The Laymens Lounge

“ I’ve found Borger’s vocation to be more similar to a pharmacist than a bookseller. People come to Hearts and Minds [Bookstore] with one deficiency or another. After some listening, Borger prescribes just the right supplement of Al Wolters or Richard Middleton or an obscure gem hidden in a tacky dust jacket… Byron is the Michael Jordan of synthesizing ideas. Each [" BookNotes ”] post is rife with...

In part 2 of our interview with Lutheran/Country Music/Vocation powerhouse, Dr. Gene Veith (part 1 is here), author of “ The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals” (Concordia Publishing House) , we chat country-music Christians (did you know Lyle Lovett and Kris Kristofferson are Lutherans?! Did you know Loretta Lynn’s had a home, now abandoned, in Hawaii a few miles from my...

Attempting to Apply a Mystery to Daily Life Join us as we sit down with Trinity-nuance master Fred Sanders and bombard him with questions on all things Father, Son and Spirit. Dr. Sanders is the author/editor of “ The Third Person of the Trinity Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics”, the modern classic “ The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything” and just released “Fountain of S...

“Eastern Orthodoxy is perceived as an exotic and picturesque remnant from an alien past” -Bartholomew I (the 270th and current archbishop of Constantinople) “It is the stability of thought in Orthodox theology that has generated the greatest interest from my Protestant students, primarily because of their often-new realization that there still exists a “predenominational” and Apostolic Christian w...

Fuel for Ethics from WWJD? Fake it ‘til You Make it? “Kingdom”? Gratitude? Imitation? or Creation? “ As Bavinck works out the concrete content of his ethics in this volume (Reformed Ethics Volume 2), he joins the long tradition of Reformed ethicists and turns to the Decalogue and the notion of duty. That move could be disconcerting for some who have recently turned to the “kingdom ethics” of union...

A glimpse into “Holy Worldliness” across the globe “Through the making of culture, as opposed to simply criticizing it, Christian architects, entrepreneurs, farmers, and city planners offer their neighbors new ways of living and being in the public square.” “The flourishing of one individual requires the flourishing of schools and families, courts and businesses, artist guilds and sports teams, ne...

A Practical Guide to Raise Sons of Consequence "We need to have a vision of the day our sons will leave our homes and work backward from that day with a plan to help them gain the knowledge, skills, character, and experiences they need. This will enable them to move into the world as confident and healthy men. That’s when the questions will start pouring into your mind. What have I given him? What...

Listen in, because the Gospel is not just “true”, but it is actually truly wonderfully good news – and not just in theory but in lived-reality. Dr. Gene Veith , author of “ The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals” (Concordia Publishing House) , serves us up what the ingredients for true joy and true rest in Christ and his finished work.

“You don’t use your job as an excuse to evangelize, but you treat people as full human beings – and part of being a human being is you have spirituality, and they may not even be a Christian, but they are still a spiritual person, and they have spiritual needs." - J. Richard Middleton "The proper way to exercise dromion is through love and generosity and in a world of evil that will inevitably inv...

Christ infuses purpose into every facet of the ordinary. Folding laundry. Weeding the garden. Cooking dinner. Changing diapers. Work in the home can seem so ordinary . Does any of it matter? Is there meaning in our most mundane moments at home? When the work of the home fills our days, it is easy to get disillusioned and miss God’s grand purpose for our work. As image bearers of the Creator who ma...

Before the Fall, we were all artists and poets “Can our churches be beautiful again, and not just promote goodness and truth?... It’s one thing to make our work, our business, our arts and our political endeavors good and even ‘successful.’ It’s another to aspire to make them beautiful. It’s one thing to try educate and raise our children to be good and ‘successful,’ but it’s another to try to rai...

“The Bible became alive to Him, it was not as some Elizabethan artifact but as a living book, appropriate for the gritty lives of butchers, cement layers, radio-preaching mothers, and the drunks who lounged in the alley behind his father’s Butcher shop. People around the world were picking up books with his name on it--picking them up and sensing they’d found a voice that spoke their language. Vas...

