I was guest preacher at a little country church. There are thousands like it. They looked to be teetering on the brink of the abyss, hardly able to muster the leadership and funding to survive. My wife was chatting with one of the members — someone with a lot of complaints about their denomination’s influence […]
Archives for April 2013
Who You Talkin’ To?
“Why did Christ command us to call God ‘Father’?” That’s question 120 of the Heidelberg Catechism, the first in a series of ten on the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer. They asked the question 450 years ago, but it is still a good one — and timely now for reasons the authors never would have […]
Exploring Models Of Christian Community
When Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-c. 550) set out to form a new Christian community — a monastery — he did it all wrong. If he’d been a member of my denomination we would have set him straight. He should, of course, have started with a “mission study.” We want our communities — typically local […]
Survey Says…
Quick quiz — or maybe it’s a riddle: What makes you patient when things go against you? thankful when things go well? and confident as you face all the unknowns of the future? Or maybe I should switch it around and make it a survey — something they could have used on the old game […]
Simon Says: “What Do You Need?”
Last week I was blogging about the guidelines for prayer offered by the Heidelberg Catechism and I whizzed right by one that some may find troubling. When we pray, says the Catechism, we are supposed to ask “for everything God has commanded us to ask for.” It sounds like we are playing the spiritual version […]