On My Way to Jubilee 2015

Posted on February 21, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m sitting in the Atlanta airport, waiting for a flight to Pittsburgh. I’ll be speaking at the annual Jubilee conference tomorrow (Sunday) morning. This year’s conference theme is “This Changes Everything”—a reference to the radical message of the gospel. A brochure for the Jubilee 2015 conference can be found here, for those interested.

I’ll be giving the last of four keynote talks that stretch from Friday through Sunday. The topics for the talks are Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. The title of my talk is “Restoration—The Destiny of God’s Good Creation,” and I hope to take the attendees (mostly college students) on a tour of Scripture, to introduce them to the depth and length and height of God’s amazing love for this world, a love that leads to God’s commitment to redeem and restore creation.

I’m sort of going in to the conference blind, since I won’t have heard the other talks that precede my own; I will get there just in time for supper this evening. I would have liked to have been part of the entire event, which started on Friday. But my wife and I were already committed to being in Jamaica to take care of her mom and stepdad who live there (they are in their eighties); we left the cold and snow for sunny Jamaica ten days ago and we praise God for the wonderful things we were able to accomplish while we were there.

That prior commitment initially led me to turn down the invitation to speak at Jubilee 2015 since I couldn’t be in two places at once. But the good people who plan the conference wouldn’t give up and offered to fly me up directly from Jamaica to Pittsburgh, and then send me home to Rochester.

So, goodby sunshine! Welcome snow and cold!

I’ll let you know how it goes (the conference, not the cold).

A Sacred Calling for Sacred Work

Posted on February 7, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

Back in October I wrote a post about a conference I attended in New York City, called “Making All Things New.” The conference was sponsored by the Center for Faith and Work, a ministry of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. In that post I mentioned an amazing talk given by David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times. The organizers have now posted video recordings of the conference, and Brooks’s talk, called “Cultivating a Cultural Imagination,” is well worth mulling over; listening to it again, some months later, I find it immensely inspiring—and humbling. My own talk is also posted; entitled “A Sacred Calling for Sacred Work,” it was given at the start of the day, as a biblical and theological foundation for the presentations that followed.

Another Web Review of A New Heaven and a New Earth

Posted on February 1, 2015 by J Richard Middleton

Thanks to Mike Wittmer for his recent online review of my eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth. Finally, here’s a review that takes issue with some of my points (though none of the major ones). Wittmer and I are in basic agreement on the big issues; but it would be interesting to have a dialogue on the small issues sometime.