Listen in as we sit down with Dr. Bruce Pass and discuss his book “ The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocentrism in Herman Bavinck” . Here we are guided by the hand of Bavinck and Dr. Pass into a Theology that is no mere academic hobby but where Theology is a living-being animated by true religion. Like a heart this living-being pumps blood and life to the needed areas in the body. Dr....

“I immediately saw that neither pious homilies or straightforward religious education were cutting it. Instead, I brought in albums, video and newspaper clips. By exploring the stories behind pop music, entertainment and sports reporting with them I was able to unpack the underlying worldview. Not only does this approach work, it works without any complaints of preaching or indoctrination. Vital i...

“ Our weary hearts long to hear the gospel reverberate around us in surround sound. We hear the voices of our fellow church members and remember that were not in this alone. God has welcomed us into his family .” Listen in as we sit down with Matt Merker, author of “Corporate Worship: How the Church Gathers as God’s People” (Crossway, 2021), asking him about all things worship/singing at church. Q...

Not long ago, Dr. Michael Kruger came across a list of ten principles set forth by proponents of progressive Christianity. They are, in effect, a new Ten Commandments. What’s striking is that they are far less about God revealing his desires and far more about man expressing his own—less Moses, more Oprah. Yet each of these “commandments” is partially true. Indeed, that is what makes this list, an...

Ok, so were saved… Now what? Once we know we are firm in Christ, we ask, along with Luther, what should we do now? We know we don’t perform good works to get saved, or to stay saved, or to improve our salvation, or to impress God… So why do works at all then? We agree with Luther/Wingren saying “God doesn’t need your good works… But your neighbor does.” We are free to work, we are free to return t...

When the desire to be on fire for Jesus is a living hell “Is there a God for those who are not changing anything but diapers? Is there a God for those who simply love their spouse and pour out rarely appreciated affection on their children day after day? Is there a God for the mom who spends what feels like God-forsaken days changing diapers and slicing up hot dogs? Is there a God for the man who...

The Trinity is not a Mere Concept, Idea or Formula Questions to Dr. Sonderegger 1. What did God’s internal relationship look like as Father, Son and Spirit BEFORE anything was ever created? 2. Does understanding their pre-creation relationship explain why the Son was sent by the Father instead of the Son sending the Father to be incarnate and save us? 3. Explain Eternal generation and Is Eternal g...

Dr. Ross Hastings is a pure and utter delight and a fount of wisdom - a medium for compelling truth for the Christian just trying to make it through the day. Bombarded with temptations from within and without, how do we actually wage war, how do we “by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh”, and is this moral battle itself the telos and goal of the lived-Christian-life? What is participat...

In the late 1960s and on into the next decade, Francis Schaeffer regularly received requests from evangelicals across North America seeking his help to replicate his innovative learning community, L'Abri, within their own contexts. At the same time, an innovative school called Regent College had started up in Vancouver, British Columbia, led by James Houston and offering serious theological educat...

We all know Santa Claus didn’t really punch Arius in the face at Nicea (but we still share the memes), but there are a few other urban legends of Church history we need to come corrected on. In this episode Dr. Michael J. Svigel, author of “ Urban Legends of Church History: 40 Common Misconceptions” (B&H Academic), takes us on a fact-checking crusade and puts some serious chinks in the armor o...

Join us as we sit down with Dr. Vincent Bacote , (interview part 2 of 2) (Associate Professor of Theology, Director of Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College) author of “ Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology ” (Brill, 2020) – listen-in as we have a thoughtful discussion on race, properly navigating blind-spots and how to view c...

Join us as we sit down with Dr. Vincent Bacote , (the first of two interviews with) (Associate Professor of Theology, Director of Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College) author of “ Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News In Search of a Better Evangelical Theology ” (Brill, 2020) - listen-in as we have a thoughtful discussion on race, properly navigating blind-spots and ho...

An Introduction, Overview & Step-by-Step Guide “The Book of Common Prayer” seems amazing but having grown up Baptist I have no idea what this thing is and how its to be used. So, we wrangled in the editors of IVP’s release of “ The 1662 Book of Common Prayer ”, Samuel L. Bray & Drew Keane, and asked them everything you need to know on what this thing is all about, how to best use it for pe...