Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace was my big reading project last year, and it was excellent. I loved the great epic journey of the book. Of course, any book that large is bound to drag in places, but the characters always kept me going. I enjoyed War and Peace so much at, at one point, …
Continue reading Why I Keep Coming Back to the Lord of the Rings
Explore the history of altar calls and why the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are Christ’s intended, biblically-grounded ways to call us to repentance.
The simple and honest answer to the title's question is: as often as you do. When Christ held up the cup, He said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:25). In other words, there is no explicit command …
Continue reading How Often Should We Take the Lord’s Supper?
Yesterday (February 1) marked the eleventh anniversary of my pastorate at Western Meadows Baptist Church. Here then are eleven thoughts from eleven years of pastoring. CLARITY FOSTERS UNITYTHICK SKIN; TENDER HEARTA SHEPHERD, NOT A CEOPASTORING TAKES TIMETEACH FIRST, AND MAKE BIG CHANGES SLOWLYORGANIZING SERMONS BY YEARTHE PRIMARY WORK IS LARGELY UNSEENREADING WIDELY AND DEEPLYLEARNING THE …
The internet gives us a false omniscience, presenting everything from everywhere to everyone at any time. But we are not God. We were not designed for omniscience. Not even the digital imitation. Yet here it is. Everything. All the time. I can listen to the greatest performances of Mozart, ponder over the most beautiful artwork …
AUTHOR The superscription for the whole book is Song of Songs 1:1: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's." That is why the book is often called the Song of Solomon. Indeed, most evangelical commentators argue for Solomon as the author. A popular speculation throughout church history is that Solomon wrote Song of Songs in …
The New Year is here. Have you already started a new devotional? A devotional is book of sort, often daily, readings. Many have 365 readings for the whole year. They are usually written to be relatable and encouraging. The more theologically robust ones typically reflect on a particular verse or passage of Scripture, sometimes encouraging …
When it comes to sermon preparation, pastors often think of sermons primarily as individual units of study or, perhaps more broadly, as parts of a sermon series, often on a particular topic or book of Scripture. Of course, that is a proper impulse. Each sermon must stand on its own. You never know who will …
Each December 31st I write this post, looking back on the previous year and forward to the new. As you may have noticed, 2025 was quite similar to 2024 here: my writing was fairly sparse. There were two main reasons. First, instead of using my free time to write, I have been devoting it to …
I recently finished reading War and Peace (here is a great three-volume edition), which I picked up this year after coming across a full set of The Great Books of the Western World at a bookstore. It was the original 54-volumed edition and in great condition. So, we bought it. I began looking at reading …
B. C. Newton 