Owen Strachan

Owen Strachan is assistant professor of Christian theology and church history at Boyce College. He blogs here and is the co-author of the The Essential Edwards Collection.
 

Apr

19

2012

Owen Strachan|10:00 PM CT

Eugene Peterson on the Reading and Writing Life of the Pastor
Eugene Peterson on the Reading and Writing Life of the Pastor avatar

Editors' Note: The aspiring teacher is a devout reader. That's why The Gospel Coalition encourages pastors and lay leaders to read classic works of literature. Eugene Peterson, through books like Take and Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated List, has encouraged many Christians with reading recommendation that will change their hearts and souls, first, and then their public ministry. Boyce College professor Owen Strachan recently sat down with Peterson in New York to learn about the reading and writing life of the pastor.

How has good literature, whether modern, classical, or ancient, shaped you in your pastorate, in your theology?

Good writers are people who pay attention to language, are interested in telling the truth, and are in some ways finding themselves inoculated against the fads of what will sell, what will please. Good literature...

 
 
 
 

Apr

09

2012

Owen Strachan|10:32 PM CT

The Spirituality of Pleasure in The Good Life
The Spirituality of Pleasure in <em>The Good Life</em> avatar

The rappers have taken over.

Rap has been mainstream in America for a while now: Jay-Z plays Carnegie Hall; Pitbull sells, well, everything; Kanye wears skinny jeans and changes fashion overnight. In evangelicalism, however, it has taken longer for it to break into the cultural center. That is the result of numerous factors---race (with some racism sprinkled in), the bipolar nature of much popular rap (either embarrassingly hedonistic or frighteningly nihilistic), and a lack of familiarity with the genre, among other reasons.

In 2012, though, everything has changed. Rappers motivated by the gospel are accomplishing the following: crashing the Billboard album sales charts, touring internationally, freestyling before millions at secular awards shows, sampling John Piper sermons, interning for Mark Dever, shooting around with NBA stars before games, getting shout-outs from Jeremy Lin, and much, much more.
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Apr

08

2012

Owen Strachan|9:00 PM CT

Gabe Lyons Calls the Church to Integrate Faith and Work
Gabe Lyons Calls the Church to Integrate Faith and Work avatar

Editors' Note: The Gospel Coalition's Theological Vision for Ministry advocates for the integration of faith and work, because, "The good news of the Bible is not only individual forgiveness but the renewal of the whole creation. . . .  Therefore Christians glorify God not only through the ministry of the Word, but also through their vocations of agriculture, art, business, government, scholarship." Our churches seek to help people "think out the implications of the gospel on how we do carpentry, plumbing, data-entry, nursing, art, business, government, journalism, entertainment, and scholarship," so they will "work with distinctiveness, excellence, and accountability in their trades and professions."

Therefore we commend other Christians seeking to bridge the sacred/secular divide. Owen Strachan recently sat down in New York with Gabe Lyons, the founder of Q---a learning community that mobilizes Christians to advance the common good in society. They discussed how Q seeks to help...

 
 
 
 

Feb

13

2012

Owen Strachan|1:23 PM CT

The Basketball Star No One Wanted: Jeremy Lin's Unlikely Triumph
The Basketball Star No One Wanted: Jeremy Lin's Unlikely Triumph avatar

The sports world has a historically fraught relationship with complexity. Like caramel on ice cream, opinions of athletes are often formed quickly and harden fast. "Look at his stride---he's got a hitch." "She's too slight---won't be able to get anywhere on the field." "With that wingspan, he'll be able to impose his will on defense." Whether you're torpedoed all the way to the bench from opening tryouts or you make the varsity as a freshman (high school's highest status, just under "Olympian demi-god"), coaches often chart the general course of your fate in a few practices, a swatch of sessions, and that's that.

At least that was the case for many of us. Call it athletic election, the determinative council taken by underpaid youth coaches in Applebee's restaurants around the country. This was true of my experience in basketball, the game that captured me in the 1990s as it did so...

 
 
 
 

Dec

13

2011

Owen Strachan|12:01 AM CT

Tebow, Calvin, and the Hand of God in Sports
Tebow, Calvin, and the Hand of God in Sports avatar


Two days ago on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" telecast, announcer Bob Costas spent two minutes weighing in on the most exciting---and polarizing---phenomenon in sports right now: the Tim Tebow Magical Fourth-Quarter Show, accompanied by the Denver Broncos players and staff.

