Silence is therefore important even in the life of faith and in our deepest encounter with God. We cannot always be talking, praying in words, cajoling, reasoning, or keeping up a kind of devout background music. Much of our well-meant interior religious dialogue is,...
Paul actually expects Christ to be encountered as his people share with one another a whole range of verbal ministries in the congregational. For example, as they “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual song,” with gratitude in their hearts to God, they will fulfill the...
I love the Bible. I have spent more than half of my life reading it, studying it, teaching and preaching it. While I do not find every word of it as inspiring (or inspired) as some of my fellow Christians do, I encounter God in it reliably enough to commit myself on a...
The first evangelists were shepherds. It was a task for which they had no skill, no special gift. No theological teaching or individual training. They had no organization to go before them and no literature to leave behind them. What they had, and all they had, was a...
I used to say that if I ever wrote a book, its title would be Nothing Truly Radical Happens After Age Six, Except Grace. Grace, that experience of unconditional love, breaks through the whole system and can change anything. All of Christian life could be described as...
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you...
Worship is a gift, a gift from God that allows us to achieve our full potential as persons, and a gift to God that acknowledges God as Creator and Redeemer. Without gifts at its center, worship does not occur. God’s people gather for worship not so much to receive a...
Christ lives in us and leads us, through mutual encounter and commitment, into a new future which we build together for one another.
Mature religion involves changing ourselves and letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This is the truth that will set us free (John 8:32). Yet much of our history has involved trying to change other people--with our...