Robert Grunden

Sheep Food

Reflections on Turning 40
Reflections on turning 40.
Controversy and the Sin of Self-Importance
Controversies appeal to our sense of self-importance. They can make us feel important in the grand scheme of things.
Trevin’s Seven
Links for your weekend reading.
The Good and the Bad of Losing Cultural Christianity
As we cheerfully embrace the opportunities before us, let’s not be blind to the challenges we will face and the beauty we will lose as the sunset of cultural Christianity fades.
Evangelicals Weighed and Wanting?
Let’s hope that in the days ahead, if the world finds us intolerable, it will be for all the right reasons.
Trevin’s Seven
Links for your weekend reading
Christianity’s Public Witness: Not Just a Red State Problem
What if some of the concerns voiced about Christianity’s public witness are motivated by embarrassment at evangelicals who are insufficiently docile toward elite secular opinion?

Yes, Singing Really Does Change People
When I was converted to Christianity as an adult over twenty years ago, I vividly recall my first Sunday at my mother’s church.
Liturgies Are the Pipes, But the Word Is the Water
In our use of liturgy, how can we make sure our confidence is in the power of God’s Word, not the creativity or ingenuity of our methods?
Don’t Do Weird Stuff
For years, 9Marks has been standing with historic Protestantism advocating the ordinary means of grace. There’s nothing radical about this proposal.
Do Weird Stuff
After my first Sunday at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, I asked myself one question and one question only: “Are these people crazy?”
How A Good Desire for Church Growth Can Lead to Bad Ministry Practices
The desire for numeric growth, in turn, leads many pastors to constantly look for growth strategies that undermine the ordinary means of grace.
How Programs Fit into an Ordinary Means of Grace Ministry
Our programs are helpful only to the extent that they put people in contact with the God-ordained means of grace
Why Preaching Is Primary and the Ordinances Aren’t
Still today it is through the Word, not the bare ordinances, that men and women are “born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23).

Southern Baptist Fundamentalism, Then and Now
The way forward for Southern Baptists is a Great Commandment Resurgence.
New and Notable Books: Summer 2021
Here’s my latest edition of New and Notable Books. As a reminder, these suggestions focus on recent books in history, especially American history and religious/church history. These books certainly may interest fellow historians, but I also suggest ones that are accessible and (relatively) affordable to students and general readers. Jehu J. Hanciles, Migrati […]
Who Is a Fundamentalist?
If “fundamentalist” is simply a way to place people beyond the pale, then it may be rhetorically useful, but not much else.
Who Was William Jennings Bryan?
Only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture during the reform era.
A Guide to Choosing a Christian College
Christian parents and students should move beyond rhetoric to see what a school’s Christian commitment means in practice.
How to Counter Anti-Evangelical Hostility
Clickbaity hostility to evangelicals is everywhere. How do we respond?
A Modernist Christian Nationalist: John Wilsey on John Foster Dulles’s Faith
Historians are to be truth tellers, not judges.