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It is simply good news
I am starting into NT Wright’s book, Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes It Good. As usual with Wright at this point in my life, it is refreshing reading. Wright has done such a marvelous job of paring down issues over time. He can be as complicated as the next scholar. Here, he keeps it basic.…
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Theology of Joy
Wonderful discussion between NT Wright and Miroslav Volf.
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Why we read Scriptures in every worship service
We follow a public reading of Scripture format every service. They are designed to keep us mindful of the story. The church needs constantly to learn, and constantly to be working on, the practice of telling and retelling the great stories of the world and Israel, especially the creation and the Exodus; the great promises that emerged from those stories;…
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Transformational thinking starts with suffering. Really.
Picking up N T Wright’s book, After You Believe, is a tremendous bonus as I work through these texts on “live dead” for my messages on Sunday. Wright does not pull any punches. He examines the New Testament texts thoroughly. While a lot of his writing sounds a lot like the old “Kingdom Now” theology, it varies off wildly from…
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Be anxious for nothing. Really.
I am working through a series I’ve called “Live Dead.” I am using the missions theme our denomination uses that is building teams to go into the hardest areas of the world and from that exploring what it means to “live dead” as American Christians. I’ve been drawing from the New Testament readings each week in our services (Revised Common…
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God changing the world — through us
When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice, the peacemakers, and so on… It is because of this that the world has been changed by people like William Wilberforce, campaigning tirelessly to abolish slavery, by Desmond Tutu, working and…
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The true POWER of our discipleship in the Kingdom of God
Dallas Willard and NT Wright both ignite my soul for so much more in this life. They do it in a quiet way that doesn’t sound nearly intrusive as others I’ve heard… yet it rings true somehow. Ortberg in his book Soul Keeping quotes Dallas as saying this: Your eternal destiny is not cosmic retirement; it is to be part of…
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Understanding the power of the Kingdom right here and right now
One of the things I love about NT Wright’s writing is he uses phrases that scare the living daylights out of people like me who are used to the abuse of those words. When Wright dares to move into territory that sounds a lot like the old “Kingdom Now” theology I studied in college, I get nervous. Yet, he refuses to surrender…
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The paradigm of kingdom thinking
One of the more important chapters in Simply Jesus by NT Wright is on Space, Time, and Matter. It’s a mind-bender for me, which I enjoy. The contention is that Jesus wasn’t about telling people how to get to heaven. Jesus was about announcing the coming of the Kingdom HERE… NOW. Not in some “Kingdom Now” type of theology, but…
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Surrendering our allegiance to the magisterium of the state
Thoughts from NT Wright’s Simply Jesus. I blame him. Don’t shoot me. 😉 The church for centuries lived in the true power of the Kingdom (not fully, but more at times than others). The church lived out what was demonstrated in the life of Christ and they simply believed him when he commanded them to go and do the same. Now…
Tag: N.T. Wright
