John Mark Hicks

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). “Today this scripture is […]

Rejecting 1 Corinthians 16:1-4 as a prescriptive positive law regulating how the church should give, but embracing it as an arrangement by which the church might be the instrument of God’s grace to others (as so intepretered by 2 Corinthians 8-9), by what hermeneutic do we discern our relationship to the poor or our responsibility to […]

In the first half of 2004, the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ (Family of God) in Nashville, TN, pursued a congregational-wide study entitled “Women Serving God.” There were some preliminaries in the Fall of 2003, but the main focus was the Spring of 2004. This involved many different venues–sermons, Bible classes (Sunday and Wednesday), small groups, […]

I offer this methodology for thinking theologically about any particular theme or communal practice in Scripture. What I offer, however, is neither comprehensive nor complete but a theological trajectory. I hope to get more practical with this in the next few posts. A Basic Methodology First, and foundationally, the Christ Event (incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection […]

After a “deserved” break (for you as well as me), I now return to my series on “theological hermeneutics.” (For the previous articles, see the heading “Hermeneutics” on my Serial Index page.) My last few posts in this series emphasized the redemptive-historical character of Scripture as a function of the narrative plot of God’s story. In […]

On February 2 of this year I conducted a one day seminar at the North Davis Church of Christ in Arlington, Texas. They had invited me to prepare some materials for a congregational-wide study of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper and Assembly based on my three books (Come to the Table, Down in the River to […]

May 10 is my father’s birthday, but he is no longer with us on this earth. His story is the story of many devoted ministers throughout history. He worked with small churches with little notice but was loved by those he served. This is the story of most ministers and I honor them with this […]

During July 2007 I presented three lessons in the summer series at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ near Nashville, Tennessee. They asked me to present some material from Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding which I co-authored with my good friend Bobby Valentine. Bobby and I presented the material […]

I have uploaded to my Bible Class page some handouts I designed for a congregational-wide study in their Bible classes. It is entitled Women Serving God. The four lessons cover: (1) creation; (2) women in Israel; (3) women in the ministry of Jesus; and (4) women in the early church.  The intent of the series […]

Christians in the early centuries approached the doctrine of God according to the structure of the Apostles’ Creed and the earliest baptismal formulas:  “I believe in one God the Father, I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe in one Holy Spirit.”  To believe in one God is to believe in the Creator […]