This is the third of three posts in which I’m meditating on Psalm 43:3, “O send out thy light and thy truth,” which serves as Welch College’s motto. In the last post, I talked about truth. In this one I’ll be discussing light. What good is truth if you can’t really...

In this post and the next, I will be continuing the meditation of my last post on Welch College’s motto, from Psalm 43:3, “O send out thy light and thy truth.” Let’s start by discussing truth. We need the truth of the Trinitarian God if we are to make sense of the...

For many decades the motto of Welch College has been taken from Psalm 43:3: “O send out thy light and thy truth.” This has been symbolized in the official College Seal, about which my colleague Dr. E. Darrell Holley wrote the following: “The College Seal represents...

This week I had the opportunity to speak and be a part of a panel discussion at Trevecca Nazarene University's Academy for Preachers Festival. The topic was preaching to the Millennial generation in the next ten to fifteen years. I thought some of my readers might be...

Last week in Salon.com, an article written by Edward L. Rubin appeared entitled “‘50 Shades’ of Confederate grey: Why the Christian right is losing power over Southern morality.” In it, Rubin discusses the fact that the salacious film “Fifty Shades of Grey”—a film...

The Commission for Theological Integrity of the National Association of Free Will Baptists (of which I serve as chairman) sponsors a blog, fwbtheology.com. From time to time, I post a theologically oriented blog post on that website and place a link to it on this...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being with Welch College’s Rejoice! Ministry Team at Heritage Free Will Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio. We were so warmly welcomed by the pastor, Tim Stout, and his growing congregation. This ten-voice ensemble travels across the...

The Commission for Theological Integrity of the National Association of Free Will Baptists (of which I serve as chairman) sponsors a blog, fwbtheology.com. From time to time, I post a theologically oriented blog post on that website and place a link to it on this...

The end of the fall semester is always such a wonderful time on the campus of Welch College. Of course, it’s a hectic time. Students and faculty prepare for exam time, grading, and the other busyness of the end of the semester. Administrators take care of financial...

Recently a friend and former student, Jesse Owens (now a Ph.D. student in historical theology at Southern Seminary) told me about a statement Herbert McGonigle had made about Wesley “raising the ghosts” of John Goodwin and Thomas Grantham. This was very interesting to...

A few years ago, my friend and former student Jacob Riggs asked me to participate in a panel discussion on denominational identity. He sent me a list of possible questions, to which I typed out some rough answers (most of which I never introduced into the discussion)....

Not Just “Sheer Believers” Recently I heard Christian cultural analyst Ken Myers say something that shocked and saddened me: When many evangelicals talk about the Great Commission, what they really mean is not the Great Commission in Matthew 28, but getting people to...

The Commission for Theological Integrity of the National Association of Free Will Baptists (of which I serve as chairman) sponsors a blog, fwbtheology.com. From time to time, I post a theologically oriented blog post on that website and place a link to it on this...

When my September 2014 issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, better known as JETS, came in the mail today, it carried with it a pleasant surprise: an article on the passages in Hebrews that discuss falling from grace by a Reformed-Arminian...

I recently came across a great passage in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France that applies to organizational change. One of Burke’s critiques of the French Revolution is that the revolutionaries wanted change too quickly. But, Burke said, change...

There’s a lot of excitement on the campus of Welch College. A large crop of freshmen arrived on August 21st, met by student leaders (who also serve as peer mentors to the new students), who’d arrived three days earlier for training. Returning students came in on the...

As I said in Part One of this two-part series on preaching, I have never (at least since early adulthood) been a great critic of preaching, except for the sort of topical preaching in which no real expounding of biblical texts is taking place. Like my grandfather, I...

Of the making of definitions of expository preaching there is no end. Of late, in reaction against the overabundance of topical preaching, there has been a return to expository preaching. So a cottage industry has developed of defining expository or expositional...

The Commission for Theological Integrity of the National Association of Free Will Baptists (of which I serve as chairman) has started a blog, fwbtheology.com. From time to time, I will be posting a theologically oriented blog post on that website, and I will place a...

“Rarely does a leader fall completely into either Theory X or Theory Y approaches to leadership. Most people’s leadership is somewhere on a continuum between these two extremes.” [These reflections are intended more for typical CEO-led, employer/employee sorts of...

Rarely do we realize how important the small things we do can be. Many years ago, in a religion course at a community college in Georgia, I taught a young woman who did not believe in God. I felt a burden for her, and my wife and I began to pray for her and talk with...

