03541 – Key to Relationship with God

I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, spirituality pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has...

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03043 – I’m So Weary…

I’m so weary of a cloistered Christianity of privilege, one that feels itself entitled to comfort and ease, one that wields absolute power and cries “oppression” when it cannot have all of it. I’m exhausted from daily encountering a Church that still works to...

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02348 – Where Does God Want Me?

I tell our new members: You don’t join a preacher; you join the church. And you join the church for one reason—because you believe that God told you to plant your life there. If you join because of a style of preaching, that can change. If you join for the facilities...

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02221 – Avoiding Thorny Matters?

A church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a Word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, what kind of gospel is that? Preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed do not light up the world.

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02210 – Using Gender-Inclusive Language

As the father of two girls (now also grandfather of three), I have cringed listening to some preachers and teachers in the church make perfectly good points while using solely male pronouns during their exposition... There are, indeed, “hidden figures” in our...

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01641 – Stories Challenge Us

One thing healthy religion does is challenge us. I don’t mean the strident castigations of the street preacher or even the social justice rally-er. Great traditions excel at the soft challenge, the friendly nudge, issued predominantly through the mode of story....

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01619 – A Different Way to Think

But our commitment is to do what we have promised, not to meet expectations, whether our own or those of others. If we can learn to measure effectiveness in terms of discerning what is really worth doing and keeping a covenant to do it, we might be both faithful and...

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