Welcome to this part of our AGC site. The idea for this forum came about as some of our leadership discussed good books to recommend for our pastors. I suggested that knowing where to find good resources on the Internet is becoming indispensable as well, if we want to stay current with theological issues and trends.
The World Wide Web consists of countless websites and endless rabbit trails. It can be a real time waster, and surveys show that indeed, many pastors are being sidetracked by Internet time-wasters. Through collaboration with all of our visitors and pastors we hope this blog will help you navigate to the good stuff. We want to help you cut through the chaff. Once or twice a month, there will be a new post with links and helpful advice.
Through this blog, we want to connect you to the latest discussions on the emergent movement. Are you interested in heavy duty apologetic resources? Where are the best Bible tools available online? Do you know of any free books that are helpful? What about free online courses that will help me in the discipling of new Christians in my church? Do you know of email lists that one can subscribe to, dedicated to discussing theological issues? The Internet has all of that, and more available. So keep coming back, and hopefully there will always be something new and helpful for you.
CETA: One way that I have stayed connected to a segment of the Canadian evangelical scene is by subscribing to an email group called CETA (which stands for the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association). Aside from its penchant for not quite knowing what 'evangelical' means, and the fact that it is made up of a good number of academics from seminaries across the country and is more liberal than we would be comfortable with, it is a good way to keep your finger on the pulse of the academy. I was on this list in the days that Clark Pinnock was creating a stir at ETS. Some of today's contributors on this list are Terry Thiessen from Providence, Stan Fowler from Heritage. To subscribe to this email list, simply send an email to ceta-l-subscribe@yahoogroups.com with nothing in the body of your email, and you will be subscribed. This is not a very busy list, although there are 126 very diverse members.
ETS: Check out this website and download as many papers as you need from ETS participants. The Evangelical Theological Society meets annually and presents papers on various theological issues of the day, and many papers presented in the past are freely available here. You can do a search by author, title, publication or keyword. Here is a fascinating title: What, In Hell, Is Going On?: An Examination Of Annihilationism And The Boundaries Of Evangelicalism . A page will open up, and in the left hand column, you have the option of downloading the entire article at once, rather than getting one page at a time.
Counter-cult ministry: Are you looking for information on faith groups you've never heard of before? Or do you need help in dealing with a cult that is active in your area? Here is a website that tries hard to track cult activity and new religious groups all over the world. Across the top you will see the letters A-Z. If you know the name of the group, they are likely listed here. If they are not listed, Apologetics Resources would likely want to know about it. At that website, you are also able to subscribe to a Religious News Service that will send you news and keep you up to date on significant religious events, particularly with aberrant groups.
Christian Journals: A link to Christianity Today is a must. If you are like me, you cannot subscribe to everything that is available, so a condensed version will have to suffice. Have a look at their website. Although they try hard to get a paid subscription from their readership (they have annoying popups) they are informative. For instance, I was wondering whatever became of L'Abri, a ministry that was big during my formative years. Here you can read the latest with an article entitled, Not your Father's L'Abri.
Biblical Resources: Bible.org is the most complete biblical resource website that I am aware of. A lot of the material here is written by DTS profs. Here you will find blogs by guys such as Dr. Darrel Bock. Here you can find an article or even a sermon on almost every text in the Bible. Or if you want to review some theology, there are articles in every category of theology here.
Academic: Another helpful site is Leadership University. There's a lot of heady academic stuff here. Click on the theology menu item and browse.
So there's a small sampling of the kind of resources I use regularly. If you have links to resources on the web that you regularly use, or if you are a part of a discussion forum that has been helpful to your ministry please send them to my email address: werner@westmountparkchurch.org I will continue to post links to resources that have been helpful to me over the years.
Disclaimer: I will not necessarily post everything that is suggested, nor do we endorse everything that is posted. And of course, many links will lean towards supporting the positions we hold as Associated Gospel Churches.
Werner Peters