John Bowen January 12, 2012 No Comments
Eighteen months ago, Wycliffe College introduced into its M.Div program a so-called “pioneer stream.” The advertising cited the writings of missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, and his call to the church in the West to rise to the challenge of a post-Christendom world, and then concluded:
The kind of leadership that was required for established, healthy churches in [...]
Read more and discuss...
John Bowen March 8, 2007 No Comments
Evangelism has been a preoccupation in many mainline denominations over the past twenty years or so. On one level, this may simply have been a panic reaction to declining numbers and the feeling that evangelism is one way to “get people back to church. My own church, the Anglican Church, was not untypical in proclaiming [...]
Read more and discuss...
In 1984, Haddon Robinson, then President of Denver Seminary, gave an address on the topic, “The Evangelist and the Theologian.”[1] He observed that evangelism and scholarship have generally been estranged during the past two hundred years, to the detriment of both. Yet, Robinson argued, the church needs both “scholarly evangelists” and “evangelistic scholars.” He pointed [...]
Read more and discuss...
John Bowen March 22, 2005 No Comments
A double strand
The title of a book tells you a lot about where the author is coming from. There are two books I use in teaching evangelistic preaching which illustrate this very nicely. One is a book of essays entitled Mastering Contemporary Preaching. (Do you get the picture? Preaching is something which can be “mastered”—as [...]
Read more and discuss...
This lecture is free for reading online, and also for sale in Audio CD format.
Purchase an audio CD for $15 Plus GST and $1 Shipping: [quickshop:Narnia Lecture CD:price:15.00:shipping:1:end]
Listen to the Podcast:
In 1959, C.S.Lewis wrote to BBC producer Lance Sieveking, who had apparently proposed that a movie be made of The Chronicles of Narnia. Here is part of Lewis’ response:
I am [...]
Read more and discuss...
John Bowen April 8, 2004 No Comments
By way of putting this paper in context, I should say that Lewis has been one of my most formative influences from the time I read Mere Christianity as a teenager. I was on staff with IVCF for 26 years, and the last 10 of those were as a campus evangelist, giving lectures on Christian [...]
Read more and discuss...
John Bowen April 8, 2002 No Comments
It has become commonplace in discourse about evangelism to say that evangelism is a process. That is, people come to Christian faith gradually, through a series of influences, and over a period of time which may take months or years. Jesus’ own frequent use of the imagery of sowing and reaping is sufficient testimony to [...]
Read more and discuss...
John Bowen September 29, 2000 No Comments
First of all, I should state that my main interest in this subject is the atonement in evangelistic preaching. By that, I mean preaching whose intended audience is those outside the Christian faith; I mean preaching whose primary intention is to teach, intrigue, draw and challenge the hearers to open their minds and hearts to [...]
Read more and discuss...