5.5. This post is dedicated to the word “manya,” my daughter’s favorite word. What started as the word for “milk” (spoken in the manner of an Asian tonal language) has now branched out to “Michael” (her uncle), “banana,” “balloon,” and even “clean up” (as in The Clean Up Song). Seinfeld fans may even recall Manya from The Pony Remark (fair question, Jerry, fair question). It’s amazing what this one little word can do. Manya is the David Grohl of my daughter’s vocabulary.
5. Not sure how many of our readers have heard of Meredith Kline, but he was an Old Testament professor at Gordon-Conwell a number of years ago; I went to Gordon-Conwell at the same time as his grandson Jonathan. There is a website up dedicated to him, which includes the audio from classes he taught at a church, including his Kingdom Prologue. I think I’ve tried 3 times to read that book, but could hardly get 5 pages without losing him. Maybe his audio is a little… less dry.
4. Zondervan is giving away a copy of Klyne Snodgrass’ commentary on Ephesians, if you’re lucky.
3. “A Caution for Expository Preaching” by Iain Murray (HT). I’m a fan of expository preaching, though I think there are good and bad ways to do it. Murrary does a good job here.
2. Another interesting scholar/preacher you should listen to is Rikk Watts. Watts is an NT professor at Regent College in Vancouver, and used to preach at a church called The Rock Garden. You can check out his sermons here, especially if you’re into quirky Pentecostal New Testament scholars. Included are sermon series on Mark, 1 Corinthians, Revelation, Isaiah… you get the picture.
1. It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned my love for biblicaltraining.org. They now have Darrell Bock’s Life of Christ class online, free as usual.
The Dave Grohl of your daughter’s vocabulary…I love it!!
Rikk Watts is awesome. I used to rave to everyone about those Rock Garden sermons. The ones on Mark are particularly good. I’m surprised you didn’t mention him being a Gordon Conwell alum.
Yeah, how did I forget to mention that? I’m slipping.
Do you know Jon Kline personally? If so, I wonder if he knows you’re related to me. He was at Cornell as an undergrad, and I met him there when I visited one evening. A couple years later he began driving up to Syracuse every Sunday to go to our church. We had several lengthy debates during that time. Neither of us budged one bit, but both of us enjoyed every minute of it. He brought Tiffany Carson with him one week (she was at Ithaca College at the time), and one of our elders said to me afterward, “we’ve got the children of scholars in our midst!” or something like that. I know Jon’s older brother Joel also. He went to Syracuse during my first few years here and also attended our church.
Speaking of Don Carson, he mentioned Rikki Watts in a talk I just listened to. He says his dissertation brilliantly solves the problem of whether Mark has a new Exodus theme running throughout it. Scholars are about equally split on it, with one side pointing to the clear thematic ties and the other side pointing to the complete lack of linguistic ties to the book of Exodus. Watts argues that it’s all mediated through Isaiah’s new Exodus theme, and the language connections are fully present with Isaiah. I’ve heard Carson mention this dissertation in several talks, but the most recent mention of it is the only one to give the name of the author. It’s nice to know finally who he was talking about, since it turned out to be someone I’ve heard of but don’t know a lot about.
I sure would hate to be in a church using Murray’s model of preaching. Every preacher I know who constructs a sermon out of a verse or two preaches hobby-horses. Almost every preacher I know who preaches series according to a schedule moving through a book of the Bible somehow seems to avoid all the problems Murray assumes will happen while achieving the things he says expository preaching can’t do.
As for Lloyd-Jones, he can keep that kind of preaching. I don’t want 20 sermons on one chapter in Romans. You actually need to move through the book to get a sense of the whole, even if it would be bad to go so quickly that you miss the important details. I’ve tried to listen to Dick Lucas sermons, which seem to me to use the Lloyd-Jones model, and I’ve never gotten through one.
Carson’s arguments in favor of expository preaching are far more convincing.
I’m not sure you read Murray right. Or maybe I’m reading him wrong. I think he’s saying the Lloyd-Jones model isn’t the best one (specifically pointing out that few have Lloyd-Jones gifts). I agree with you. I hate the model of preaching for 5 years on a book because you have to dissect every word, to the point that you aren’t actually talking about the passage anymore. In fact, I had a comment in this post about it and opted to delete it for fear of chasing rabbits. More importantly, I also agree that Carson’s points are better.
I met Jonathan (didn’t know he was “Jon”) once. We had mutual friends, but I don’t think we ever had a class together or anything like that. He certainly seemed nice enough. The word is that he’s incredibly intelligent, which is no surprise given the genes in his family (his father, the younger Meredith Kline, is also quite impressive).
I’ve never read Watts’ dissertation, but have only heard good things. He is, after all, a Gordon-Conwell alum. =) It’s been published, check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Isaiahs-Exodus-Biblical-Studies-Library/dp/0801022517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296707225&sr=1-1.
Somehow my comments about Watts’ dissertation got cut off. No matter, it was simply an excuse to mention the fact that he’s an Gordon-Conwell alum. =)
His dissertation is quite good. I read it years back when I was going through a Rikk Watts kick. Apparently Joel Marcus argues something similar in his book (dissertation?) “The Way of the Lord”, which apparently was done around the same time. He discusses a lot of the new Exodus stuff in his sermons on Mark.
Thanks for reminding me about the Rock Garden lectures. I need to go back and listen to the ones I haven’t heard some time. The Isaiah series is probably pretty interesting. I actually wrote Rikk Watts an email once thanking him for making them available, they had such an impact on me at the time. He was very appreciative. If I remember right, the last lecture on 1 Corinthians has some pretty interesting stuff regarding some of the experiences he’s had in different places.
Bryan:
I guess it’s a fair guess that his “New Exodus in Mark” book is his dissertation (basically)? I’ve wanted that one for a while but never got around to getting it.
Yeah, that’s the same book.