The age of the coming Kingdom of God is the age of love, which requires us to accept each other unconditionally. Such love, which does not answer back and never says no, ensnares evil in the world (Matthew 5:39-40; Luke 6:29). It smashes the vicious circle of violence...
Worship should be one avenue for God’s Spirit to generate a new unity and communion. Blending or weaving varied music and rites is preferred to occasional services designed for one pattern. Don’t just have spirituals on race relations Sunday or when you have an...
I fear that attempting to satisfy personal preferences may honor selfishness while further destroying the unity of the church. Further, I fear that gearing the “worship service” toward unbelievers who may be present will perpetuate the revivalistic confusion between...
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 visitor gave his impressions of certain worship services carelessly conducted: "People who would hiss a play which was so ill-planned that the order of the acts and scenes was of no importance or would throw into a wastebasket a novel which was so utterly without...
When you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with...
How to achieve “unity of life”? You start by giving over space in your crowded schedule of work and family duties to prayer and the sacraments. But even people who pray daily can still fence off their praying and working lives in separate compartments. Unity of life...
Paul actually expects Christ to be encountered as his people share with one another a whole range of verbal ministries in the congregational. For example, as they “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual song,” with gratitude in their hearts to God, they will fulfill the...
The first way in which a soul is united with God is through salvation, solely by grace, This is followed by a period in which a saved soul comes to know God through a series of experiences, some of which bring it into closer union with him and some take it further...
To be biblical is not simply to quote the Bible. We need to tell that to the fundamentalists. To be biblical is not to quote Moses; it’s to do what Moses did. To be biblical is to do what Abraham did; it’s not to quote the Abraham story. It’s to do what Jesus did;...