It is not the task of the church to "Make America Great Again." The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of empire, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus'...
I ask myself whether we are using sufficiently one of the doors that leads to God—the door named Beauty… One can find God through the door of truth, for truth also attracts us. But many of our contemporaries are little Pilates who ask: “What is truth?” and remain...
In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God’s love for us, but few are willing to talk about their love for God… They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but...
Hymnody needs to be popular. It is more closely related to folk song than to art song… It is because hymnody is, in its very essence, a kind of folk song that we must never close the door to new hymns written in the idiom of our day… Time has a way of selecting the...
We must become relevant and reverent. Worship must become the meeting place between the eternal and the contemporary. We tend to love the altar so much that we refuse to set it on fire. Yet God comes in the flames. Our God is a consuming fire. Each generation must...
The contemporary obsession with spirituality, among Christians and pagans alike, surely betokens something worthy of the church’s attention. I am not convinced, however, that the current vogue for spirituality should be embraced without making important historical and...
Worship is both the heart and heartache of contemporary religious life. In many churches, worship is an exciting, meaningful and inspirational moment. In many churches of today, however, worship is a battleground for its membership, an opportunity for fracturing and...
Don’t trade authentic preaching for the kazoo of being contemporary, for the tin whistle of entertainment, for the turkey call of trying to get as many people as you can under one roof.
The lack of substance in most popular Christian books is producing anemic disciples… Millions of contemporary Christians read mainly cotton candy. It may be Christian cotton candy, but it’s still cotton candy. And even the substance that is offered generally lacks...
For the Christian, Jesus Christ is always our contemporary and the present is always a day of judgment and of opportunity. Our task is not to go back to him but to catch up with him. It is not “back to the Bible.” It is forward until we can grasp the wisdom and...