God forgive us for selling out our great intellectual treasure—the gospel of God with us—for a mess of psychobabble and pragmatic, utilitarian, self-help triviality.
02733 – God Came Down
We thought, if there is to be business between us and God, we must somehow get up to God. Then God came down, down to the level of the cross.
01518 – Humility: At the Heart of Christian Mission
Missiologist Lamin Sanneh says that humility is at the heart of Christian mission because this faith--unlike "spirituality"--must be received from another. No one is born into this faith. Nobody stumbles upon it after walking in the woods or rummaging around in one's...
01330 – John vs. Pop TV Preachers
John's testimonials are lacking in content and repetitious: "Look! The Lamb of God!" Yet on the basis of his witness two of his followers become Jesus' first disciples. Having seen, John testifies so that others might see... As Karl Barth said, anybody who stops on...
01200 – Conversion Keeps on Happening
The newly-converted Saul is welcomed, baptized, and shares in the table fellowship of the church. Paul says that he was given "the right hand of fellowship" (Gal. 2:9). The enemy is addressed as "Brother Saul." Conversion is not an individualistic attainment or...
00959 – We Are All Vulnerable
Being numbered among the “least of these” is a condition, not just in childhood, but at any stage in life when we are out of control, weak, needy, and dependent. In taking a child in his arms, in placing the child at the forefront of his disciples, Jesus made an...
00729 – Worship Not Based on Feeling
We keep doing these things over and over again on Sunday morning because we know that if we didn’t we might lose our love. In fact, those times when we don’t feel like it, when we really feel no deep attachment or desire to worship the Beloved, are the times we ought...
00700 – What Does God Want from Our Worship?
To ask the theological question is simply to ask, What does our worship say about God? or the corollary, What does God say to us about our worship? Surely, this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask....
00620 – You are the Main Proof of Easter
But you can’t prove that Easter is true by going backward, only by going forward. Because John says that’s where the risen Christ is, on the move, ahead of us, not behind us. You know what is for me the main proof of Easter? It’s you! Despite all of the setbacks and...
00556 – Pentecost Spirit
To those in the church today who regard the Spirit as an exotic phenomenon of mainly interior and purely personal significance, the story of the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost offers a rebuke. Luke goes to great pains to insist that this outpouring of the Spirit is...