Part 3: What the Church Needs. Now. We've been taking the last Sunday of each month the past couple of months to visit other churches in our area. This, in conjunction with our travels to preach in various churches, gives us the opportunity to see how the Lord is working in our part of the… Continue reading Some Thoughts on Mark 1, The Church, and Power
Category: Church
Some Thoughts on Mark 1, The Church, and Preaching
Part 2 of 3: What the Church Needs to be Preaching. Now. In part one of this short series of posts, I talked about what I think the church needs to be doing now, namely, preparing the way for the coming of Jesus. By preparing the way, I mean: calling people to repentance. It may… Continue reading Some Thoughts on Mark 1, The Church, and Preaching
Some Thoughts on Mark 1, the Church, and Repentance
Part 1 of 3: What the Church Needs to be Doing. Now. Been thinking about church. I do that a lot for some reason. It's not like I have anything else to do with my time. (/sarcasm). The truth is, I'm fairly heavily involved with my local church through helping lead worship (singing, playing guitar,… Continue reading Some Thoughts on Mark 1, the Church, and Repentance
Book Review: Surprise the World
Me and a friend have been working our way through some pretty good books. I'm just a little more ahead of him, but he is plowing his way through slowly and making some amazing discoveries in the works of Scott McKnight and NT Wright among others. We have both had our theological worlds shredded–and for… Continue reading Book Review: Surprise the World
Book Review: Accompanied by the Instruments of David
One day I was scrolling through my twitter feed and this person I follow posted a link to this book. The link said the book was free. I wrote to the person who posted it, never heard back, waited a few days and downloaded the free Kindle version of this book. Turns out the book… Continue reading Book Review: Accompanied by the Instruments of David
Advent Day 7: Matthew 7: The Kingdom of Love
If you have to force something, you really need to ask if it is love. If it isn’t love, you really need to ask yourself if you are of Messiah.
Advent Day 3: Matthew 3: Things to Come
Read: Matthew 3; Psalm 2; Isaiah 42; Genesis 22; 1 Peter 1:1-12 It is quite impossible for me to overstate how important it is for us to see the big picture in the Bible. We are so accustomed to reading the Bible to find either how to be saved (in some way that we usually… Continue reading Advent Day 3: Matthew 3: Things to Come
Advent Day 2: Matthew 2: The Real King of Israel
Read: Matthew 2; Psalm 2; Revelation 12; Genesis 12 I thought a little more about that genealogy from Matthew chapter 1: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." So, in some way, Jesus is related to David and Abraham. OK. And the Lord made promises to… Continue reading Advent Day 2: Matthew 2: The Real King of Israel
Book Review: A Fellowship of Differents
I only recently jumped on the Scot McKnight bandwagon. This year, in fact, although I have followed him on Twitter for a while and, if I am not mistaken, reviewed a book he wrote on Fasting a long while ago. I became interested in McKnight's writing when I saw another of his books called The… Continue reading Book Review: A Fellowship of Differents
Book Review: Thriving in Babylon
I love when a book just sort of 'shows up' and it has immediate relevance to my life or ministry. Such was the case with Thriving in Babylon. I was searching through the David C Cook offerings on NetGalley and this book just appeared…I'm fairly certain I heard the sound of 'ahhh' sung by angels… Continue reading Book Review: Thriving in Babylon
Book Review: The End of Me
Back in the day when I was still invited to stand in the pulpit each week and preach, I once had a crazy idea after reading a book by Eugene Peterson. Actually, Peterson's book began sparking little fires in me that I simply could not control. He eventually wrote five volumes in a series of… Continue reading Book Review: The End of Me
Book Review: God for the Rest of Us
Can you imagine if Karl Barth sat down to write Church Dogmatics and began with an exceptional account of how wrecked his life has been by sin, how disturbed his family is/was, and other unsavory and sordid details of his confusion, pain, and suffering and then told us the story of how God redeemed it,… Continue reading Book Review: God for the Rest of Us
The Unshakable Kingdom of God
Grounding Text: Daniel 2:44-45; Hebrews 12:28-29 Download The Church in Exile 3 February 4 2007 Daniel 2 1 49 This is part of a sermon I preached from Daniel 2. I think it is still relevant and still carries some weight. If you would like to read the text of the entire sermon, click… Continue reading The Unshakable Kingdom of God
Helpless, Lenten Reflection #10
[Note: I wrote this for Easter Sunday, 2007. The week before, while preaching the sermon, I had suffered a massive attack of a kidney stone. It completely incapacitate me. I was in so much pain I was unable to finish the sermon and the rest of the week I merely laid around on the couch… Continue reading Helpless, Lenten Reflection #10
Book Review: Engaging the Christian Scriptures
Title: Engaging the Christian Scriptures Authors: Andrew E. Arterbury, W.H. Bellinger, Jr., Derek S. Dodson Publisher: Baker Academic Year: 2014 Pages: 286 Kindle Price: $14.57 Paperback: $20.33 [Disclaimer: In exchange for my fair and unbiased review, I was provided an ARC by the publisher through NetGalley. The views expressed here are mine alone. I was… Continue reading Book Review: Engaging the Christian Scriptures
Life Under the Blue Sky: The View From Below 