About

by CCIFenn
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C. C. I. Fenn PortraitHi there. I’m C. C. I. Fenn, a pastor and writer who lives in the foothills of western North Carolina with my wife and three (soon to be four) children.

If you hang around long enough, you’ll learn my theological biases but just to make it easy (and so you aren’t caught off-guard), I’ll lay out the basics here: I’m firmly planted in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. I’m amillennial, non-dispensational, and I have a high view of the sacraments (which should be evident from the fact that I call them ‘sacraments’). As a child of the Church of God (Anderson) reformation movement, I’m also a strong believer in the unity of God’s people and the power of the Holy Spirit to actually make us holy.

Oh, and I love Johnny Cash.

With all of that said, the purpose of this blog is pretty straight-forward. I want to encourage Christians to think and live deeply.

Let me explain what I mean by that…

Shallow thinking has, at times, seemed like a hallmark of evangelical Christianity (I mean, Mark Noll wrote a book called ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind’ back in the 90s). And yet, the Christian tradition has a rich history of deep thinkers. Men like the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas were no intellectual lightweights. They were geniuses who thought deeply about the Christian faith and its implications for our philosophies and lifestyles. I hope that this blog will call believers everywhere to think more deeply about God, faith, the Bible, and everything in between.

Deep thinking is awesome. I love it. But if it isn’t followed up by deep living, it’s worthless. Fortunately, the Christian tradition is rich in advice and practices that help us move from deep thinking to deep living. Practices like Lectio Divina and fasting, along with faithful practitioners like George Mueller and Thomas a Kempis call us to live the Christian life – not just talk about it. I hope that, together, we can recognize and put into practice this rich heritage of spirituality.

In other words, I hope this blog will help Christians of every denomination, creed, and theology to live out the prayer of the Apostle Peter: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

Though I don’t have a rock-solid schedule, I do my best to write a couple of posts per week (ideally, at least one on deep thinking and another on deep living). In addition to blogging here and (occasionally) on The Revelation Explained, I’m currently working on a book that focuses on prayer. Oh, and I discuss the more intellectual side of our faith on a friend’s podcast, Apologetics Discipleship.

I don’t claim to have all of the answers to anyone’s questions about the Christian faith (not even my own). But I’m genuinely looking. If you’d like to look alongside me, I’d invite you to subscribe to my newsletter below. It goes out twice a month – with a focus on deep thinking at the beginning of the month and deep living in the middle.

So, that’s about it for me. Though if you have any questions or comments, don’t be afraid to send me an e-mail or leave a blog comment.

I look forward to getting to know you and growing with you in grace and knowledge.