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...
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.
Whatever else God calls us to do, we are called to worship, to do so together and to do so in the promised company of Jesus Christ. It is in worship that our lives are expressed before God and informed and converted by God’s Word. It is in worship, that through song,...
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus...
In my judgment the Christian faith does not lend itself to much preaching or talking. It is best propagated by living it and speaking it. When will you Christians really crown Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and proclaim Him through your deeds as the champion of...
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...
In short, our congregations are marked by a warped spirituality. We have been formed spiritually in ways that bracket the realities of violence and poverty and oppression, ignoring them (at worst) or confining them (at best) to the margins of our attention. We have...
Your calling is going to crush you. If you’re called to mend the brokenhearted, you’re going to wrestle with broken-heartedness. If you’re called to prophesy, you’re going to struggle to control your mouth. If you’re called to lay hands, you will battle spiritual...
As long as Christians are breaking the bread and pouring the wine, as long as we are anointing the sick and baptizing sinners, as long as we are preaching the Word and paying attention, the church lives, and Jesus says the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.