The Henry Center is pleased to announce that videos of talks presented at the 2009 Conference on Short-Term Missions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

In the summer of 2009, building on the momentum of the Henry Center’s Lima, Peru conference in 2006 (henrycenter.org/international), Dr. Robert Priest (TEDS) led a conference on Trinity’s campus on the topic of short-term mission. The conference brought together scholars, pastors, missiologists, anthropologists, youth pastors, missionaries, students and laity to think biblically and practically about short-term missions.

Miriam Adeney — Associate Professor of Global and Urban Ministries, Seattle Pacific University
“What We Can Learn From China: Short-Term Missions in the Dragon Kingdom | Video

Eric Iverson — Multicultural Integrity Director, Youthworks
“One Cross at a Time: The Mission Agency’s Role in Building the Missional Church” | Video

Oscar Muriu — Pastor, Nairobi Chapel, Nairobi, Kenya
“Short-Term Missions from a Kenyan Pastor’s Perspective” | Video

Kara Powell — Executive Director, Fuller Youth Institute; Assistant Professor of Youth and Family Ministry, Fuller Theological Seminary
“Deep Justice Journeys and STM for Youth”| Video

Robert J. Priest — Director, PhD Progam in Intercultural Studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; Professor of Mission and Intercultural Studies, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
“Megachurches and Short-Term Missions: New Priorities and Paradigms of Mission” | Video

Kurt Ver Beek — Assistant Professor of Sociology, Calvin College
“Different Soils and Different Seeds: Review of Research on STM and Study Abroad” | Video

Robert Wuthnow — Director, Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University; Chair and Professor, Department of Sociology, Princeton University
“Short-Term Missions and the Global Reach of American Christianity” | Video

Panel Discussion | Video

The Center is anticipating a lecture by Dr. Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, on January 20, 2010.  The lecture falls within the Center’s Scripture and Ministry program.  See info about the talk below (and note that it is free and open to all).

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 | Richard Mouw | Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA “Confessions of an Evangelical Pietist”  (1pm in ATO Chapel at TEDS)

The Christian community needs to work at integrating our doctrine, action and piety (”head, hands and heart”). But which takes priority? And a closely related issue: what, in the most basic sense, is the Bible trying to “do” to us? Shape the way we think? Guide us in the activist programs we align ourselves with in the word? Transform our inner life? Obviously, all three are crucial. But Richard Mouw will explain why he keeps coming back to the fundamental need to be guided in everything else by the kind of piety that characterized the “sawdust trail” of our revivalist past.

It’s time to start marking your calendar for the Center’s full slate of spring events.  The following is a partial list of upcoming offerings, all of which are free and open to all:

Scripture and Ministry Series — Richard Mouw January 20-21, 2010

Lecture: Jan 20 | 1PM ATO Chapel

Timothy Series — Wayne Ogimachi Feb 9, 11, 2010

Chapel: Feb 9 | 11AM ATO ChapelChapel: Feb 11 | 11AM ATO Chapel

Scripture and Ministry Series — Christine Pohl March 17-18, 2010

Lecture: Mar 17 | 1PM ATO Chapel

Timothy Series — Dave Johnson April 20, 22, 2010

Chapel: Apr 20 | 11AM ATO ChapelChapel: Apr 22 | 11AM ATO Chapel

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Dr. Josh Moody’s recent Timothy Series lectures and Q&A sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

October 20 & 22, 2009 | Dr. Josh Moody, College Church, Wheaton, IL

Dr. Moody was born in Surrey, England and holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Cambridge University. He currently serves as Senior Pastor of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois and served previously as Senior Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in New Haven, Connecticut beginning in 1999. He has authored three books to date: The God-Centered Life: Insights from Jonathan Edwards for Today; Jonathan Edwards and the Enlightenment: Knowing the Presence of God; and Authentic Spirituality.

“The Necessary Foundation for Biblical Ministry”: 2 Timothy 3:10-17 | Audio
“The Necessary Vision for Biblical Ministry” 2 Timothy 4:1-8 | Audio
Interview Pt. 1 | Audio | Video
Interview Pt. 2 | Audio | Video

1. The Henry Center is pleased to announce that it will offer two Hansen Fellowships in the coming year.  Hansen Fellowships, created by the generous support of G. Walter Hansen, provide two-year fellowships to TEDS PhD students to the tune of $10,000 per year.

Interested TEDS students are encouraged to download the form and turn it in to the Center by January 15, 2010.  DOWNLOAD HERE

2. Media from Craig Carter’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture is now posted.  Visit the Recent Media page to view material from past weeks.

