Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying to think of a way to express what I find so disturbing about the “emerging church” debate. Let me try this. Many of us know that just before the end of the first century our resurrected Lord returned in a vision to his dear friend and […]
Although I want to keep our conversation going about “emerging churches” and “emerging problems,” have a question this morning about how the present economic downturn is affecting us as individuals and as a group? Wondering if as many of us as possible would give a quick comment about any of the material, emotional, or spiritual […]
Over the past decade there has been growing controversy about “a new way of doing church.” The debate has been generational in nature. Many of our sons and daughters are forming or joining congregations that don’t look or sound like our kind of church. Yet, they are likely to tell us that they are just […]
It’s Saturday and a cool rain is falling in West Michigan. Not supposed to get over 50 degrees F. Leaves are turning and dropping. Sort of happy they are too wet and heavy to rake today. Big 10 football game this afternoon. This year’s underdog University of Michigan plays rival Michigan State. But for the […]
In first-century Greek, Roman, and Jewish society, a man was the master of his house. Wives lived under the rule of their husbands and were expected to submit to them. So when the apostle Paul, in his New Testament letters, encouraged wives to submit to their husbands, those words would not have been unusual. Today […]
There are ideas in yesterday’s conversation that make a lot of sense to me. It seems to me that it is consistent with the Bible to say that: 1. Bitterness is not an acceptable option for followers of Christ. 2. A desire to get even is also not a Christ-like option. 3. Our Lord gives […]
Yesterday, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered recognized the 45th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963 that Christopher McNair and his wife Maxine lost their 11 year old daughter, Denise, in the blast that also took the lives of three […]
Envy is not always bad. But it can be evil. In the best sense it’s a desire for the good qualities we see in others. In the worst sense it’s a desire to see others deprived of their joy. Reference.com says, “Aristotle in Rhetoric defined envy “as the pain caused by the good fortune of […]
Someone has said, “Wise are those who look at others with the same generosity they offer themselves, and, at themselves, with the same critical eye they have for others.” Such advice is difficult to disagree with because it amounts to treating others the way we’d want to be treated. But just because the “golden rule” […]
Sometimes I wonder whether I’m half asleep even when I think I’m wide awake. I say that while reflecting on some words of the New Testament that seem dangerously extreme– and radically sensible. In his first letter to the Corinthians, and in anticipation of an unnamed impending crisis, the Apostle Paul wrote, “The time is […]
