Humble orthodoxy in the visual age

July 14, 2006August 8, 2007 Tony Reinke Great Quotes, Humble orthodoxy, Imagination, Photographs, Preaching, Promotions, Shepherding, Sin, Sin in Culture, Sinfulness

This week I have been positing several pictures I created as a college ministry leader on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. These cards were printed as 4×6 photographs and created to introduce college students to writers of the past. From the response, they were well received.

The challenge in a visually based society is to present messages that include well-done visual elements. As you can see, being visually appealing does not mean compromise to the message of the Gospel and the urgent pleadings with sinners to be reconciled. Quite the opposite! Biblical churches would benefit from thinking of preaching and pastoral ministry within the visual framework.

And I’m not talking about merely running some general landscape nature pictures behind text. Think about what picture captures the message. Think visually. What can I show them that reinforces what I am trying to tell them?

And so to close out the week, here is a graphic design I created for a series on worldliness, sexual sin, intellectual pride and laziness. I called it Spiritual Biohazards of the College Life. It was created on PhotoShop Elements 2.0, an inexpensive graphic arts program, using three free images from the web.

Keep pressing on! – Tony

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Pic7: Baxter on relationships

July 14, 2006July 23, 2006 Tony Reinke Great Quotes, Idolatry, Idols, Photographs, Relationships, Richard Baxter, Sin, Sinfulness

Working with college students, one quickly finds that relationships are a big part of their lives as many of them consider marriage. However, these human relationships often overrun the divine relationship. Baxter, in A Christian Directory gave a great quote to confront this sin and so I used it. – Tony

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How much faith do we have in God?

June 30, 2006June 30, 2006 Tony Reinke A.W. Tozer, Faith in Pulpit, God, Great Quotes, Humility, Hypocritical pastor, Pastoral Failure, Pastoral faith, Pride, Self-promotion, Self-strength, Sinfulness, Sovereign Grace Ministries

Thank you Mark Alderton (Sovereign Grace Fellowship, Minneapolis) for the following quote!

Pseudo faith always arranges a way out to serve in case God fails. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes. For true faith, it is either God or total collapse. And not since Adam first stood up on earth has God failed a single man or woman who trusted Him.

The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself with secondary ways of escape so he will have a way out if the roof caves in.

The faith of Paul or Luther was a revolutionizing thing. It upset the whole life of the individual and made him into another person altogether. It laid hold on the life and brought it under obedience to Christ. It took up its cross and followed along after Jesus with no intention of going back. It said goodbye to its old friends as certainly as Elijah when he stepped into the fiery chariot and went away in the whirlwind. It had a finality about it … It realigned all life’s actions and brought them into accord with the will of God.

What we need very badly these days is a company of Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now, as they must do at the last day. For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God! Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away and we shall have only God. To the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.

It would be a tragedy indeed to come to the place where we have no other but God and find that we had not really been trusting God during the days or our earthly sojourn. It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether we actually trust Him. This is a harsh cure for our troubles, it is a sure one! Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us.

– A.W. Tozer (source unknown)