Last week Welch College participated in the annual Convention of the National Association of Free Will Baptists. This is significant, because Welch is the only educational institution owned and operated by the National Association. Welch was well-represented, and we...

In the last post, we talked about unity—the need for members of Christ’s church to be of one mind, having the same love, in one accord. Today we are going to discuss the greatest enemy of unity, the biggest thing that keeps us from embodying the mind of Christ in our...

In the last post we meditated on what Philippians 2 can teach us about the implications of the mind of Christ for our relationships. We emphasized that the mind of Christ motivates us to love, humility, and unity, and that it necessarily involves unity. What does this...

In my next few posts, I want to meditate on the implications of the mind of Christ for our relationships, as gleaned from the first four verses of Philippians 2. As we put on the mind of Christ, we will realize in community what it means to be the people God designed...

A few weeks ago, I recommended four podcasts on youth ministry from the White Horse Inn. I didn't know at that time how many more podcasts they would post on youth and youth ministry-related topics. They ran four more such podcasts, which I highly recommend to youth...

For more than four decades, the Commission for Theological Integrity of the National Association of Free Will Baptists (of which I serve as chairman) has sponsored an extended Theological Integrity Seminar at the annual session of the National Association. In these...

In my last post, I began talking about my family’s visit to the church Chuck Swindoll planted in suburban Dallas, Stonebriar Community Church. I discussed how he began to see the church drift into a market-driven approach, and the renewal he believed was necessary,...

"When we sacrifice truth on the altar of relevance, our words are no longer relevant." —Chuck Swindoll This past Sunday my family and I had the opportunity to worship at Stonebriar Community Church in suburban Dallas, the megachurch started by Chuck Swindoll fifteen...

I occasionally listen to the White Horse Inn podcast and like most of what I hear, especially when it comes to the subject of the church maintaining kingdom values and priorities in the midst of contemporary secular culture. The White Horse Inn is run by Michael...

The sort of approach I’ve been discussing in the last two posts arises from the second theme I want to talk about in today’s post with some ideas from Proverbs 4—intentionality. Intentionality not only grounds this approach to Christian education, but this approach...

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m worried about the over-emphasis in our culture on experience at the expense of deep, hard thinking about the things of God. If we’re going to sustain the faith in all its enduring wonder and vibrancy into the next generation, then...

In my view, Christian education in the local church is about imparting divine wisdom and knowledge in the context of rich relationships and community. I was recently reading Proverbs 4:1-13 and was struck by how much the culture we live and minister in discourages the...

The 2013-14 academic year at Welch College has come to a close, and what an outstanding year it was. The year ended with a shout last Friday when we conferred degrees on 34 students from ten states and two foreign countries. Students completed degrees in multiple...

I recently came across a great quotation from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, in which the head demon is instructing other demons on how best to tempt human beings. Note that “the Enemy” he refers to in the quotation is God. This is probably more true in our own...

In February I wrote a blog post entitled “Are Arminians Necessarily Synergists?” It was later posted on the Society of Evangelical Arminians site (http://evangelicalarminians.org/j-matthew-pinson-are-arminians-necessarily-synergists/). My friend Jim Leonard was...

“You, O Lord, are a shield for me, My glory and the One who lifts up my head”—Psalm 3:3, NKJV What Does Psalm 3 Mean What a profound encouragement this verse is to me! I can only imagine how much distress David was experiencing when he wrote Psalm 3. He had fled from...

I can remember attending a National Association seminar about twelve years ago. The discussion revolved around the large numbers of retiring missionaries over the next several years. This was compared with the dwindling numbers of students answering the call to...

I recently read a post from Rod Dreher at the American Conservative (americanconservative.com) that I found interesting, and I think most of my readers will find interesting. It consists of a letter he received from a Millennial who changed his mind on same-sex...

The following blog post from Ajith Fernando appeared on the Zondervan Academic blog, Koinoniablog.net. Even though Dr. Fernando uses different categories and labels than I do, we discovered much common ground when he spoke on the campus of Welch College, about which...

In my last post, I discussed what we mean by the word Christian in the phrase “Christian community of faith and learning.” The next word is community. Listen to the primary definitions of this word:  a social group sharing common characteristics or interests and...

Students who are on our campus for very long grow accustomed to hearing the phrase “Christian Community of Faith and Learning.” That is our vision for Welch College: that it will be a Christian community of faith and learning, to use a phrase that has often been used...