Augustine and the Secular in Christendom and Modernity | Video
Interview | Video

Below is the lecture description:

“Augustine and the Secular in Christendom and Modernity” This lecture addressed the growing relevance of Augustine in debates concerning secular space. Particular attention is given to how Augustine’s City of God delineates a positive conception of secular space and its role in civil society. A distinction between Augustinianism and Triumphalism is made to differentiate Augustine’s conception of the secular from the secularism and statism of many modern statist projects.

What do folks like John Piper, Justin Taylor, Millard Erickson, Thabiti Anyabwile, Paula Fether, and organizations like Associated Baptist Press have in common?

Answer: They all check the HCTU website and listen to its content.

Plenty of other folks have been, too. Let us give you some exciting stats that show how successful the year has been for the Center:

• Over 100 people tuned in via webcast for the Ravi Zacharias lecture
• Top five pages on the HCTU site in the last year: 1) Media, 2) Blog, 3) Trinity Debates, 4) Piper-Carson, 5) Scripture & Ministry
• In the last year, between 15,000 and 20,000 unique visitors have browsed the site (!)
• Traffic on the site in general is up nearly 200% from previous years
• Over 1000 people watched the Ware-Grudem vs. McCall-Yandell debate from one year ago, including people from Australia, Germany, China, and numerous other countries

There’s a snapshot for you.  We at the Center want you to know that we are committed to providing excellent content, offered for free, that will benefit the Lord’s church as it seeks knowledge of God, understanding of the Almighty, in pursuit of His maximal glory.

So please–keep checking the site, and encourage others to do the same.  We’re thankful that folks like John Piper, Justin Taylor, Millard Erickson, Thabiti Anyabwile, and you are doing just that.

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that the Kantzer Lectures with Stephen Williams are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

September 8-15, 2009 | Dr. Stephen Williams (Union Theological College, Belfast, Ireland)

Series Title: The Election of Grace: a Riddle without Resolution?

Lectures on election with special reference to Karl Barth, the Bible, and the pastoral function of the doctrine. All lectures were free and open to the public.

Series Outline

Lecture One, Tuesday, September 8 | Video

Lecture Two, Wednesday, September 9 | Video

Lecture Three, Thursday, September 10 | Video

Lecture Four, Monday, September 14 | Video

Lecture Five, Monday, September 14 | Video

Lecture Six Tuesday, September 15 | Video

The Henry Center is pleased to make media from the recent visit by apologist Ravi Zacharias available to all free of charge.  This audio has been professionally edited at a rapid rate and is now ready for the viewing public.  Dr. Zacharias’s visit galvanized the campus and has made an indelible impression on many.  Engage the media below to see why.

Click here to watch the video of Dr. Zacharias’s Scripture & Ministry talk, “Toward an Evangelical Understanding of Postmodernism and Mission.”  (Audience Q&A)

Click here to watch the interview with Dr. Zacharias conducted by pastor Steve Farish and HCTU Managing Director Owen Strachan.

Click here to watch the video of Dr. Zacharias’s chapel sermon, “Lessons from History: The Tale of Two Men.”

As noted previously, the Center was gratified to see hundreds and hundreds of people attend the lectures and tune in to the webcasts.  We trust that these resources will go far and wide and benefit many in the name of Jesus Christ.

a report live-blogged by Andy Naselli

Craig Carter is Professor of Religious Studies at Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. He blogs at “The Politics of the Cross Resurrected.” Here’s how the Henry Center advertised this address given on the campus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School:

Title: Is the Evangelical Left a Viable Alternative to the Religious Right?

Is the “Religious Right” finished? In serious decline? Temporarily dormant? Evangelicals appear to be unsure. Many pollsters and pundits claim that younger Evangelicals increasingly lean to the left in politics and the recent US election cycle saw the rise of a new “Evangelical Left,” led by Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo. Let us suppose that the Religious Right is in decline, and that many Evangelicals are swinging leftward as a result of dissatisfaction with the over-identification of Evangelicalism with the Republican Party. This scenario raises important questions about the future of Evangelicalism which this lecture will address.

Carter changed the title to this: “Augustine and the Secular in Christendom and Modernity.”

This address is available via live-stream.

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Social Justice in Modernity

Carter, who considers himself theologically conservative and politically liberal, almost thought of entitling this talk “How I Lost My Faith in ‘Social Justice.’” He’s been influenced from both the left (Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, John Howard Yoder, and Karl Barth) and the right (Francis Schaeffer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Tom Oden, and John Paul II).

Carter is disappointed with the reaction to his book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective for several reasons.

1. It tended to get swallowed up in the widespread shift to the left during the Bush years.
2. The interpretation of Yoder’s thought was trending toward theological liberalism.

