We can hardly believe we’ve come to the end of this series called the Theology of Worship! I hope it’s encouraged you as much as it’s encouraged us. Sometimes I found myself white-knuckling it in order to hang onto love, joy, peace and hope during all the public discord and rancor of 2024, so it’s been really lovely to start out 2025 with this deep dive into worship. It’s been like an oasis, where much like the woman at the well I’ve encountered Living Water and have experienced renewal that I wasn’t even aware my heart was yearning for until it found me. Modern theologian John Ortberg wisely said, “I need to worship because without it I lose a sense of wonder and gratitude and plod through life with blinders on.” We’re wrapping up this series with a super special bow because Jeremy and Adie Camp let Alli and me twist their arms and they’ve come back to help us seal that sense of wonder and gratitude that comes with being a fully devoted worshipper of Jesus Christ. So please grab a cup of coffee, your Bible, a journal and make sure you’re wearing your comfy pants because today’s going to be like a spiritual spa day for your heart. Thanks so much for pulling a chair up to the porch with us, we’re glad you’re here.

Today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology took place very recently at The Kerygma Summit here in Franklin, TN and this particular conversation was kind of the “chips and queso” moment of the whole weekend for me because I had the undeserved privilege of sitting down with some of my favorite female Christian leaders from around the country and gleaning from their collective wisdom. I framed the question that I posed to all of them like this: At sixty I know much less about God than what I thought I knew about Him at forty and what I pretended to know about Him at twenty. But what I now know to be true of God – namely His unconditional love and immutable faithfulness – I know in the very marrow of my bones. Then I asked each of them – many of whom are leading large ministries – what they now know to be true of God in the marrow of their bones. Their answers were gut-level honest, deeply encouraging, appropriately convicting at times, and always God and others honoring. This conversation was a living example of Psalm 68:11 - the Lord announces the word, and the women who proclaim it are a mighty throng. Plus, since these saints came from various streams of the church, it was also a master class in unity and it reminded me of Jesus’s response to John’s question in Mark 9: “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop because he was not one of us.” “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Christian unity is not the same thing as uniformity, y’all. We don’t have to agree on every, single jot and tittle of what is theologically nuanced, but if we can agree on the fact that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way sinners like us can be reconciled with God, as well as the authority of God’s Word, we’re family. Remember the Bible also reveals that a divisive spirit is one of the six things that God hates (Proverbs 9) and whenever possible He calls us to be at peace and harmony with each other (Romans 12). Today’s conversation is going to be like spiritual Gorilla Glue, it’s going to fasten us tighter to our Creator Redeemer and tighter to the community of faith so please grab a cup of coffee or a glass of sparkling water with a wedge of lime or a thimbleful of wheatgrass juice and your Bible – unless you’re trimming your roses, of course; mine have sprouted out with more enthusiasm than Einstein’s eyebrows during the past few weeks of warm weather – and come hang out on the porch with us.

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Today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology is a really special one and it’s especially rowdy too because it took place just a little over a week ago at The Kerygma Summit here in Franklin, TN where almost 1,500 women from across the country – as well as some other countries, I got to meet a lovely backporcher from Tanzania – gathered together to learn more about God and His Word. The teaching team at Kerygma this year was a veritable Who’s Who of Bible scholars, seminary professors and theologians including some of the engaging and enlightening friends we’ve previously connected with on the porch like Dr. Craig Keener and Dr. Scot McKnight. Brooke Ligertwood led worship all weekend, and y’all I can’t wrap words around what happened when she ushered us toward the throne room of Jesus on Friday night, except to say it felt almost transcendent. God’s Spirit revealed Himself to us in a way that left a redemptive mark on my heart, which I hope never fades. You know those moments in time when God effectively wipes the blurred glass that Apostle Paul says exists between us and Glory in a way that allows us to see Him more clearly? He made His presence so accessible this weekend, I’m still in kind of a discombobulated fog of wonder and gratitude. In retrospect, I should have taken off my shoes because it was just that holy. Well anyway, this conversation took place during the course of Kerygma, so I need to warn you that there’s a lot more ambient sound than usual because we were smack dab in the middle of a giant family of faith instead of a controlled studio environment. And I also want you to know that we delved into sensitive subject matter because I explained in detail about how God used a community of believers to save my life when I wasn’t sure I could keep living it. Which means some of the moments we’ll share today are too mature for little ears, therefore I encourage you to wait until after you’ve dropped the kids off at school to join us. That being said, please bring your Bible and a big cup of coffee – unless you’re up to your elbows in suds because that darling Doodle tangled with a skunk again - and come hang out on the porch with us!

