In preparing for my Sunday School lesson tomorrow I read some very high sounding words about settling for less: pleasure rather than joy, vengeance rather than justice, sentiment rather than beauty, and so forth. The source was N. T. Wright, quoted in the introduction to the Cokesbury Adult Bible Studies Uniform Series for the Summer…
This past Sunday the lesson was from Luke 18:15-17, Jesus blessing the children. Saturday evening, as I was thinking about this, a local church was promoting their variety of children’s programs and how that showed their care for the children. I know it’s probably unkind of me, but I was not impressed. Yes, having children’s…
Church politics is necessary. Even those who most avoid it live with it. What we must work toward is a way of making decisions in the church that isn’t just a pale reflection of the way things are done in the world. One of the ways we create a pale reflection is by doing what…
Today Pat Badstibner of World Prayr published a post on the World Prayr Devotional blog picturesquely titled The Law Is Not Soggy Cornflakes. In it, Pat finds a number of purposes for the law, even, and perhaps especially, for those living under grace. If we look to the law as the means of making ourselves…
Recent political discourse reminds me of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector: 9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee,…
I’ve been wrong before, am quite probably wrong about many things right now, and I suspect I will go right on being wrong until I die. From What Embarrasses Me about Christianity. Yep. Just checked. No reason to believe I’m not still wrong about bunches of things.
In Hebrews 2:1-4 I believe the author of Hebrews provides a basic apologetic outline, and I think it’s a very useful one to follow. After the first two verses, which start from a platform that was already accepted by the audience, the author emphasizes the importance of the decision. If he is right in what…
The sixth mark Dave discusses in Seven Marks of a New Testament Church is fervent prayer (pp. 39-42). There are a variety of views of what it means to be “the church” or what it means to be Christian. For some, it’s a matter of holding the correct set of beliefs. One knows that certain…
A few months ago a friend, commenting on my approach to publishing, and really to many other things, said, “It’s hard to be both a prophet and a facilitator.” Now he wasn’t talking about the way a prophet might get his or her words from God, but rather that prophets advocate ideas. Facilitators encourage others to…
It’s the evening of Good Friday and I find myself a bit too tired to blog coherently or to come up with some uplifting words. I generally try not to write when I feel this way. No use spreading the weariness around. But of course Good Friday was a day that made something like my…