I remember with fondness conversations I had with Dr. L. C. Johnson, the founding president of Welch College, before his death. He stressed to me the importance of educating all kinds of students, with all kinds of callings—those called into full-time ministry and...

I want to share with my readers over the next few blog posts some thoughts about my vision as president for Welch College, and I want to start with some reflections on our tradition of faith and learning at Welch. Stewardship of Our Tradition I am convinced that...

Two Groups Now I want to stretch this passage a little to apply to two groups of readers. Some of you might be exactly like the rich young ruler, and you’ve never made any sort of real decision to follow Christ. You may have had some emotional experiences in the past....

The Second Table Jesus talks to the man about the second table of the law, the second table of the Ten Commandments. That second table talks about our duties to other human beings. And Matthew’s account gives Jesus’s summary of the second table of the law—“You shall...

Over the next few blog posts, I want us to take a deep, honest look into our hearts. I want to consider a young man who came to Jesus but wasn’t willing to give up what was most important to him to follow Jesus. And I hope my readers will meditate prayerfully on this...

Even though we offer 40 programs of study, from biology to teacher education, from business to psychology, ministerial training remains the core of what we do at Welch College, and we hope to expand that one day soon with the addition of master’s-level seminary...

It’s my privilege to announce a late luncheon with the theme “Advancing the Gospel through Online Learning” at the upcoming Forum14 conference at Welch College. This event will be held Monday, March 10, at 1:30 p.m. At Welch College, our mission is to educate leaders...

Recently I came across the following quote from John Fawcett’s Christ Precious to Those Who Believe. Fawcett (1739-1817) was a British Baptist minister, theologian, poet, and hymn writer (most famous for writing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”). This quotation gets to...

I am excited to have my good friend Russell Moore speak at this year’s Forum14/Bible Conference March 9-11. Dr. Moore and I have had a growing friendship since he first delivered the Leroy Forlines Lectures at Welch College several years ago. He has since been back to...

Recently I read a blog post by Roger Olson on how one does not have to agree with Arminius to be an Arminian. It can be found here. Olson made several good points in the article, and he is certainly correct in his main assertion that one can differ from the finer...

I am excited about hosting Ajith Fernando at the upcoming Forum14/Bible Conference at Welch College, March 9-11, 2014:http://www.welch.edu/forum14. Ajith Fernando, internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and evangelist, is the teaching director of Youth for Christ...

I want to share with you an excerpt from Francis Schaeffer’s No Little People [1]. Chapter 1 of that book, “No Little People, No Little Places,” was important for me early in my ministry, and I commend it and the entire book to you. With God there are no little...

Do you tend to be process-oriented or people-oriented in your leadership? David McKenna reminds us in Never Blink in a Hailstorm of the need to remember that people in community are those whom we as leaders are leading. Though processes and methods are important,...

For seven decades, Welch College has set aside a day each semester for the entire campus community to give itself to prayer. This past Wednesday was our spring semester Day of Prayer, entitled “Praying the Scripture,” and it was a delight to be involved in. The Day of...

If you are interested in the Arminian-Calvinist debate or the theology of John Wesley, you may be interested in a brief piece I wrote recently for the Gospel Coalition. In the essay, I give reflections on a recent book by the Wesleyan-Arminian scholar Fred Sanders,...

Do you want to become a great leader? We all do. David McKenna’s 12 lessons on leadership in his excellent book Never Blink in a Hailstorm provide wise maxims on outstanding leadership. In the last post, I talked about his first two principles of great leadership. I...

“A leader’s trophies are not etched in brass; they are written in flesh.”—David L. McKenna Are you called to be a leader? If you are, then you know that leadership can be an exhilarating experience. But your level of experience in leadership will determine to what...

“The hungry man needs no help to teach him how to beg.”—William Gurnall Recently over lunch, a friend asked me how I had been stretched most in the past few years. I immediately said that difficulties in life had forced me to realize in a new way that life’s...

The beginning of the spring semester is always an exciting time at Welch College, and right now is no exception. Of course it’s anything but spring. It’s been bitterly cold and gray outside. But the community of faith and learning that is Welch College is abuzz with...

I’ve finally decided to start a blog. For years people have suggested that I start blogging. Many of them have used the argument that the president of our nationally sponsored denominational college needs to be blogging. I suppose this is what finally got me thinking...