addresses one of the biggest problems with programming for discipleship as I see it. That problem is the difficulty of getting people to embrace transparency. The third part of the series talked … Continue reading Working on “Programming for Discipleship IV”