Churches around the world honor the “cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us – all those people who shaped, challenged, and carried us forward on our spiritual journey. When I contemplate the saints in my own life, I’m reminded of two interrelated ideas. The first is called six degrees of separation; the second, three degrees of influence. In theory,
A Response to the Assault on the Capitol of the United States January 11, 2021 Each Thursday morning, at 8:00am (eastern time), I lead the Wesleyan Methodist family across the globe in a time of prayer on Facebook Live. We focus on the needs of our world and on the continuing COVID crisis. The events at the US Capitol on
We have traveled (less this year than others) through the days of Christmas feasting, arriving like the Magi at Epiphany. This is a blessing on a prosaic scale: as a child, Christmas was one day, not 12; and given all the build-up, something seemed off about abandoning festivities so quickly. The cadence of maneuver through 12 days makes more rhythmic
Luke 2:25-40 The good news we take into the new year is that grace is trickling down and seeping upward before we ever realize it. As we pray, we listen. We ask if there’s anything we need to hear, anything at all. And then we wait. Faith is the art of waiting on active, unseen grace, like trusting that crocus
When my son, Nathan, was a kid he had a watch with a dial that would glow in the dark. The only problem was that it never seemed to be dark enough to see it glow. One day, all the kids were playing in our basement, which is like a cave – it’s PITCH DARK. No light gets down there.
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the
“Let’s put him on blast!” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but I instantly knew what it meant: whatever the business’s misstep had been, the call was sent out to grab it by its social media handles and tear it down. A bit of photographic evidence, a globally-audible, locally-tangible siren, and the business was tagged: the company was now “it”—a
Go in peace,Remembering that the Christ who was King and is King and will forever be KingWas born not to a family of nobles and princes,But to a family who couldn’t even place their child in a proper crib;a manger would have to do. Go in peace,Remembering that the Christ who would be both the high priest and the perfect
Think of a time when you went through a significant transition to something wonderful and new. Maybe it was moving away from home for the first time and getting your own place. Maybe it was starting a new job and moving to a new city. Maybe it was getting married and beginning a new life together. We can celebrate the
We’ve entered the season of Advent, that time of preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ. Because Advent is the beginning of the Church year, I find it interesting that the Gospel readings for the first Sunday always begin with the end – the return of Christ. In my mind those are the kind of passages that should come at
Many of you know that I love gardening. I just love working with my hands in the dirt. I’ve written about that passion before. Annuals are the kind of flowers that you need to replant every year and they are crucial to my garden. Unfortunately, with the heat wave that has plagued my part of the world, they are looking somewhat
Over the years I’ve observed that many of the problems we have in mission and ministry stem from our confusion between two similar, yet distinct, things: Conflict and Tension. Now, since these are pretty common words it might be helpful to offer definitions for the sake of this conversation: Conflict: “An incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests.”
Scripture Focus: God wanted them to look for him and perhaps search all around for him and find him, though he is not far from any of us: “We live in him. We walk in him. We are in him.” Some of your own poets have said: “For we are his children.” (Acts 17:27-28, New Century Version) In quite
“Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, dear friends! I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women since they have contended at
Scripture Focus: Aways be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again – rejoice! (Philippians 4:4, NLT) At its most basic level, Christian faith is about joy. It is about the deep, abiding joy of being in relationship with a God who accepts us as we are and pledges never to abandon us. The by-product of following
Scripture Focus: When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while
When church leaders grieve, there is sometimes a spiritual reality that makes the grief of a pastor or priest slightly distinct from the grief of other leaders. Grief and reality pair together; anytime we find ourselves grieving, we find ourselves responding at multiple levels to what we perceive to be true, as cartoons remind us whenever someone cries over a
Many of us continue to deal with the effects of the pandemic in our schools, communities, and churches. No matter the location or size of the church, one universal and lingering effect of the post-pandemic reality is that church attendance has not rebounded as well as other aspects of our pre-COVID19 lives. Recent studies show, regardless of the size of
Scripture focus: It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when
Romans 12:10 Words are a funny thing. Not just words on their own, but the ways we choose to use words and give meaning to them. For instance: a young lady meets a young man and they begin going out on dates. Then they become “exclusive.” Pretty soon the pressure begins to build as the young lady and the young
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