My hope is to interpret the life and example of Jesus in a redemptive and relevant way. Each generation must do this with Jesus, lest it be forced into stale beliefs that strain credibility and diminish life. For the joy of Christian faith is not to be found in the...
In a world that is desperate for something real, many mega-churches today are like Disney World plus God, while too many mainline churches are serving up bits and pieces of the Great Books Club. One wonders which fiction is most cruel, that all your dreams can come...
In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women who centered their lives on the living Christ. They had a personal relationship with the Lord. It transformed them and the world around them. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy....
Under the sway of forces hostile to God, the world seeks to twist the church into its own mold. Under the sovereign rule of God, on the other hand, the church must resist conformity to the world. It must not capitulate to the pressures to fall in line (Romans 12:20)....
The Bible is far more than a doctrinal guidebook. God’s Word generates life, creates faith, produces change, frightens the Devil, causes miracles, heals hurts, builds character, transforms circumstances, imparts joy, overcomes adversity, defeats temptation, infuses...
He who speaks to us in Advent…knows the wilderness into which we have wandered, and the wildness of the world we have on our hands. It is precisely there we are to prepare the way of the Lord. Into the desert of this weary world we are thrust to transform and make it...
This internal dying or death has two closely related dimensions of meaning. On the one hand, it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand, it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. These—the self and the...
People view hospitality as quaint and tame partly because they do not understand the power of recognition. When a person who is not valued by society is received by a socially respected person or group as a human being with dignity and worth, small transformations...
Christians…live and die in hope. The Christian virtue of hope transforms the virtues of aging… It is why elderly Christians can bear the sadness of memory without being overcome by it, and why they can insist on the truth of a story that challenges the ultimate rule...
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. Creation has a pattern of wisdom; and we dare not shield ourselves from it, or we literally will lose our soul. We can obey commandments, believe doctrines, and attend church services all our lives and still...