Seven Dangers Facing Your Church — What does the book of Revelation have to say about potential dangers that might face local churches today? The seven letters to churches in the opening chapters of the book contain enduring warnings the church today must heed. This talk will discuss how these seven letters inform congregations of the ways the enemy attacks the bride of Christ from both the inside and out, and how churches can confront and overcome the dangers it faces. This talk will point us away from indifference, fear, and doubt and toward full dependence on the love and hope of Jesus Christ. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, January 28, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Juan Sanchez, senior pastor of High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin, Texas.

To Think Christianly, Think Virtuously — Young people all over the country are drawn to Christian nationalism on the right, and critical theory on the left. As they assess their national identity, they often run to the extreme of national nostalgia or national cynicism. When thinking about America and the church, is there a way forward when it comes to assessing our history as a people? The people of God can demonstrate their Christian faith when thinking about history and national identity by employing the theological and classical virtues–faith, hope, charity, temperance, wisdom, courage, and justice. Doing so is fully consistent with Galatians 5:22-23 and Philippians 4:8. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, March 17, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. John Wilsey, professor of church history and philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

Gospel Clarity and Partnership for the sake of the Nations — Most every Christian knows and affirms the mission of the church, found in the Great Commission, especially to those language groups that have never heard. What is often lacking though is the tangible knowledge for how that task is to be accomplished. Who is meant to go? Do we even need “goers” in this day and age? What of those who stay? In the times we find ourselves in there are few topics that evoke more nebulousness than missions. If the people of God are to be about the mission that he left them we must know the goal, and how it is to be carried out. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, April 28, 2024, at 5pm by Brooks Buser, President of Radius International in San Diego, CA.

The Complicated Beauty of Being Born This Way: The Promise and Peril of Transhumanism and The Difference Christianity Makes — Being human with finite bodies is bewildering. We are pulled toward glee and gloom at the same time. Embodied life is great because it only lasts for so long, but it only lasts for so long…and thus we worry that time is always running out. Then there is the fact that our bodies just aren’t what we want them to be most of the time. Living isn’t easy. What if it didn’t have to be so challenging? What if there were solutions to death, disease, disability, and unfairness available in this life? Transhumanists envision a day when all this could be ours, if we only have the will to do what is necessary to grasp it. Everything from cutting edge medications, to technology implanted in our bodies, to the use of robots for all manner of activities (including sex) might be on the horizon, with the promise of a better world. How should we understand such claims? How might the Christian tradition appreciate, subvert, and better these claims? As we will come to see, Christianity provides a way to embrace the complicated beauty of existing in finite bodies in a broken world, no matter what kind of bodies we have. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, May 26, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Jeremy Meeks, director of the Chicago Course on Preaching in Chicago, IL.

Care: Escaping the Productivity Trap and Learning to Nurture — The modern world is a treadmill demanding ever more productivity in ever less time. Smartphones, email, and constant connection mean that many of us are never truly away from work, even when we should be off of work. These and other trends make it harder for us to care for others: to notice their needs, care about their needs, and slow down enough to treat them as whole persons. What does it mean to care well for others? How can learning to care transform not only your relationships but your attitudes toward work, rest, and fulfillment? This SNT will be taught on Sunday, June 30, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Bobby Jamieson, associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington D.C.

Technology and Christian Discipleship — What is technology and how does it fit within the biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption? This lecture will seek to answer this question as well as that of whether technology is simply a neutral tool as is often assumed to be the case.  Drawing on the insights of media ecology, we will examine the inevitability of technologies’ formative effects on their users (e.g., the psychological, social, and intellectual effects of immersive digital technology). The goal is to help Christians engage and employ digital technology with wisdom. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, July 28, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Keith Plummer, dean of the School of Divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, PA.

The Gospel in the Gospels — The Gospels contain many familiar stories, including the death and resurrection of Jesus. But what about the rest of Jesus’s life? How are we to understand the work of Christ in portions of the Gospels prior to the cross? In this lecture we’ll look at the representative obedience of Christ in the Gospels, with particular focus on Christ as the new Adam. This is an important lens that helps us understand the obedience of Jesus in the Gospels is saving obedience. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, August 25, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Brandon Crowe, professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, PA.

Biblical Typology: How the Old Testament Points to Christ, His Church, and the Consummation — In the Bible, what is a type, and how do we detect and interpret types? Jesus himself teaches that the Old Testament is about him (Luke 24:44-49). A combination of biblical principles and examples will serve to guide you in seeing the richness of the presence of Christ in the Old Testament without reading in arbitrary meanings. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, September 29, 2024, by Dr. Vern Poythress, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, PA.

When Home Hurts: Trying To Be Biblically Grounded In the Abuse Conversation — This talk will provide a theologically grounded definition of abuse that seeks to display the heart of God while avoiding two common, opposite errors – the error of dismissing the seriousness of abuse by addressing it like any other sin and the error of considering all relational sin abusive. The hope of this talk is to provide a framework for protecting real victims of abuse and to represent the heart of our Lord to them. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, October 27, 2024, at 5pm by Dr. Jeremy Pierre, professor of biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy: Gospel Tools for Pursuing Unity at Church — When we describe church as the family of God, what we have in mind is a rosy holiday photo, but too often what we get is more like shouting matches over who used up the hot water. Because churches are full of differences, and differences can be difficult. They could be differences of personality or background, of opinion over political and social issues, of preference about what church should be like, etc. And yet unity in Christ despite all these differences is key to how a church shows off the glory of Christ, because easy love rarely shows off gospel power. This SNT talk will examine wisdom from the closing chapters of the book of Romans—written to churches like ours that were full of differences—to examine practical gospel tools for loving people at church who, if we’re honest, sometimes drive us crazy. This SNT will be taught on Sunday, November 24, 2024, at 5pm by Jamie Dunlop, associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.