Christmas Books for 2014

I got several good books for Christmas. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read them! The next best thing is to skim the first chapter, or enough to get a sense of what they are...

Thoughts on Scholarship

This fall quarter I took a PhD seminar called Historiography. Its basically a research methods class for work in historical studies, and specifically church history. I’ve been plowing through a lot German and French stuff,...

New Blog Look

As you can see, I’ve upgraded to a new background theme for my blog. I’ve also shortened the domain from gavinortlund.wordpress.com to simply gavinortlund.com (although either one will automatically direct you here). Thanks for checking...

Will there be scholarship in heaven?

This would make for a fun journal article. And it would be a window into some important larger issues, like continuity/discontinuity between creation and new creation. Here’s my tentative answer: certainly there are some realms...

Keys for Ministry Longevity

I was recently reading a bit of Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told Us About Surviving And Thriving, by Bob Burns, Tasha Chapman, and Donald Guthrie (three old seminary professors). It looks like a really helpful...

Belize Video

California

Esther and I are here on vacation in Scotts Valley, California, near Santa Cruz. We’re staying at the same Conference Center that we met at, almost exactly 7 years ago. Its been fun to explore...

Why I find the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Helpful

I used to be a bit skeptical about the value of personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Then one of my professors in seminary, Dr. Phil Douglass, gave my wife and me a...

If I were teaching a systematic theology class…

This quarter I had the privilege of TAing in a systematic theology class, and it got me thinking of how I would structure such as a class if I were teaching at a seminary. So...