Costas, one of the most eloquent and thoughtful voices in sports, suggested that Tebow's recent string of performances was "approaching, okay we'll say it, the miraculous." Many have made similar comments in recent weeks. Costas switched to a more controversial track, however, when he went on to suggest that the God Tebow worships has no interest in influencing the outcome of games. I quote at length from the full transcript:
Again today, Tebow did next to nothing until the waning moments, and then, down 10-0 with two minutes left, he throws
...

 
 
 
 

Sep

14

2011

Owen Strachan|5:30 AM CT

Everything But the Knickers: The Enduring Significance of Francis Schaeffer
Everything But the Knickers: The Enduring Significance of Francis Schaeffer avatar


In a news cycle driven by the latest quotes from Rick Perry, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney, you would not expect to see Francis Schaeffer popping up on the daily ticker. The American expatriate, wearer-of-knickers, connoisseur of Swiss cosmopolitanism, and, above all, philosophically minded Calvinist public intellectual once made national headlines, to be sure. But suddenly he has returned, posthumously torturing the public square with supposed plans of a Christian political takeover, a master-strategy foiled in his day yet rising again in the phoenix of Michelle Bachmann's presidential campaign.

Bad history and considerable ink-spilling aside, all this prompts a question: did Schaeffer ever really leave? A controversy recently erupted in the Twittersphere over this very matter. Alan Jacobs, one of evangelicalism's most astute scholars, wrote in response to the...

 
 
 
 

Jul

01

2011

Owen Strachan|5:00 AM CT

You Can Anger God But Not Lose Him
You Can Anger God But Not Lose Him avatar


Editor's Note: “There is a difference between having a rational judgement that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness," Jonathan Edwards wrote. "A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes.” The Bible often describes our knowledge of God and his gospel with experiential language, using “sense” language like “taste and see” or the “eyes of the heart.” The term Christians have used to identify this emotive knowing is spirituality. Expressions of spirituality have taken many different forms, from Catholic mysticism to Pentecostalism. Evangelicals rejoice in the objective work of Christ in the gospel yet an important aspect of our knowledge of the goodness of God and his saving work is through, what Edwards calls, “the sense of the heart.” That’s hard to define and often harder to bring about. So, over...

 
 
 
 

Jun

02

2011

Owen Strachan|6:00 AM CT

Men, Temptation, and the Gospel
Men, Temptation, and the Gospel avatar

Harvey Mansfield, Harvard professor of politics and 2011 Bradley Prize winner, just wrote a provocative piece on the distinctive characteristics and faults of men for The Weekly Standard.  It's entitled "Manliness and Morality" and I commend it to you.

Several years ago, Mansfield penned the highly controversial book Manliness (Yale, 2006), also worth reading, though the professor operates from a non-evangelical framework and sometimes writes in a swashbuckling style.  Enjoying the freedom only tenure can bring, Mansfield has questioned gender absolutes in the academy and suggested that men and women are different.  These are fighting words in many circles today.  I have benefited from his insights and applaud his courage, even if I have some essential disagreements with him.

Differences Between the Sexes

In...

 
 
 
 

Apr

26

2011

Owen Strachan|5:00 AM CT

The (Welcome) Rise of the Pastor-Theologian: A Friendly Response to Donald Miller
The (Welcome) Rise of the Pastor-Theologian: A Friendly Response to Donald Miller avatar

In a recent piece posted on his blog, Donald Miller wrote the following cris de coeur on the scholarly nature of the American pastorate:
The church in America is led by scholars. Essentially, the church is a robust school system created around a framework of lectures and discussions and study.

Miller laments this situation and suggests that the divisions in evangelicalism flow from academics:
Church divisions are almost exclusively academic divisions. The reason I don’t understand my Lutheran neighbor is because a couple academics got into a fight hundreds of years ago. And the rest of the church followed them because, well, they were our leaders. So now we are divided under divisions caused by arguments a laboring
...

 
 
 
 

Feb

02

2011

Owen Strachan|5:00 AM CT

Lessons in Faith from ‘Jersey Shore’
Lessons in Faith from ‘Jersey Shore’ avatar

Like a roaring, rushing tide of filth and near-bestial behavior, Jersey Shore has broken onto the cultural beach. Surely it will soon fade away; unfortunately for standards of public decency, the tide has not yet receded. This may come as a surprise to some Christians, whose interest in the show ranks just behind belly button lint accumulation and just ahead of embossed Christmas sweater prints.

Lest you mentally revoke my TGC-writing credentials, I have very little experience with this show. Like a car horn beeping its angry tune outside one’s bedroom window, its presence has (however distantly) entered my life, displeased though this makes me.

Somehow, without any real engagement with this veritable MTV franchise, I have become familiar with a key concept of the show: GTL,...

 
 
 
 
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