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Pressing ahead
We face quite a few changes for our church this year. They are incredibly wonderful opportunities brilliantly disguised as frightening choices. It is a time to clearly hear the voice of the Spirit. We must be tuned in. I have invited our congregation to walk slowly through Matthew 5-10 in these next few weeks to see the pattern Matthew gives…
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Real Church. You may want to try it.
Great thoughts here from Scot McKnight on the local church. Ordinary small churches are the norm and the reality of church life, of kingdom-now life. We have the ideal in our head, and lifted up as THE model for church, McKnight tries to burst that bubble. As pastors we can even have our ideals: Pastors smitten by the ideal of…
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The church is a mess
“The churches of Revelation show us that churches are not Victorian parlors where everything is always picked up and ready for guests. They are messy family rooms. Entering a person’s house unexpectedly, we are sometimes met with a barrage of apologies. St. John does not apologize. Things are out of order, to be sure, but that is what happens to…
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Digitizing our experiences
So many of our “experiences” in and with the world… and in and “with” God are digitized these days. To have the physical touch… the physical interaction… without the manipulation of some sort of digital enhancement… just doesn’t occur to us very much.
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We do this, we do this as a CHURCH
Powerful thoughts from Eugene Peterson in Reverse Thunder: The Revelation of John and Praying the Imagination. : The gospel is never for individuals but always for a people. Sin fragments us, separates us, and sentences us to solitary confinement. Gospel restores us, unites us, and sets us in community. The life of faith revealed and nurtured in the biblical narratives is…
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Westboro
I went to church with my parents in Kansas on Sunday. The ironic thing… more like MORONIC thing… is their church was picketed by Westboro Baptist Church of all things. I thought I heard wrong, but it was true. It is beyond me how that much hate resides in people to the point that on a Sunday morning, when one…
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The small things we do
If we could possibly move away from doing things that we only think are good enough to post on Facebook, think of all the things we actually DO that bless people in the name of the Kingdom. When you think about all of us as believers simply living out the Kingdom in some small way… it is a huge payoff.…
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The Church That Ate Its Own
We really like this stuff. (I was so tempted to say, “We really eat this up.“) Tales from the crypt about horrible church experiences. Bad church. BAD CHURCH! And we shake our all too righteous fingers at it like it’s a dog that just wet the carpet. But… it makes headlines… and we eat it up. (Sorry. The metaphor is too good.) Write…
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Why I won’t be “packin’”
The article was this: “Pastor Shot in His Pulpit.” The discussion in a Facebook went to: “Maybe we need to carry when we go into our pulpits.” You can pack. If it’s legal, I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’… especially if you’re packin’. cebook group of ministers centered around this thought: “Maybe we should be packin’ when we head to our pulpits these days.” And I…
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Why I pastor a great church!
In our small church, we had 17 leaders go on our retreat. Among our leaders is Ida. She is a board member. On the day before her 82nd birthday she got on the zip lines with 10 others. She is fearless! This is the church I love!
Tag: Church
