When you hear someone "making room" for bigotry embedded in state law or church polity, look at who they are. If they are not one of the people oppressed by that policy, but they're making room for it, they are complicit in the oppression, not at all a neutral...
Anna is the very last character in the Christmas Story. Mary and Joseph have left behind the shepherds and the stable animals, stopping in the temple to fulfill their requirements of their faith. Upon arrival, they meet Simeon the Priest who would perform the...
There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the ass understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child." But shepherds don't beat their sheep with the rod. The rod is used to steer the sheep, as a support when the shepherd is tired, and as a weapon to defend the herd from harm. Sheep follow the shepherd because his kindness makes him...
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Every once in a while, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and reject it. There are many reasons she may do this. If the lamb is returned to the ewe, the mother may even kick the poor animal away. Once a ewe rejects one of her lambs, she will never change her mind. These...
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep…without a shepherd. Without innovation, art is a corpse.
I wonder if in the rush of creative planning and the desire to see people enjoy our worship gatherings in the modern church, we have pushed to the sidelines what we are supposed to be doing… In the emerging church, we need to make sure we view our worship services as...
Modern-day individualism has diminished and diluted the communal emphasis in Scripture. Piety has become compartmentalized, relegated to a private personal pocket of life. The result is a religious consumerism which describes worship as “attending the church of your...
Believers throughout the centuries have tried to describe God, but very few have been satisfied with their descriptions. Their words turn out to be too frail to do the job. …The best any of us has ever been able to do is to describe what the experience of God is...