DLGP

Doctor of Leadership in Global Perspectives: Crafting Ministry in an Interconnected World

Category: Uncategorized

Enchanted Gardens

By: on June 28, 2014

It was March 1st, 1997.  I had just said, “I do!” to Naomi, who was now my wife.  It was an amazing day filled with family, loved ones and great friends.  Just as special, was our next day walking to our terminal at the airport.  See, being the hopeless romantic I decided to surprise my…

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“Is ‘God Is Dead’ Dead?”

By: on June 27, 2014

“Is ‘God Is Dead’ Dead?” I began my undergraduate studies in the mid-nineteen sixties. It was a time of turbulence and turmoil. President Lynden Johnson rapidly escalated the Vietnam War when he took office following the assassination of President John Kennedy. The social, political and economic upheaval and chaos were rooted in the expanding civil…

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Decline of Religion

By: on June 27, 2014

This week’s reading directly illustrated the fact that religion is being removed from culture across the globe. Eagleton begins by referencing a 2011 survey from Britain which concluded that, “61 per cent of the respondents claimed to have a religion, but only 29 per cent of them claimed to be religious.”[1] I’m not sure if…

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Surrogates and god-shaped holes

By: on June 27, 2014

Most storms are not produced by pressure, but more by de-pressure, a vacuum that draws and pumps masses of air. It’s not always the pushing force that produces a shift and motion, but sometimes also the lack or deficit. Some think, we live in times, were religion is more and more marginalized, up to a…

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Madman For God

By: on June 27, 2014

The parable goes like this….“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—-As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got…

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The Rumors of God’s Death

By: on June 27, 2014

Last night I took myself out for a lovely Lebanese dinner while reading Terry Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God.[i] A you ng family of four came in shortly after I, and was seated across from me. I couldn’t help but be enamored by them; the dad engaging consciously with his young son, while…

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Culture and the death of God

By: on June 27, 2014

  Culture and the Death of God by Eagleton Terry is interesting but admittedly I needed to read it a couple of times to digest his perspective. The author quotes and paraphrases a number of other intellectuals’ works which are perfectly relevant to his viewpoints and require his readers to be familiar with the sources he…

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Will Man Kill God?

By: on June 27, 2014

I have been receiving several malicious ‘hate tweets’ over the last few days in response to my last tweet about my time with leaders and church planters in eastern India and the fact that the church is multiplying there.  The one received today I thought was interesting. It said that people in Pakistan, Afghanistan and…

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The ‘double truth’ of evangelical Christianity

By: on June 27, 2014

Terry Eagleton’ book titled “Culture and the death of God” picked my interested for particular reasons. From the onset, I was impressed by Eagleton’s evidently brilliant layout of the changing relationship in religious affairs, mythology and art during the enlightenment through modernity and in post modernity.  During the course of reading Eagleton’s literature, I found…

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I Can’t Understand What You Are Saying

By: on June 27, 2014

First things first, I felt a lot like Marlin trying to understand the turtle in the movie Finding Nemo,  “You’re cute, kid, but I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”  While I recognize the value and need for us to discuss and unpack the differing influences from the Enlightenment and the transition from modernity to…

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Looking for God

By: on June 27, 2014

One of my favorite stories I have shared with children is about Martin the Cobbler. He is the central character in Leo Tolstoy’s classic called “Where Love Is”. Martin, because of some very difficult situations in his life, has denied God. But through a visit of a missionary and a dream he believes God will…

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Philosophical Headache!

By: on June 26, 2014

I met a fellow benchrest shooter a few days ago and we took the opportunity to have a conversation. He was quite talkative and needed no prodding to begin a long discourse on his reloading process and benchrest shooting style. For the unbaptized, benchrest shooting is an exacting discipline that requires precise and consistent load…

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With a Little Help from my Atheist Friends

By: on June 26, 2014

Culture and the Death of God – Eagleton There are billboards on our interstate highway leading to downtown Grand Rapids that say……”you can be good and be atheist.”  This is quite the shocker in my very religious Reformed area of the United States (the picture I’ve included is more akin to our area!).  Eagleton, in…

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Wanted: Dead and Alive…

By: on June 26, 2014

In his very philosophical and satirical style, Terry Eagleton[1] attempts to uncover the flaws in modern philosophical thought that have attempted to defame religion, specifically Christianity, in Western culture.  His style is very academic; yet he occasionally comes up for air to interpret and relate to a non-academic mind.  Eagleton, to his credit, is arguing…

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God is Dead?

By: on June 26, 2014

Culture and the Death of God by Terry Eagleton is an academic world-wind history of the 300-year funeral for God and the search to replace the idea of God with something else. It’s a project that Eagleton argues has failed and will continue to fail. What’s fascinating to me is that one wouldn’t think of…

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God’s Not Dead

By: on June 26, 2014

Last week, I read Culture and the Death of God by Terry Eagleton. Last week, I also spent ten days in a small village outside of Mukono, Uganda. In the middle of a three-acre farm sits Agape Christian Academy and Orphanage. Fourty-four children, all losing one or both parents to AIDS, live here full-time. Another…

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God is not dead in the UK

By: on June 26, 2014

According to the UK Office for National Statistics, (ONC), Christianity is officially in steep decline in England and Wales. The figure for those who claim to hold to Christianity across all regions in these countries fell from 71.7 percent in 2001 to 59.3 percent in 2011. [1] Even more dramatic is the sharp increase of…

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God, Are You Here?

By: on June 26, 2014

Last week I attended the funeral of a woman, 31 years old, who tragically, inexplicably died. By the estimation of many, she had begun to make straight paths out of the broken roads that had previously defined her. She just graduated from college,  seemingly had much to look forward to. However, now her three children…

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Eagleton’s phoenix, God.

By: on June 26, 2014

In “Culture and the Death of God,” Terry Eagleton takes us on a fast interesting train through the variety of philosophies found in the eras of the Enlightenment, Idealism, Romanticism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism.  He specifically discusses the topic of the Judeo-Christian God and the atheistic strivings that only helped morph God into other forms and…

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