That dissonance between what grief actually requires and what our work culture allows and demands is where so much of this struggle resides. In a system that runs on production and performance, there’s little space for something that can’t be optimized or sped up. And grief, by its very nature, refuses to operate on that... Continue Reading

Although some among us would defend both biblically and historically the practice of referring to lay volunteers as deacons or deaconesses, others find this to be a distressing refusal to abide by the BCO as currently written. Overture 71 would prohibit this nomenclature even more clearly than the BCO currently does. However, keeping the lay... Continue Reading

Biblically speaking, there are two and only two legitimate sexual identities: male and female. Scripture identifies sinful desires and sinful behaviors, calls them sin, and calls sinners to repentance, forgiveness, and adoption into God’s family as sons and daughters of God. That is the identity on offer. The gospel doesn’t baptize your disordered desires and... Continue Reading

The civil power is to serve the church as a guardian of liberty and a hedge against violence, not as an umpire of doctrine and practice who can even eject players from the ecclesial arena. When we compare these passages on the civil magistrate, we do not find “sorta, kinda” the same thing—they are altogether... Continue Reading

Progressive Christianity in final analysis forms and then ascends a mountain of its own making, at the summit transfiguring the community’s internal inclinations into external dogma. Such idol-making is the only recourse for Progressive Christianity, dwelling in the shadow of nihilism, rubbing modernism and postmodernism together in bifurcated hopeful-despair for a flame to arise.  ... Continue Reading

God cares for the temporary things in this world. He dresses things with great beauty even though they are passing. He gives beauty to what lasts only a little while. If that is true of grass, then what does it say of men and women made in his image, what does it say of those... Continue Reading

Public performance of vulnerability to sin is not part of the minister’s calling. The congregants, if well-catechized, all know he is a sinner. They need no more information than that. The temptation to say more is a function of our therapeutic society and thus part of the larger cultural problem, not a solution.    Another... Continue Reading

The New Testament presents early Christians as having a keen focus on sound teaching that builds us up into the most holy Faith. It will be obvious that the New Testament documents often do not state doctrine like a modern textbook, but its authors collectively contribute to something that we can recognize as the Faith,... Continue Reading

He is the one who is and who was and who is to come. He is in full possession of the Spirit’s power, shining radiantly in the fullness of glory. Nothing is hidden from this enthroned Son of Man whose eyes are like flaming fire. He has ascended to the Right hand of the Father,... Continue Reading

When we move forward into the New Testament and the unveiling of the gospel story, we see that this God exists as the fullness of Father begetting his Son eternally, and the Father and the Son pouring out the Spirit eternally. In other words, this a se God is a Trinitarian a se God. He is a God of... Continue Reading