Award: Dr. Bray won an Award of Merit in the 2013 Christianity Today Book Awards for his book, God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology.

Dr. Warren A. Gage

Books: Spring of 2013

The Romance of our Redemption (with Chris Barber)

Preaching morning services: May 24-26, 2013

Corpus Christi Christian Fellowship, conference with Pastor Don Leavell.

July 14-19, 2013

Lamplighter Guild for the Creative Arts, conference with Mark Hamby, Dr, Jeff Myers, and Michael Card.

Mohonk Mountain House (New York)

August 7-13

Pyungkang Chiel Church (Dr. Abraham Park).

Conference with Dr. Bruce Waltke

Seoul, Korea

Lecturing for the Christian Union: September 12, 2013

Columbia University

September 13, 2013

Yale University

Teaching Trip: November 15-24, 2013

Knox Seminary & Rio Vista Holy Land Study Tour to Israel. Students can receive course credit for the trip.

Dr. Sam Lamerson

Teaching: Continuously in 2013

Sunday School at Cross Community Church

Deerfield Beach, FL

Preaching: Dr. Sam Lamerson’s latest sermon preached at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church:

Blog: Follow Dr. Lamerson on his blog.

Dr. Michael Allen

Speaking: April 11-12

Bible Backgrounds

Pastorum LIVE

Chicago, IL

Dr. Jim Belcher

Books: In Search of Deep Faith

Pre-order on Amazon

Due out in September 2013

Dr. Jono Linebaugh

Speaking: March 4-6, 2013

Cathedral Church of the Advent’s Lenten Series

Birmingham, AL

All of Dr. Linebaugh’s sermons from this series can be accessed here.

Publications:

God, Grace, and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Texts in Conversation (Novum Testamentum Supplements, Brill, 2013).

Preaching: Dr. Jonathan Linebaugh’s latest sermon preached at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church:

Speaking: February 21-24, 2013

 Liberate 2013 Conference

Dr. Scott Manor

Speaking: 

July 7-11

Society of Biblical Literature 2013 International Meeting

“Diversity or Disharmony: Patristic Writers on the Different Accounts of Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple”

Saint Andrews, Scotland

Dr. Daniel A. Siedell

Speaking:

May 1, 2013

“Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?”

Christ Episcopal Church

Charlottesville, Virginia

May 5, 2013

“Art and the Church”

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Charlottesville, Virginia

Blog: Follow Dr. Siedell on CULTIVARE at Patheos.

Pastor Tullian Tchividjian

Watch Pastor Tullian at LIBERATE 2013

KnoxUTube from Danny Sien on Vimeo.

While it is true that things have changed in China, it is still a communist country and a westerner like me teaching was doubly problematic because not only was listening to me illegal, but the very school in which I was teaching was also illegal.  I was a little nervous at times, but concluded that if these people were willing to take the chance then I could do the same.  They, after all, risked jail.  I doubted that I would be arrested (more probably deported) but I didn’t know for sure.

It was clear to me that most of the students were poor even by Chinese standards.  Yet many had gone to great lengths and sacrificed much to be in the class, and saw my coming as a great and wonderful opportunity to learn.  In other teaching situations, even in other Asian countries I often hear “suggestions” from students about being let out early.  Here I heard genuine requests to be kept late.  I taught from 8:30-5:30 each day (with a lunch break) and the students asked me to come back at night and teach.  When I explained to them that because of jet lag, I was simply too tired to teach at night, they would gather together at night to study what I had taught during the day.

I have taught in many places, both around the U.S. and in other countries, but I don’t think that I have ever felt more loved or appreciated by a group of students than I did in China.  On the last day the translator said to me “the students have a gift for you.”  I was afraid that they had taken what little money they had and purchased something for me but what I received was much more valuable.  They wanted to sing for me a Chinese blessing on my work and travels.  It was a very moving experience.

The Gospels tell us that the Kingdom goes forth whether we wake or sleep.  In China the Kingdom is moving ahead thanks to the bravery and commitment of these gracious brothers and sisters.

In spite of the small difficulties (I’ll tell you about Chinese beds in the next post), I was proud to be the first representative of Knox Seminary to teach in China and thankful to One Hope (a wonderful missions organization with contacts all over the world) who made my trip possible.  You supporters of Knox can be assured that the faculty are not just sitting in the ivory tower of academia, but are putting “boots on the ground” to train Christians all over the world.

While in the country I saw the great wall, which was spectacular (I’ll write more about this later).  I witnessed amazing Chinese acrobats.  I walked on Tianamen Square and entered the Forbidden City.  Yet nothing was so amazing as what God is doing in China.  Please pray for my friends in this part of the world.  They are beautiful children of God committed to sharing the Gospel with those that are around them.  I was humbled to be a small part of this incredible movement of the Kingdom of God.

