Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has performed a valuable service in posting papers presented at meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society.  The library appears to represent meetings  from 2001 to 2005 only, but that still represents hundreds of papers on topics ranging from systematic theology to biblical exegesis to church history to christian counseling and more.  As a pastor I am concerned with making disciples at Beaver Baptist Church, and I am interested in the relationship between spiritual formation and the disciple-making ministry of the church.  It turns out that there is a spiritual formation interest group in ETS, and the site has 12 papers on the subject of spiritual formation (the site says 15, but some are double-counted).

One of the papers that I have found to be helpful is “New Wine in Old Wineskins? The Relationship of Evangelical Thinking on Spiritual Formation and Theological Models of Sanctification” (html, or download the .pdf file here), by Steven Roy, who teaches practical theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  In this paper, Roy compares the approaches to spiritual formation of two evangelical scholars: Dallas Willard as described in his book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, and Bruce Demarest, represented by his book, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality.  These approaches (which turn out to be fairly similar) are compared to three evangelical models of sanctification: (1) The Reformed or progressive model, which holds that progress in sanctification occurs over the course of the believer’s life, and which is never complete in this life; (2) the Wesleyan model, which holds that entire sanctification is possible, coming through a crisis experience, subsequent to regeneration; and (3) the Keswick model, which holds that the believer, through a crisis experience, comes to surrender to the work of the Spirit, resulting in a breakthrough, or turning point in sanctification,  although entire sanctification is not the result.  Roy observes that there is an affinity between the spiritual formation view approach (of both Willard and Demarest), and the Reformed model of sanctification, because there is a common emphasis on lifelong, gradual progress, and because they both are synergistic, that is, they both emphasize cooperation with the grace of God.  Roy assesses strengths and weakness in each author’s approach to spiritual formation, and in general is quite positive about benefits of spiritual formation movement in evangelicalism.  He concludes:

Spiritual formation and sanctification need each other.   Sanctification is not an old wineskin that must be discarded in order to profit from the new wine of spiritual formation.  Neither is spiritual formation a new and weird departure from tried and true discussion of sanctification.  No, both spiritual formation and sanctification need each other.  So, to quote the words of Jesus from another context, What God has joined together, let no one separate.

On Sunday evenings at Beaver Baptist Church  I am teaching a survey of the Bible.  I got the idea from The Story of a Kingdom, a survey of the Bible using principles of biblical theology.  The author, Jonathan Gibson,  credits a number of books on biblical theology, including Graeme Goldworthy’s According to Plan, William Dumbrell’s The Faith of Israel, and Tim Chester’s From Creation to New Creation, all of which are excellent.  You can particularly tell the influence of Goldsworthy.  The only shortcoming for my purposes is that his course is designed for students of English as a second language, thus the lesson outlines are somewhat simple.  So I decided that I would supplement the lessons with my own reading.

One resource that I have found to be quite helpful is book that I feel deserves a wider reputation: Yesterday, Today and Forever: The Continuing Relevance of the Old Testament , by Larry Helyer.  It is not a comprehensive survey, but it treats a number of key periods in the OT and key themes.  The Table of Contents will give you the idea:

1. An Overview of the Old Testament
2. The Old Testament Teaching on Creation
3. The Fall and the Flood
4. The Promise to the Patriarchs
5. The Exodus from Egypt and the Sinai Covenant
6. The Kingdom of God: Part One
7. The Kingdom of God: Part Two
8. The Word and the Spirit: Prophesy in Israel
9. Eschatology of the Old Testament
10. The Way of Wisdom and Worship
11. Epilogue: The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments

This post hardly qualifies as book review, since I am currently reading chapter 5 on the Exodus.  But I can testify to the book’s helpfulness.  For example, in chapter 2 on the Creation, Helyer has a very even-handed discussion of the various approaches to the issue of Genesis chs. 1 & 2 and modern science.  (For the record, I am an “Old Earth Creationist”).  I like a number of his charts and tables, which I have utilized in my handouts, and each chapter has a useful bibliography for further study.  Helyer is familiar with the scholarly literature, and yet incorporates it with a very accessible style.  It’s a book I will recommend to anyone wanting to get a grasp of the Old Testament.

The latest feature I’ve added to the Beaver Baptist Church website is the ability to display slideshows from Picasa photo albums.  The first one is a slideshow from our Easter service.

I’ve redesigned the Beaver Baptist Church website, discarding Microsoft Front Page and installing WordPress.