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Today’s episode of Back Porch Theology is a continuation of the hope-fertilizing conversation Alli and I got to have with Dr. Craig Keener – a world-renowned New Testament scholar, and commentarian, who currently serves as a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary. Dr. Keener is one of our heroes of faith, who by the way has graciously agreed to be on the teaching team at Kerygma ’24 at the end of April so we’re over the moon about that! He’s widely respected for his scholarship – he’s got a Ph.D. from Duke – but even more so for his gentle compassion. And it’s in that spirit of kind humility that Dr. Keener dismantles the vitriolic yet increasingly popular claims that the Bible and those who order their lives by the promises and parameters prescribed in it are racist, misogynistic, and imperialistic. Mind you, people claiming to know God have often behaved despicably and His Word has been used to promote all kinds of horror throughout history. However, when people use God’s Word to promote the mistreatment, marginalization, and murder of others, they’ve twisted and distorted it into something God Himself never intended because evil is not divinely causative. So grab a cup of coffee and your Bible and come hang out on the porch with us. 

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Today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology took place in Wilmore, KY, on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary, because Alli and I had the phenomenal privilege of spending time with one of our favorite – and I mean one of the most favorite of all our favorites – Bible scholars, Dr. Craig Keener. I quote or cite Dr. Keener all the time because his book on hermeneutics, his commentaries on the New Testament, and his classic Bible Background Commentary are some of the sturdiest scaffolding I’ve built my Christocentric belief system on. He’s the one I paraphrase every time I say, “If you get out of the Bible what you were expecting to get out of the Bible, you need to raise your expectations!” because Dr. Keener is among the wise saints who’ve taught me that the redemptive truisms in this divine love letter we call the Bible are always bigger and better than our finite human minds can comprehend! His life’s work proves that Scripture isn’t a flat text to memorize or a proposition to study, but it provides a way for us to engage with the only true God who sees us and loves us, and is always in pursuit of our hearts. For Alli and I, getting to spend the day with Dr. Keener felt like being junior high kids who love singing in the choir but aren’t particularly melodic, yet we got invited to harmonize with Pavarotti! And the best part about this conversation wasn’t even the wisdom bombs he humbly dropped, y’all - it was how his heart is surely bigger than his extraordinary brain because even though Dr. Keener is a world-renowned New Testament scholar, almost every time he talked about the love Jesus has lavished him with, his eyes welled up with tears. I’m telling you, this man walks with God and just being in his presence helped us lean more fully into our Savior’s embrace. So please grab a cup of coffee (or one of those fancy electrolyte-enhanced waters) and your Bible – unless you’re picking dog hairs off your black jeans, of course – and come spend some time on the porch with us.

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During today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology, Dr. Howard, Alli and I are happily diving into the seemingly heady subject matter of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics comes from the Greek word hermeneutic, which means “to translate” or “to interpret.” And in the context of Judeo-Christianity, hermeneutics refers to the science of interpreting the Bible and is the branch of theology that deals with the principles of exegesis. In the same vein, the term exegesis is etymologically related to the Greek word meaning “to guide” or to “lead out.” Therefore, the basic definition of exegesis is to draw knowledge out of something and in the Judeo-Christian context refers to how Christ's followers can understand and apply the holy Scriptures. Now before you hurl one of your earbuds against the wall in frustration because this is all starting to sound as confusing as the garbled voiceover from an old Godzilla movie, hang with me a minute longer and listen to what Peter said about Paul’s New Testament writing: His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). Even more startling is a verse in John’s Gospel account where surely the Pharisees’ faces got beet red when Jesus admonished them for being clueless Bible bangers with His observation in John 5:39: You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. In other words, those First Century religious elitists had pretty much “mastered” the text of Torah but they’d missed THE MESSIAH in the process! Unfortunately, modern Bible readers can get way off course and still miss Jesus in the text if we dive into Scripture without first praying for discernment, considering the author’s original audience, the socio-historical context, the literary format, and several other factors of sound biblical interpretation. It’s entirely possible to diligently study God’s Word – even memorize portions of it – and misappropriate or distort His promises. So while it’s not necessary to remember the academic definition of terms like hermeneutics or exegesis, much less how to spell them, it is important for us to learn how to wipe the fog off our proverbial lenses before we read this awesome, authoritative, supernatural love story called the Bible. I think today’s episode is going to invigorate our desire to engage with God through His Word. So please grab a mug of your favorite caffeinated beverage and your Bible - unless you’re chopping a slippery onion for homemade chili with a sharp knife, of course – and come hang out on the porch with Ally, Dr. Howard, and me!  

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