If it [our framing story] tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little...
To the Materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and the group may last for centuries. But to the Christian, individuals are more important, for they live...
It is this ideal of kingship that is manifested most perfectly in the life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. ...The ideal of kingship furnished the content for the messianic tradition, the tradition which was fulfilled in the life of Christ and which is the challenge...
Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That's why Jesus says, "Love Your enemies." Because if you hate your...
Wholeness is relational as well as individual. We cannot separate our own health from the health of those around us... When we appropriately love other peoples' bodies by insuring that they have adequate food, shelter, health care, communal support, and political...
Every act of worship should be understood as part of the Church's offering to God. "Any action that does not meet with that qualification does not deserve to be a part of a worship experience." [C. Weldon Gaddy, The Gift of Worship] All the music, from prelude to...
There are moments when we all stand together and see our faces in the mirror: the anguish of humanity and its helplessness; the perplexity of the individual and the need of divine guidance; being called to praise and to do what is required.
Corporate worship can become empty—it can turn into an abstraction—outside of each individual worship taking on full responsibility, for each person is the church, and it is the church that is to be at worship, individual by individual. In corporate worship, it is not...
The corporate worship of the Church is not simply that of an assembly of individuals who believe the same things, and therefore unite in doing the same things. It is real in its own right; an action transcending and embracing all the separate souls taking part in it.
A church must not overlook the fact that it exists for unselfish, active service to society, to individuals and groups and even to its opponents. If it does so, it loses its dignity, its claim and the reason for its existence, since it abandons discipleship. But if a...