To be continued….

Photo Album from Dr. Lamerson’s Trip:

Be moved by the truth of the gospel, rather than be motivated by the desire for self-adulation.

As many of you know, I filled the pulpit at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church during the illness and homegoing of our beloved pastor, Dr. D. James Kennedy, as well as throughout the pastoral search.

During the couple of years that I was preaching virtually every week, I had occasion to think about what it meant to be both an academic (a professor at Knox Seminary) as well as a “fill-in” pastor. It was a wonderful time but also a difficult time, as I was teaching a full load of classes as well as preaching to a large congregation and trying to keep them hopeful while we looked for a pastor. I must say that I learned a great deal during this time and that the preaching greatly impacted my teaching. What was it that I learned from being a preacher coming straight from the academy?

1. I LEARNED TO THINK OF THE CHURCH IN ALL OF MY CLASSES.

While one may  think that the church has nothing to do with many of the classes that I teach at Knox (advanced Greek grammar, hermeneutics, and Greek syntax) the truth is that all classes in seminary must have some bearing upon the churches to which our graduates will be called. If my students cannot teach or preach better as a result of learning Greek grammar, then either I should change the way I teach or change the class. The goal of all of the classes at Knox is to make our students better stewards of the word of God and better communicators of that word to the average person on Sunday morning.

2. I LEARNED TO THINK OF HOW THIS ADVANCED INFORMATION MAY BE COMMUNICATED TO THE PERSON SITTING IN THE PEW OR SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS.

Too often the minister or the teacher desires to “show off” the knowledge that they have gained. The real goal of a seminary education is to make the graduate capable not only of understanding deep thoughts and writing about the scripture, but also capable of communicating those thoughts in a clear, easy-to-follow manner. The pulpit or Sunday school podium is no place for the proud. The goal of “dazzling” their hearers, rather than educating them is prideful and of the evil one. We at Knox want our students to come before their listeners with the desire to bless them, not to say things that they cannot understand in an effort to appear “educated.”

3. I LEARNED TO THINK OF HOW THIS PASSAGE SPEAKS OF OUR LORD JESUS.

The scripture is gospel centered. Any passage reminds us of our lostness, our need for a savior, and God’s provision for a Messiah. We seek to remind our students that a message without Christ is not a Christian message. Thus all sermons, lessons, or Bible studies should, in the word of Charles Spurgeon, “make a beeline for the cross” which is the only hope of mankind.

A professor of mine once prayed in class, “Lord may we not seek to master your word, but to be mastered by it.” It is this prayer that the professors at Knox have for all of our students as well as all of our graduates.

In Mortimer Adler’s classic text How To Read a Book he points out that while reading is a fairly simple physical task, it is an incredibly complex intellectual one.  Reading and understanding the author calls for a variety of skills that one continues to sharpen well into adulthood.  Having been on sabbatical over the last semester I have both read a large number of books as well as thought about how one learns to be a better reader. Given the fact that any book can be difficult to read, the Bible calls for even more careful thought and skill, so that the reader does not misunderstand and then incorrectly teach the Scripture.  It is this set of skills that the class in “Hermeneutics” seeks to impart to the students at Knox.

One of the most often heard complaints of seminary graduates is that they never learned a “method” for reading, studying, and teaching the Bible.  The hermeneutics at Knox gives the students a method not only for finding and understanding the meaning of Scripture on their own, but a method for realizing that the entire scope of Scripture points to the grand redemption of God through Christ.  This is sometimes called a “Christ-centered” method for reading the Bible.

The old saying, “If you give a person a fish you feed them for a day, but if you teach a person to fish you feed them for a lifetime,” applies to the hermeneutics class.  The goal is not to give the student answers to many of the troublesome passages in the text, but to teach them to study and find those answers on their own.

There are a variety of tools that we give to the students for this “fishing trip” but one is exceptionally important.   This tool (after the student has prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit) is, of course, the Bible itself.  The students learn that there is no substitute for reading the text, reading it again, and reading it several more times.  It is our desire that students learn to read the Bible in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew), but if that is not possible we teach them to read several (four to six) good translations and to look for the major differences.  This will show them where the translators differ as to what the original implies.

The major lesson that the students in this class should walk away with is that there is no better way to learn about Christ than to read the Scripture.  The “scarlet thread of redemption” runs from Genesis to Revelation and truly understanding the Bible comes from recognizing the story of redemption behind every book of Scripture.  Thus the hermeneutics class can be said to be not “How To Read a Book,” but “How To Read The Book”; the most important book ever written, read, or taught.