Andy Melvin: The Human Engine Waits

This new album by Andy Melvin will soon be a success. Andy is theologically solid, artistically gifted, and just fun to spend time with. A college friend, Andy is now the worship pastor at The Austin Stone, where no-name Chris Tomlin is known to play from time to time.

The whole album is thoughtful, innovative and worshipful. Liner notes include Scriptures that inspired each song. Here are the lyrics from “Our God Above”:

come and fill us Father
with Your living water
cause these wells we’ve dug are dry
the world we have befriended
has left us empty handed
and only You can satisfy

as we return to You
our spirits are renewed
and our hearts are moved to worship You alone

our God above
we lift you up
to the place that You deserve
within our hearts
and we glorify
the Lord on high
You have no equal on the earth
No equal on the earth

Lord we claim the promise
that the work You started
You’ll be faithful to complete
so we trust in Your might as we offer our lives
as a living sacrifice of praise to You

and we! declare! our love! to You!
yeah we! declare! our love! to You!

New Article at Donald Miller's Burnside

The Burnside Writer’s Collective is “an online magazine presenting an alternative to franchise faith.” A Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) creation, BWC offers articles on “issues relating to social justice, novels relating to humanity, music expressing reality and books strengthening our understanding of God’s heart for the world, for equality and whole morality.”

Today they published my article “Pulp Fiction Faith or Universal Faith?” You may comment/interact with the article there. Comments are welcome!

Read an alternate, more robust ending to the article here.

Limitations of Evangelical Theology

Limitations of Evangelical Theology

1.      Unawareness of culture-boundedness of Western theology that leads to an ethnocentric assertion of unswerving rightness.

2.      Over attachment to those forms of Scripture that are most familiar.

3.      Highly academic and disconnected approach to theology and praxis.

4.      Philosophical presuppositions unbalanced.

5.      Theocentric to the exclusion of human experience. High Christology, weak anthropology.

 

Contributions of Anthropology

1.      Provides a better understanding of the culture(s) in which and for whom theology is done.

2.      Provides a better understanding of language in general affecting translation work.

3.      Provides insight into the meaning and relevance of cultural forms.

4.      Provides clarity in what should be considered absolute vs. relative.

Adapted from Charles Kraft, Culture, Communication, and Christianity