Koinonia

Koukl and Estes books Win in Outreach Magazine

Outreach Magazine Announces 7th Annual Outreach Resources of the Year

Outreach magazine is announcing the resources chosen for recognition in its 7th Annual Outreach Resources of the Year issue.

The Outreach Resources of the Year is a celebration of the best books, DVDs and curricula produced to help the Church and Christians reach out in areas such as evangelism, compassionate service and cross-cultural ministries.

Nearly 160 resources published between Nov. 1, 2008 and Oct. 31, 2009, were submitted to Outreach for consideration. Outreach editors narrowed the field to 110 nominees.

The magazine then enlisted the help of an expert for each of 12 categories. Each panelist independently evaluated the nominated resources in his or her area of expertise and selected the best. The experts had the discretion to choose how many resources to recognize in their categories. The expert panelists identified a total of 25 Outreach resources of the Year.

Greg Koukl's Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions was one of three winners chosen in the "apologetics" category. Douglas Estes' SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World was one of three winners chosen in the "culture" cagetory.

Congratulations to our winners!

"Busted" Giveaway Today! Do you know a myth about Christianity?

20 FREE copies of Busted: Exposing Popular Myths about Christianity by Fred von Kamecke are being given away today at the Just A Thought blog.

In order to win a free copy you must (1) leave a comment with a question, myth or pre-conception someone has thrown at you when you share your faith (2) Or share a question about the Christian faith you’ve always wondered about.

The contest is open to everyone REGARDLESS of where you live. The 20 winners will be chosen randomly. An email will be sent to each winner. For full details visit the Just A Thought blog. Fred von Kamecke will also be hanging around the blog to chat.

Let's do some mythbusting!

Z

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Bruce Waltke - New Paper on Evolutionary Process

Bruce Waltke has a new paper posted on The Biologos Foundation website, "Barriers to Accepting the Possibility of Creation by Means of an Evolutionary Process."

Download the full PDF here. (Posted here with the permission of the BioLogos Foundation.)

Other scholarly essays in the BioLogos collection can be found here.

Are the Gospels Reliable?

Fred von Kamecke answers this question in chapter 3 of Busted: Exposing Popular Myths about Christianity. The entire chapter is now available on the Zondervan Academic SCRIBD page.

--Andrew

Influential Books and Authors: Robert M. Bowman Jr. discusses Luther, Erasmus and F.F. Bruce

Each week in Influential Books and Authors we hear from a noted scholar on the author(s) and book(s) that have been most important to them for spiritual and intellectual growth. This week we feature apologist, Robert M. Bowman Jr.

Robert M. Bowman, Jr., has served in apologetics ministry for such organizations as the Christian Research Institute, Watchman Fellowship, and the North American Mission Board, and taught apologetics and biblical studies at Luther Rice University and Biola University. He is author or co-author of a number of books including An Unchanging Faith in a Changing World, Faith Has Its Reasons, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ and the Sense and Nonsense series.

The Mormon Mirage 5 of 5 by Latayne C. Scott

A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today

5 of 5: "Can You Un-Cult a Cult?"

I know that many people are unsure today of the definition of the word "cult." When I was writing one of my books, Why We Left a Cult: Six People Tell Their Stories (Baker), several challenges arose. First, of course, was to formulate a working definition of a pseudo-Christian cult.¹ Second (and, I thought at first, easiest) was to identify groups which qualified to be called cults. The third challenge was finding suitable ex-cultists to interview.

In the course of narrowing down my list of cults, I paused over the Worldwide Church of God. At that time, just after the death of the founder Herbert W. Armstrong, WWCG members began to question many of the former legalistic doctrines, exclusivist teachings, and prophetic speculations of its authoritarian and charismatic founder.

In the end, I decided not to include the WWCG in my list of cults. Much to the dismay of ex-WWCG members (whose angry letters to me still grace cyberspace – see, Mormons, I am an equal-opportunity offender), I acknowledged that I saw a possibility of true change. "I am fascinated with the prospect that a cult, as a group, can turn to God," I wrote in the introduction to my book.

