Tommy Mann

(Please read Mark Driscoll, Apology Accepted here ) As a young pastor I keep getting told that I need to learn from the leadership training of Mark Driscoll, who is the leader of the Acts 29 Network and pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. He is considered to be a leadership guru for young church leaders, but I believe that his methodology is dangerous. To Driscoll’s credit, he teaches a lot of good theology. Most of Driscoll’s fans seem to be in the emerging church, but Driscoll himself is no fan of the emerging church. He is the first to point out the fact that they do not believe in absolute truth, and that they care more about handing out “muffins and hugs” than they do about preaching the gospel. In a day where the emerging church spends more time giving happy pep talks, Driscoll is a teacher of theology. And while I do not agree with all of his theology, I do appreciate that he is teaching it. Unfortunately, it is guys like him that say just enough good s...

When it comes to deciding which Bible to purchase, use, or trust, there is a good test to use. Since a new translation seems to come out about every fifteen minutes in this country, there is no way to have a memorized list of which translations to trust. The test is simple: open the Bible and see if it is a literal translation or if it is a dynamic equivalent. This information will be located somewhere on the inside cover or in the first couple of pages. This final installment of the Bible Blog will show the difference between the two. Literal Translation For the last 2,000 years the textus receptus, also known as the majority text, has been one the most trusted and accepted set of documents that we have. In the first century the Bible was just our Old Testament, which was written in Hebrew but was already available in Greek. So as the New Testament was written, it was written both in Greek and Latin. Therefore, the earliest Bibles were written mostly in Greek. Some of t...

Is the King James Version of the Bible the only translation of the Bible that we should read? As a child I was taught that it was the only accurate Bible, and my BA degree in Bible came from a KJV only college. I love the KJV, and it is the only translation I have ever taught or preached from. But is it the only Bible we should read? Before I begin, I want to be clear that this is by no means an exhaustive review of this topic, for that could go on and on. This is just designed to point out a few surface level points. The KJV only crowd likes to criticize the newer translations by asserting that they are leaving out words, phrases, or verses, and that they change words. The problem with this line of thinking is that they are comparing these newer translations to the KJV and not to original texts. For example, when the KJV-onlies criticize some for leaving out verses 9-20 of Mark 16, they are missing the fact that those verses do not appear in any ancient texts. Those verses ...

The Message by Eugene Peterson brands itself as “The Bible in contemporary language,” but is it really a trustworthy easy-to-read Bible? I intend to show you why this book is dangerous and should not be considered the Word of God. Every English Bible had to have come from somewhere; that is, they had to be translated from something since the Bible was Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin long before it was English. The opening pages of each Bible will tell the potential reader where this translation drew from. For example, translation like the KJV, NKJV, and NASV are literal translations from the textus receptus, meaning that they are literal word for word translations from Greek to English, Hebrew to English, etc. Translations like the NIV are dynamic equivalents from English Bibles, meaning they took someone’s English Bible and simply updated words. There is no literal word for word translation, just taking the general idea and tinkering with it. I have long been critical of thi...

The word repent means “to change one’s life for the better.” It carries with it the idea of making a 180 degree turn, of totally changing directions in your life. In short, repentance is a command for the thief to quit stealing, the drunk to quit drinking, the fornicator to quit fornicating, the gossiper to quit gossiping, etc. But that doesn’t sound like a good sermon. Aren’t sermons supposed to make the listener feel good? Maybe talking about repentance every now and then is ok, but just during an invitation or somewhere near the end of the message. We should never begin a sermon with a call to repent, and we should never harp on it the whole time. After all, won’t all that repent talk offend the lost or turn them off from Christianity? For starters, if a person is not a Christian, a sermon, no matter how bold, cannot make that person any more lost. But what about the claim that we have to warm people up to the idea of repentance? Let’s look at how some of the greatest preache...

“I believe in the traditional Baptist doctrine on that subject.” That answer came from a pastor when I asked him what the Bible says about the age of accountability. He clearly had no idea what he believed, and instead of taking time to research the matter, he simply deferred to the Baptist doctrine. Asleep in Heaven’s Nursery is not just for people who have lost children, although that is a major part of it. I want Christians to know why I wrote this book, and why I think it can be helpful to them. This might sound self-serving, like I am writing this to just sell books. But I never would have written the book if I didn’t think it would serve a purpose. And as a not-for-profit ministry, I don’t make a penny off of these books, so this is not about financial gain. This book looks at the age of accountability to see if it is biblical. It also lists the major criticisms for the age of accountability and gives a rebuttal for them. For example, if Jesus said that no one gets ...

As many of you know, my wife Alicia had a kidney transplant last week in Charlotte, North Carolina. I wanted to take a few minutes to brag on God and record some of the details that are nothing short of miraculous. When Alicia was 12 weeks pregnant with Reagan she was diagnosed with a specific kidney disease called FSGS, or focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, which is hereditary. This disease was thought to only be passed on to males, so we were shocked to learn that Alicia had it. I have reported before that Alicia’s doctor thought that an abortion would be the best plan because the pregnancy would fast-forward the kidney disease, but we both have strong convictions against aborting a baby. The fact that Alicia’s kidney function level stayed the same from the time she was diagnosed until the time she delivered (33% function) is a miracle in itself. But after Regan was born the disease began to pick up speed, and we began the process of getting approved for the transplant list. A...