Category Archives: Institutional Church

The Epigenetics of Emergent Calvinism

Posted on May 21, 2012 by PaulVK

Pt. 5 of The Postmodern Logic Behind Emergent Calvinism Making My Calvinism More Emergent As I worked on the intended “Epigenetics” post last night I had to face the question of how much stuff I’m reporting of is Tim Keller’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church, Missional, theological | Tagged | 11 Comments

The Emergent Bizarro Twins of Mars Hill

Posted on May 18, 2012 by PaulVK

Pt. 3 of The Postmodern Logic Behind Emergent Calvinism The Dream of Resurrecting the First Century At the core of the Protestant ethos is the dream that the root vine of the church of Jesus Christ can be tapped by … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture commentary, Institutional Church, philosophical reflection | 2 Comments

Christianity is not about being nice

Posted on May 16, 2012 by PaulVK

Love I believe Christianity is about learning to love everyone, all the way up to and including our enemies. In most cases our real enemies are not people far off, or people we can push away, speak ill of or … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture commentary, Institutional Church | Leave a comment

More on the Women at Classis Conversation

Posted on April 28, 2012 by PaulVK

Comments from me on the CRC Network Classis Blog on Classes that don’t seat women. Are you saying complementarianism is cultural?  I don’t know that we can have a conversation that asserts knowledge that transcends culture, not because culture cannot … Continue reading →

Posted in CRC, Institutional Church, Saved Blog Comments | 1 Comment

How to evaluate the health of a church?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by PaulVK

This grew out of a Voices discussion on “turn around” churches. Part of the difficulty in church work is figuring out how to evaluate what is going on? Churches are complex communities and it is easy to be reductive in … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church | 1 Comment

A Conservative Apology for Liberal Christianity

Posted on August 12, 2011 by PaulVK

This grew out of a conversation on CRC-Voices about the relationship between the Bible and history, Genesis and Science, and the controversy surrounding the professors at Calvin College and the historical Adam. We have many layers to us. 1. For … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture commentary, Institutional Church | 2 Comments

Why we can listen to 52 sermons a year and never learn a thing

Posted on April 21, 2011 by PaulVK

Got a nice link from Bill Harris on an article about why clear communication isn’t always the best for learning. That link then led me to a good youtube link that talks about why students don’t learn from very clear … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church, Links, theological, Understanding the Bible | 1 Comment

Personality Disorders in the Church

Posted on January 21, 2011 by PaulVK

Chuck De Groat of City Church SF is doing a helpful series on “dealing with difficult people” where he gives some thumbnail sketches of some personality disorders and how they impact the church and the pastor. It’s a good read. … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church | 1 Comment

Telling the Truth in Church

Posted on January 8, 2011 by PaulVK

The Bill Zeller’s Suicide Note posting on CRC-Voices predictably generated some good discussion. A lot of it centering around the questions “can you tell the truth in church.” This was one of my responses that I wanted to save. There … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church | Leave a comment

A note to my little church

Posted on October 26, 2010 by PaulVK

Got a call from a woman on the church phone this morning looking for help for her sister. This isn’t an unusual situation. The deacons and I field “benevolence requests” pretty regularly. What was noteworthy about this request was that … Continue reading →

Posted in Institutional Church, Missional | Leave a comment