The Mormon Mirage 4 of 5 by Latayne C. Scott

A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today

4 of 5: "It's All About the Story" 

Some Mormons have begun to publicly criticize me for "spending my life criticizing the LDS Church." It’s true that 5 of my 14 books are about Mormonism. However, that’s a fraction of my writings, and until this year the last book I published on the subject was 15 years ago. If I were the rabid dog nipping at the heel of their church, I counter, I certainly wasn’t very consistent. Thus when I felt a call to re-enter into the LDS thought world and examine its sea-changes, I did so with all the enthusiasm of Moses leaving the burning bush as I began to write The Mormon Mirage.

And, at the same time I was researching for this look at the Mormonism of the 21st century, I was also writing a novel, Latter-day Cipher.

Why would someone whose lifetime body of work was almost all non-fiction (books and hundreds of magazine articles and other short works) turn to writing a novel, one with a similar subject to some previous nonfiction books?

The Mormon Mirage, pt. 3 of 5 by Latayne C. Scott

A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today

Agreeing with Spurgeon

The Mormon Mirage is not the only book I wrote about Mormonism. In another, Why We Left Mormonism: Eight People Tell their Stories (Baker), I interviewed seven other people to find out what was effective in reaching them while they were LDS, what mistakes Christians made, what advice they offered. In another, After Mormonism, What? Reclaiming the Ex-Mormon’s Worldview for Christ (Baker), I applied the worldview categories of James W. Sire (The Universe Next Door) and formulated questions and lessons for helping new Christians coming out of Mormonism.

I learned from painful experience, though, that in my own life, nobody knew how to address the needs of a heart broken by a church.

The Mormon Mirage, 2 of 5 by Latayne C. Scott

A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today

Understanding Representational Research

One very useful thing about once being so catastrophically wrong about a god -- and all associated things religious -- is that I am reluctant to say I can never again be mistaken, even in the most crucial areas of my faith.  I have found, as have many ex-Mormons, that such an experience can make one tenuous and fearful. Most specifically, I will never again make the mistake of believing that any one person’s experience with a religious system is normative, or even necessarily reliable.

Probably one of the most useful concepts in my life that has helped me understand the authenticity of the Bible, and so to compare it to less-authentic systems of thought such as Mormonism, is an area of study about which I wrote in my dissertation.

Representational research acknowledges the triadic nature of the things of God. God is triadic. A full understanding of reality shows it to be triadic, consisting of the invisible world of God, linked purposefully by the Holy Spirit to the visible world.¹  Even our own ability to process information about the outside world is triadic.² It is this relationship of facts (the things, events, conditions, etc.) to representations  (images, language, other ways to “access” the facts) which has given me great insight into Mormonism, and buttressed my faith in the Bible at the same time.

The Mormon Mirage, part 1 of 5 by Latayne C. Scott

Latayne C. Scott is the author of numerous books on Mormonism from a Christian perspective, including The Mormon Mirage. She is also a former member of the LDS church. We've asked her to share some thoughts on Mormonism and Christianity with us here at Koinonia.

- Andrew

A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today

1 of 5: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Zondervan’s new edition of The Mormon Mirage contains all the original reasons why I left the LDS Church, after being a faithful, happy, BYU-scholarship, temple-recommend Mormon. But about 50 percent of this new book is comprised of completely new content – necessitated because the LDS Church is one of the most metamorphic, dynamic religious groups of all time.

Rewriting this book was a labor of love and sorrow. Prevalent in the reviews of the book (in both previous and present editions) has been the observation that I am not bitter, nor is my writing vindictive. That’s because I have no such emotions in my heart.

However, it’s easy to understand why there are hundreds of thousands – perhaps even millions – of ex-Mormons who have no such kindly feelings toward the church they left. Many are still processing the feeling of spiritual betrayal that it took me years to overcome. Worse yet, I see an increasing number of people who leave the LDS Church and are not seeking spiritual guidance from anyone or anything. For example, postmormon.org (a non-religious site) logs between 7 and 8 million site visits per month. http://www.rickross.com/reference/mormon/mormon549.html Its discussion boards are lively and often acrimonious. This organization gives ex-Mormons a place for dialogue on its discussion boards and attracts doubters with billboards throughout Utah that proclaim: "You are not alone."