The Gospel Coalition

As promised yesterday, we are taking a look back through the past five years of this blog’s history. Here are some highlights from Kingdom People’s first year (October 2006-September 2007).

The first significant blog series that I did was done out of curiosity. Having spent several years in a country dominated by Eastern Orthodoxy, I was curious about Orthodox theology and why some American evangelicals were converting to Orthodoxy while Orthodox adherents in Romania were converting to evangelicalism. To explore the differences, I interviewed two converts who went opposite ways and then pointed out the major fault line between the two traditions: sola Scriptura. 

• Theron’s Story: Why I Left Evangelicalism for Eastern Orthodoxy (November 8, 2006)
• John’s Story: Why I Left Eastern Orthodoxy for Evangelicalism (November 9, 2006)
• Sola Scriptura: The Dividing Line Between the Orthodox and Evangelicals (November 10, 2006)

The most trafficked post of Kingdom People’s first year dealt with the rise of church gossip blogs. I had come across a blog devoted to demeaning and diminishing the ministry of the pastor who had recently followed Adrian Rogers as pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church. I thought the development of publicizing this kind of church gossip would do great harm to churches and ministries, so I wrote a post called “How ‘Saving Bellevue’ is Destroying Bellevue” (February 8, 2007). The Bellevue furor has since died down, but blogs devoted to critiquing mega-church pastors and their ministries have only increased.

Ironically, more damage is being done by the effort to “preserve” Bellevue by ousting Gaines. The people running this Web site are airing their dirty laundry for the whole world to see. Bellevue is suffering, Gaines is suffering, and ultimately Memphis is suffering because the reputation of a great church has now been stained and will probably suffer reproach for several years. The church’s credibility in the community is eroding. There are people all over the country and the world who are logging on to SavingBellevue.com and reading the gossip.

Here’s an article that still challenges me today, and it’s one of my first blog posts that was published in print: “The Upside-Down Resume” (May 10, 2007).

Have you ever felt as if you were swimming upstream against a current of paperwork? When I plunged into the seminary application river, I expected an invigorating swim. Instead, I was swept away by the details that flooded my mind as I sought to enhance my résumé. Two weeks later, I finally managed to wade ashore, soaking wet, but triumphantly clinging to a single sheet listing all my shining achievements and spiritual victories. Yet before I had fully savored the moment of accomplishment, the Holy Spirit quietly reminded me of the utter frailty of my good deeds in comparison to the Savior’s cross. Suddenly my mindset was turned upside-down, and the paper that listed my triumphs crumpled into a soggy mess.

Here’s one more post you might find interesting since we are coming up on Reformation Day: “Top Ten Moments in Reformation History” (July 24, 2007).

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact starting and ending dates for the Reformation, but we can point to two events that seem to begin and to culminate the Reformation era: 1517 (Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and his protest against the indulgence system of the Roman Catholic Church) and 1648 (The Peace of Westphalia, treaties that ended both the Thirty Years War and the Eighty Years War and thus put an end to most of the civil disruption caused by the religious movement). Here are the ten most important moments within that time frame…