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Sin and the Church as Community
In what he confesses is a long post, but is still shorter than my normal post, Dave Black discusses how to translate the Greek word ekklesia, both in terms of an English word (he chooses “community”), and in practice. I’ve been discussing this in connection with the question of dealing with sin in the church….
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But Did God Approve of That?
Last night in my Tuesday night group we were discussing the story of Hezekiah in Isaiah 36 & 37, in which King Sennacherib of Assyria attacks Judah, and things get pretty dire. Following a sneering message from the Assyrian king, Hezekiah, at the beginning of chapter 37, tears his clothes, puts on sackcloth, and goes…
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Spiritual and Physical Decluttering?
I wonder if there’s something ironic, or perhaps just odd, about working on the interior layout of a book on Spiritual Decluttering while this is behind me? Actually, there’s less clutter than there used to be. I’m turning storage space into usable office space, and I’m about half done.
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Philippians 2:1-11, Romans 12, and the Nature of Christian Community
That’s a fairly ambitious title I gave myself, but the content is a bit less ambitious. When I found that I’d be teaching from Philippians 2 in Sunday School, I commented that if someone couldn’t teach a class from Philippians 2:5-11, they should just give up teaching. That’s probably a bit harsh, but the passage…
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Is There Ever a Good Reason to Leave Your Church?
I was reading this article on the reasons people leave, titled 5 Rather Startling Reasons People Leave Your Church, and while it is by no means the worst offender, it reminded me of an interesting characteristic of church growth/health books and articles. The problem is this: We, as leaders in the church, tend to assume…
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A God That’s Cool
In the introduction to his book What’s God Really Like? S. J. Hill tells the story of a student who announced at the end of a term in a class he taught, that she had discovered that God was cool. I don’t know how you react to that, but the moment I read that line…
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The Danger in Appealing to the Miraculous
A friend’s post on Facebook got me thinking about this verse: I said to them, “If anyone has items made of gold, bring them. And they gave them to me, and I threw them in the fire, and out came this calf.” (Exodus 32:24, my translation from the LXX) I can’t help but think that…
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Is Your Worship a Joy
As I’ve been setting up a series of posts on thinking about God, I’ve discussed a little bit what our theology can do, and what it cannot. For example, in a video yesterday, I talked about how our theological knowledge cannot save us. Yet at the same time it can mess us up. I was…
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Threads from Henry’s Web
