Posts by Don Johnson
Biblical Preaching – Are We Following the Right Template?
Years ago as a young preacher boy (I embrace the term!), I sat under a young Mark Minnick as he taught a number of us “Pulpit Speech,” a Junior level speech class. The men in that class are well fixed in my memory, some of them among my closest friends to this day. One even…
Read MoreWhat is Worship?
As a follow-up to Dr. Mincy’s thoughts yesterday, I thought it might be helpful to consider this question briefly. The term, worship, has several meanings according to Dictionary.com, but the ones we are most interested in are these: As a noun, “reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any…
Read MoreReview: Finding Truth
Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes Nancy Pearcey Publisher: David C. Cook, 2015 Review by Don Johnson Finding Truth is a relatively recent book (pub. 2015). Others have taken in hand to review it already. For a survey of the main argument of the book, you can see Challies’…
Read MoreOverseeing Church Music without Musical Expertise
The music at our recent conference at First Baptist Church of Troy, Michigan (also see here), was one of the outstanding features of the meeting. It reflected the good gifts God gave to Pastor Harding and his wife which bless their church every week. Many others on their team who contribute to this part of…
Read MoreAudio from the 98th Annual Fellowship Meeting
Last week, I posted a summary of the concluding message delivered at our meeting. Today, I’d like to highlight all the available audio with some highlights from each of them. We have all the files stored here on P&D as well as at the conference site. Monday, June 11 7:00 PM — General Session 1…
Read MoreYoung Man … Are You in Blood Earnest?
the Foundations Baptist Fellowship Annual Meeting report What an outstanding meeting! We heartily commend Dr. Mike Harding and First Baptist Church of Troy for their excellence and graciousness in hosting us for the meeting. The speakers all did an outstanding job. The music was incredible. The whole meeting a blessing. One of our attendees typed…
Read MoreLessons from an English Cathedral
I am visiting in the United Kingdom for a couple of weeks, getting some quality “grandfather time” with two lovely granddaughters. In the process, we are dragging them around to all sorts of historical sites. They appear to tolerate it reasonably well, though I am sure they would rather do something else. One thing we…
Read MoreLessons from the Caffyn Controversy
Can we learn from history? Given the oft-repeated mistakes of men, the adage that answers in the negative seems all too true. In the hope that perhaps we can be an exception, I’d like to draw your attention to Matthew Caffyn and the 17th century. Matthew Caffyn was a General Baptist pastor in…
Read MoreThe Importance of Strong Biblical Leadership
In the headlines, we occasionally see stories of abuse of power and failure of leadership. Some of these stories are of failures at a church or other religious organization. Many voices rise up when these events occur, clamoring for a renovation of church polity, denigrating the status quo, calling for change to forms of church…
Read MoreEvolution and Music
Some weeks ago, I posted an article called, Evolution and Marriage. The basis for that article and this is reading various histories that assume Darwinian progression in every aspect of human existence. In that article, I pointed out that if you hold a Darwinian/Materialist point of view, the notion of gay marriage is just one…
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