At church today our pastor (Dr. Wesley Wachob)Â made a couple of points I’d like to repeat here. They may sound disconnected, but they both derived from the scripture lesson, Matthew 23:1-12. The common theme was “remember” as he tied us as a congregation into the history of the people of God. This was tied into…
This is one of those automatically controversial topics. Jordan J. Ballor made an entry on it at Power Blog bearing the same title as my post. I don’t have a major problem with the intention of this article. Loving the sinner, but hating the sin is a very Christ-like thing to do. The problem I…
My pastor (First United Methodist Church, Pensacola) today caught my attention in a special way two different times. The first was when he announced the reading for his sermon. We had already read the gospel lesson, and the Psalm was included in the call to worship. He then said that we needed to take the…
Before I dig into this series organized around Dave Black’s book Seven Marks of a New Testament Church, I want to make a couple of off-the-cuff remarks. Over the last few years I’ve come to believe that we have two key elements that need to be changed, but more fundamentally, we keep talking about the…
I encountered a question recently that I’d like to explore a bit. The question comes in three parts, or perhaps with three perspectives. When God commanded the Israelites to look to the bronze serpent to be healed, was God commanding idolatry? Why would God give this command? Was this a good command? It’s easy to…
I got this link through a comment on my previous post on the minimum wage, but I want to make sure to call everyone’s attention to it. David Prenatt, Jr., on his blog Net Esquire, made a number of posts on the minimum wage debate, and particularly on the Earned Income Tax Credit as an…