There is knowledge of God and the spiritual nature of man, as well as other types of reality..., that are not reducible to the world dealt with by the so-called "natural" sciences. The idea that knowledge - and, of course, reality - is limited to that world is the single most destructive idea on the stage of life today.

Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.

Theology is just what you really think about God, and if you're going to do that, you'd better use your mind and not just let it be a receptacle - a catch-all for whatever beliefs happen to be passing by.

Prayer is talking with God about what we are doing together.

The idea that everything would happen exactly as it does regardless of whether we pray or not is a specter that haunts the minds of many who sincerely profess belief in God. It makes prayer psychologically impossible, replacing it with dead ritual at best.

The needed transformation is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil (and their corresponding cultures) with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught and with a culture of the kingdom of God.

Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?