Language matters. That’s why if I hear that word “volunteer” one more time in a church setting, I’m going to officially nominate the word for the “Annoying Word of the Year” award. The church is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing Christ to life, not through...
Why do Christians sing when they are together? The reason is, quite simply, because in singing together it is possible for them to speak and pray the same Word at the same time; in other words, because here they can unite in the Word. There should be singing, not only...
From his hospital bed this morning (one-day stay for a minor procedure), Dad asked me to please help him with flowers and a cake for Mom’s birthday. She is turning 75 this weekend. Once at the store, I had to send multiple pictures of options to him before he was...
Grant that I may not look to the probabilities of success, but to the wisdom of being faithful. Inspire me to be committed, persistent, and enduring in my devotion to live by values that are sacred; rather than calling sacred whatever may be my values. And so may I be...
A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relationship with God. We read our chapters, have our short...
I think Jesus would have said, "It's not about me." During his lifetime, he deflected attention from himself. In an illuminating passage in our earliest gospel, when a man addressed him as "Good Teacher," Jesus responded with, "Why do you call me good? No one is good...
To paraphrase William Sloane Coffin, a contemporary author and activist for us as Christians, God is defined by Jesus, but not confined to Jesus. To paraphrase Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar, former dean of Harvard Divinity School, and bishop of the Church...
If one is honest about what Jesus says about loving others (including one's enemies) and about sharing one's possessions with others, one has to admit that Jesus wasn't very practical at all. Indeed, he was over-the-top radical. He was far more radical than I like or...
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 can learn a great deal about worship by looking at the earliest Christians, for the culture that surrounded them was in many ways similar to ours in twenty-first century North America. Then and now the population is highly pluralistic, with the people’s...