Yes, indeed, rumors of my celebrity have been greatly exaggerated . True, I have met many MoS listeners at the Shepherds Conference but nearly all of them have commented on how great it is to have Aimee on the show as this means it is something their wives will listen to as well. And then there was...

Mark McDowell persuaded me to return briefly to Ref21 on the promise of pre-empting the annual TGC/YRR Ashandlentfest and, as a side attraction, the possibility of arousing the Anglicans from their dogmatic slumbers. It plays out here: The trap baited . The bait taken . The trap sprung .

In responding to Todd, I am tempted to make a comment about the church dying from the death of a thousand cliches. 'The story is not the clothes people wear. It's the lives they lead' is almost as good as 'We have a stance on love, and we have a conversation on everything else...

One of the problems with the stadium events of Big Eva to which I have occasionally pointed is that they showcase pastors who by definition do not have pastorates that are in any sense normal. There is thus a danger that they foster unrealistic expectations among potential pastors and even...

The Witherspoon Institute has posted a fine article on parenting LGBT children. You can find it here .

Our Man in Ulster has just brought this 2014 news story to my attention, about a woman charged with assault for taking meth while pregnant. Setting aside the obvious legal issue about the personhood of a baby in the womb in a nation where abortion is allowed by law, the prize for most astounding...

One aspect of Thomas Oden’s life which is both admirable and perplexing is his denominational loyalty. Oden is a United Methodist and it is clear from his autobiography that he is committed to his church and perhaps even optimistic that she might be rescued from all the liberal nonsense with...

One of the striking features of Thomas Oden’s spiritual life is his expansive intellectual appetite, evidenced in both his reading and his writing. From his early liberal passion for radical theological and political literature to his later development of the notion of paleo-orthodoxy, Oden...

The other evening over dinner, a young Roman Catholic friend asked me if I thought evangelicalism would hold firm on gay marriage. I told him I thought a major collapse in the consensus was imminent and also speculated that he would see a similar thing occurring among un-catechized Roman Catholics...

Last week’s Malarkey business was sad. Though the lad involved clearly did wrong, it did not seem to me that he had been motivated by greed, simply by a desire for attention. That does not sanctify the sin but it certainly puts it in perspective relative to other, more high-profile cases of...

The recent terrorist attack in Paris highlights perhaps the great political dilemma of the current age, that of Western freedoms being used to destroy Western freedoms. But perhaps just as importantly, its target was perfectly chosen. Democracy requires more than the legal right to vote. It...

The confusion and contradictory statements emanating from Wheaton College over same sex attraction some weeks ago provoked the Ref Pack into revisiting a topic which Aimee and I have written on before: the cheapening and loss of the category of friendship. That episode airs today. Listeners who...

One of the regular concerns expressed by readers of this blog and listeners to the podcast is the fact that many of the suggestions we make about church life and practice seem to be rather Presbyterian. Some are simply puzzled by this; others are rather offended by it. There is a simple answer: the...

Earlier this year, Scot McKnight kindly invited me to review Theo Hobson's Reinventing Liberal Christianity for his blog. In return, I asked him to review Todd Brenneman's new book, Homespun Gospel. Being myself broadly sympathetic to Brenneman's thesis, I knew that Scot would offer a...

By popular demand, we reprint here the picture of Paul Levy's wedding, as referred to in this week's podcast. We trust it will be a source of comfort and hope for you. Sadly, 'The Encouraging Tour of Paul Levy's Library' video appears to have been pulled from the web. The Top...

A significant part of Thomas Oden's autobiography is taken up with his account of his life in the mainline United Methodist Church and how this was affected by his repudiation of his early liberalism and his discovery of a creedal orthodoxy rooted in the patristic authors. He seems on the whole...

Listeners to this week's podcast who persevere to the (bald and) bitter end are in for a special treat: the voice of the axe wielding Mad Woman calling from the Attic as she rebukes Todd Pruitt for indulging one of his many vices on air...

On this week’s Spin, the Ref Pack deals with various aspects of pastoral ministry and culminates in a discussion of friendship. Three friends discuss friendship, albeit under the unfriendly, cold, and calculating gaze of the Mad Woman in the Attic. Friendship has been devastated in the modern...

In the casual chatter that precedes a Westminster faculty meeting, Greg Beale once commented that a certain person ‘often gives me good advice on my work.’ 'What? Make it shorter?’ was my response. Cue silence, death stare, and a perceptible atmospheric shift from the feeling...

My fellow Ref Packers have drawn my attention to the fact that Kevin DeYoung has republished his (and Ryan Kelly's) part of a friendly exchange we had recently in the British evangelical journal, Foundations . I do not want to rehearse the arguments of my original piece but I do want to...

One of the striking things about Bart Campolo's testimony to his loss of faith is the fact that it was the Bible’s teaching on the illegitimacy of homosexual acts which was a key element in his rejection of Christianity. I say ‘striking’ because it is strangely refreshing to...

When is a person not a person and yet still a person at the same time? Let me put the question another way. If sexual ethics is increasingly built on the sole foundation of consent between the parties, should child sexual abuse be legalized and even encouraged? If, as Ivy League ethicist Peter...

Some months ago, the Ref Pack earned the ire of the Beautiful People when we raised the issue of why a well-know organisation's view of cultural engagement seemed ineradicably middle class and with more than a whiff of the preoccupations of the chatterati about it. The offending article was...

This week's podcast is up, in which the Ref Pack talk about the greatest Reformer of them all. Further, anyone interested in catching a live videocast of a recording of the show, when we will be interviewing Dr Kent Hughes during the Preaching Conference at Westminster, will find a live stream...