In my last piece we looked at some qualities that make for a good study Bible. Now it’s time to look at some things that I’d love to see Bible publishers stop doing when putting together a study Bible. Though ’tis no longer the hallowed season of Festivus, nevertheless it’s time for an airing of my top ten Bible-nerd grievances! 10. Availability in only one translation I know that publishers can only publish study Bibles in translations that they license from the copyright holder (and I know that the ethics of copyrighting a Bible translation are an entirely different subject for a different ..read more

When I first began teaching others how to use Bible software in the early 2000s, I actually had a stock joke that Logos was building a sermon generator that would produce both exegesis and illustrations. It wasn’t a very funny joke then; now it’s not a joke at all. AI can do this. But what does the advent of AI mean for the sacred task of preaching the Word? If indeed preaching is “truth through personality,” as Philips Brooks famously said, what role should Large Language Models (LLMs) play in the production of sermons, or in Bible study more generally? Many Logos users have been asking us q ..read more

A few years ago during the COVID shutdowns, my ministry, which I call “Disciple Dojo,” had to pivot from a weekly lunchtime Bible study at a local restaurant to teaching via YouTube. As anyone with a YouTube channel can attest, the algorithm can be a cruel master, and one must regularly put out content if they expect their channel to ever be seen by more than one’s mother. As I was considering how to move from in-person Bible teacher to online Bible nerd, it occurred to me that in my former role as discipleship pastor at a large church, a regular part of my job had been helping connect church ..read more

Seana Scott is a speaker and award-winning writer with a passion to help Christians live with a well soul through knowing God’s Word, walking with God, and living with purpose. She is the founder of Well Soul Life and hosts the Well Soul Podcast, a weekly devotional podcast to guide listeners to drink in Scripture, reflect, and pray. Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, She Reads Truth, Risen Motherhood, Fathom Mag, and Word by Word (among others). She is married to a pastor and together they are raising three creative and adventurous ki ..read more

Kyle R. Hughes (PhD, Radboud University, Nijmegen) is the author of three books, including How the Spirit Became God: The Mosaic of Early Christian Pneumatology and Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age, as well as several peer-reviewed journal articles on patristic theology and on Christian education. His current book project, Scripting the Son, explores the intersection of Old Testament interpretation and the development of Christology in the second and third centuries. Kyle, his wife Karisa, and their three children live in Powder ..read more

People are afraid of demons. What are demons afraid of? Have you ever wondered? Maybe you would think it strange to imagine demons being afraid of anything. The accounts of demonic possession in the Gospels, and the attempts to represent such possession in films, can give even the bravest image-bearer pause as we consider the unusual capabilities of these sinister spirits. But demons do feel fear—of something, and of someone. Reading a Gospel account of an exorcism (which is the term for a person’s deliverance from demonic possession), we can see that Jesus’s ministry included these encounter ..read more

Shuffling along the dusty paths of ancient Israel, travelers and residents would inevitably stumble upon piles of rocks. A particular pile near Gilgal, however, showed evidence of being constructed with purpose.  The mighty warrior Joshua had commissioned the creation of that rock pile after the people of Israel had arrived back in their promised land: In the future when your descendants ask their parents, “What do these stones mean?” tell them, “Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.” He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful an ..read more

The name Reformed Baptist raises numbers of eyebrows. Some Christians believe the moniker is a contradiction in terms. Others think it simply refers to Baptists who are Calvinists. Nevertheless, despite the understandable confusion, Reformed Baptists have a rich history with well-defined characteristics. The first congregation of Reformed Baptists (then called Particular Baptists) assembled in London by 1638.1 The movement was born out of the separatist movement of the English Reformation. The Particular Baptists were English Puritan dissenters who faced significant persecution while remainin ..read more

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … (Rev 21:1) That influential twentieth-century poet and prophet, John Lennon, once penned these words: Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. “Imagine” is my least favorite Lennon song. Sadly, Lennon isn’t a dreamer at all in this song, though he claims that he is. He’s living without real imagination or hope, foolishly thinking that the answer to death and war, greed and hunger, is to be found in a world with nothing below it or above it. Lennon couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, the answer to all the w ..read more

Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection rightly get the emphasis in both academic and pastoral treatments of Christ’s work. The cross and the empty tomb are the crux of God’s work of salvation, the fulcrum on which everything else included in that work—Christ’s active obedience, his ascension, etc.—hinges. What is often omitted from our understanding of the Triduum, the three days of Christ’s Passion, is the final day, the day of Christ’s descent to hell. While certain Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Reformed Protestantism (especially Anglicanism and Pre ..read more