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We can’t settle for simple sets of rules
One takeaway from the excellent conversation I listened to on the podcasts I referred to in my last post was this insight: when we are tired of making too many decisions in our lives we fall to fundamentalism. There is a hard right and a hard left fundamentalism, but those are the areas we go to when we’re done trying…
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The future of the American Church
You might remember “Veggie Tales.” Phil Vischer (creator of Veggie Tales) has a podcast he’s been doing for several years with Skye Jethani and Christian Taylor. It’s now called the Holy Post Podcast and I look forward to it every week. Phil is the funny man and for the first half of the show he cuts it up with Skye…
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The myth of ministry “success”
“The point of being an apostle, in any case, is not that one should be showy and spectacular; not even that one should be successful. ‘Stewards of God’s mysteries’, say some translations in verse 1; that’s fine, but the word ‘steward’ has been so overused that we may need to find other ways of bringing out the point. Apostles are…
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One of the beauties of liturgy
One of the things that may confound some folks who wonder about me leaving the Pentecostal denomination I grew up in is how I go to a place that has liturgy. I mean, it “repeats” every Sunday! Where is the moving of the Spirit? (Of course, no one actually asks me these things. Silence is the code these days.)
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The simple frustration of my spiritual walk
I NEED the work of the Cross in me! 1 Cor. 2:16 — We have the mind of Christ.
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We need the true prophetic voice again
“The prophets purge our imaginations of this world’s assumptions on how life is lived and what counts in life. Over and over again, God the Holy Spirit uses the prophets to separate his people from the cultures in which they live and to put them back on the path of simple faith and obedience and worship in defiance of all…
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The wisdom we refuse
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. (1 Cor. 2:12, NIV)
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When does the cross of Christ matter?
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Cor. 2:2)
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We can’t glorify the cross
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18, NIV)
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The cultural status of our Christianity
I am taking a bit of a break from my normal daily lectionary reading and going back to something I have enjoyed my adult life walking with Christ. It is to walk slowly through a book of the Bible and pray. I like walking through a book of the Bible and study, pray, think devotionally, theologically, etc. This is something…