Recent events have caused Carter to doubt his faith in “social justice.”

1. The evangelical left has supported Barack Obama’s statist agenda.
2. The secular left has disgracefully treated Sarah Palin.
3. The Orwellian-named “Human Rights Commissions” has persecuted Christians in Canada.

What does Carter mean by “social justice”? It’s an interconnected set of beliefs.

1. Equality is the highest goal of society.
2. Equality is best defined in terms of equal economic opportunity.
3. Natural inequality must be overcome by human will.
4. Individual freedom must be sacrificed in the pursuit of equality.
5. The rule of law must be sacrificed in the pursuit of equality.
6. The state is responsible to create equality.

Is the pursuit of “social justice” a socialist project? No, it’s a “modern” project, i.e., a project of the enlightenment, which produced two great systems of political economy: capitalism (freedom) and socialism (equality). Going back and forth between the left and right of modernity is not a helpful way to critique modernity. Augustine stands outside of modernity.

From “Orthodox Anabaptism” to “Augustinian Conservatism”

Carter used to call himself an Orthodox Anabaptist, but now he prefers the label Augustinian conservative. The rest of this lecture deals with Augustine.

• Augustine became an amillennialist. He embraced a more sober, realistic view than the one that got caught up in the triumphalism of the day. Why? The key to Augustine’s working his way free of his early eschatology was his biblical interpretation.
• Prior to Augustine, there was no such thing as the secular. Something was either sacred or profane. There was no neutral ground. The idea of the secular makes possible individual liberty, religious freedom, free enterprise, personal responsibility, the rule of law, natural law, limited government, and the division of powers.
• For Augustine, the secular is (1) the invention of Christianity; (2) not evil; (3) this world during this age and contains the church and human institutions like Rom; (4) is grounded in an eschatological tension that prevents us from seeing any human institution as either completely good or completely evil.
• Christendom tended to distort Augustine’s thought. Its constant temptation was triumphalism in which the church brought the state under church-control.
• Augustinianism vs. Triumphalism:

Augustinianism:

1. There are four entities: church, state, city of man, city of God.
2. The church is on a pilgrimage toward the city of God.
3. Church and state may reflect elements of both the city of God and/or the city of man.

Triumphalism:

1. There are only two entities: (1) city of God/church/political structures ruled by the church and (2) city of man/political structures not ruled by the church.
2. To oppose the church is to oppose the city of God.
3. The church becomes violent as if judgment day had already come.

• The evangelical left is critiquing Christendom but not modernity.
• Modernity has distorted Augustine’s “the secular” into “secularism.” Both Christendom and modernity have the same root problem: a false eschatology.
• The pursuit of “social justice” is  statist project. The logical end result is something like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
• The statist project is well-advanced in Europe, less so in Canada, and much less so in the US, but the election of Obama has reinvigorated the politics of what Jonah Goldberg called “liberal fascism” (in his recent book of that title).
• Augustine vs. Modernity:

Augustine:

1. Original sin means no utopianism.
2. The state is neutral and dangerous.
3. The secular is potentially common ground for Christians and others.
4. Our real hope is the second coming of Christ and the kingdom of God.

Modernity:

1. The perfectibility of man means progress.
2. The state is the hope of the world.
3. Secularism says that there is nothing but the material world, and religion is private superstition.
4. [missed this]

Concluding Thoughts

1. The evangelical left is assimilating itself to the modern project of statism by its fixation on social justice. This will lead to the loss of its ability to prophetically critique the modern project.
2. The dehumanizing of man in the “brave new world” of modernity must be critiqued, and only a conservative politics rooted in Augustinian theology can do it.
3. There is no point in being fixated on Christendom today. What needs to be challenged is the modern state that seeks to usurp the place of God and close down the neutral space between church and state in which Christians have influenced culture for the public good.

It is the privilege of the Henry Center to inform you that tomorrow, Wednesday, October 7, 2009 in ATO chapel at 1pm, we will host Dr. Craig Carter of Tyndale University College and Seminary (Toronto) for a Scripture & Ministry lecture entitled “Is the Evangelical Left a Viable Alternative to the Religious Right?” The talk will cover both the Religious Right and the Evangelical Left and offer reflections on Christian political engagement in days to come.

The talk is free and is open to all at our Deerfield location.

In addition, the Henry Center is pleased to announce that it will provide a free webcast of this lecture.  Please click here to view the free webcast at 1pm CST tomorrow.

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Please note the following future Scripture & Ministry lectures offered by the Henry Center:

Richard Mouw, “Confessions of an Evangelical Pietist,” January 20, 2010.
Christine Pohl, “Practicing Hospitality in Troubled Times,” March 17, 2010.