A Retrospective

A Retrospective

My employment as a professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary began in January of 1998, over twenty-five years ago. Charles Hauser was dean of the seminary, and he probably had more to do with recruiting me than anybody else. Doug McLachlan was president and...
A Retrospective

A Pastor’s Time Away

Many church members do not understand how their pastors work, how their pastors should be paid, or why their pastors might need time away from the ministry. The result is that churches often expect more than pastors can humanly deliver. Both the pastor and the church...
A Retrospective

A Noted Passing

I first heard of Michael Heiser when I was pastoring in Texas during the mid-1990s. A visiting speaker to our church had recently visited the campus of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna, Minnesota. This speaker commented about the impression that the young...
A Retrospective

Creation as Foundational

When it comes to the opening chapters of Genesis, many conservative Christians spend their energy defending the text against the counter-narrative of evolution. That is right and proper: the theory of evolution entails in all its forms an utterly anti-biblical and...
A Retrospective

Full Circle

In 1968, when I was thirteen years old, my father moved our family from eastern Michigan to Ankeny, Iowa. He was a manager with United Airlines, but he took a demotion so that he could prepare to become a pastor by studying at Faith Baptist Bible College. We moved...