Aaron Armstrong's Blog, page 41
November 22, 2018
One of the many things we’re thankful for today
It’s Thanksgiving here in America land, our third since moving to Tennessee. It’s so weird to think that half of the Thanksgivings our son has experienced have been here, as opposed to Canada. (And even weirder to think that soon he will have fully spent half his life in the United States.)
One of the things we’re all particularly thankful for is that we get to spend this holiday with new(er) friends. We’re still building relationships with different people inside and...
November 21, 2018
What I’m reading over my vacation
So, it finally happened: I’m taking a vacation (ish). It’s Thanksgiving week here in America land, so I thought I’d celebrate by taking an extra day off and having a 5 day weekend. This means that, along with meal prep that I’ll be doing on Thursday and Friday, I get some time to chill out and read. So what am I reading?
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. I’m about half done this book and I am absolutely loving it. What specifically? Enger’s use of language, and that he cr...
November 20, 2018
Three ways we can put the Bible first
I have no doubt that we all say we want to do this. Most of us even start our year strong when it comes to our Bible reading. But then we lose momentum. Or we get sidetracked. Or something else happens that causes us to go off the rails on a reading plan and we don’t really know how to get back on it.
Sound familiar? It’s okay if it does. This is something that we all struggle with, no matter how mature or faithful a Christian—reading the Bible can be a struggle. So...
November 19, 2018
We answer Goodreads’ questions!
In the muck and mire of social media, there remains a beacon of hope—a lone site where we’re not going to read about politics or how everyone who disagrees with you is a fascist, misogynist, or a Canadian. That site, of course, is Goodreads, which Dave, Barnabas and I all love for obsessively tracking our reading over the course of each year.
Something they do on their social media accounts is ask reading-related questions. So, being the book connoisseurs that we ar...
November 16, 2018
Links I like (11/16)
Michael Kelley:
“Is there anyone else left?”
It seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? You and I might ask it when we’re leaving a building and it’s our job to turn out the lights, so we turn back at the door and shout out, “Anyone left in here?” Then, when no answer comes, we shut it down, lock the door, and head home. When we ask the question, it’s really done in a spirit of checking things off the list. We’ve d...
November 15, 2018
Discipling every generation
For a long time, I’ve wrestled with the language we use around “spiritual mothers and fathers”. It’s not so much that I think it is wrong to use these terms (though I personally avoid doing so), but I think there’s something that we can miss when we do. A while back, I wrote about this for Tabletalk Magazine. Here’s a quick excerpt:
A friend of mine’s experience is entirely the opposite of mine. He isn’t the first Christian in his family. He is a pastor’s kid whose f...
November 14, 2018
The Bible is better than basic instructions
Early on in my faith, I started to realize that something was missing. I was growing in my faith without question, but I saw a tension between what I was being taught and what I read in my Bible. Lots of principles—good principles, even biblical ones—commands, and values. There was an idea of this book being, essentially, basic instructions before leaving earth.1
Now, I’m all for teaching wisdom. I’m all about helping people to grow and live faithfully. But when we on...
November 13, 2018
My new content schedule
Well, we’re here again… I’m writing again, which is lovely. Not that I ever stopped, mind you. I just had to focus on writing… other things. (I’ll officially be able to say what soon.)
But now that I’m trying to get back in the game, I’ve been thinking about what my new content schedule should look like. Or rather, what it will look like.
Why have a content schedule?It might seem like a silly thing, but it’s actually really important. A content schedule is essential...
November 12, 2018
Books that should have been TED Talks
Some books should be blog posts, some blog posts should be tweets, some tweets should remain thoughts.
—Devin Maddox (via Twitter)
What happens when you’re reading a book and you think, there’s just not a whole lot here? There’s a whole series of books out there that fit in this category, the ones that have a good idea, but not enough to warrant being an entire book:
There’s a big idea that you get entirely in the introduction, and the rest of the book is just restatin...November 9, 2018
Links I like (11/09)
Eric Geiger:
Someone on my team recently asked me why, of all the people I quote when explaining a passage or a topic, I mainly quote dead people. I don’t exclusively quote dead people. And I don’t reference other’s thinking in all my sermons and definitely not in every point I am attempting to make. But it is true; I tend to reference dead theologians and Bible teachers much more than ones who are still living. So why? I have thought about it and...
