About 3,000 years ago the Psalmist wrote, “Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” The writer was referring to being mindful of God’s Word. About 500 years later in China, the Buddha (the Awakened One) founded the Buddhist movement, the […]
Read MoreIf you just logically and clearly tell people what to do, they will indeed do it. Does this assumption square with your experience? Is it true in church life? To me, it seems quaint. Actually, it is quaint, going back to Medieval times. What formal education existed at the time of the Reformation was based […]
Read MoreThe word “should” comes easily in church life and literature. You should go to church weekly. You should read your Bible. You should love your enemy. To lay a Christian “should” on someone makes a massive assumption: That other person wants to be a good Christian and is eager to know how. It’s an application […]
Read MoreMost mainline churches (and many others) have relied on “should” to motivate their church life. Such was the theme of the previous blog. Church is something good people should do. But that motivation is not working well anymore. What is actually working now in modern America? The same approach that worked for the Apostle Paul […]
Read MoreLike it or not the current law of this country is that you can’t discriminate on the bases of sex. The LGBT movement happened rapidly, basically in the last twenty years. We all have to deal with this new legal fact. So what then are we to do with Paul’s statements in scripture?
Read MoreOne of the joys of parenting is to watch children grow in their understanding of God and faith. To a toddler the Jesus figure in a Palm Sunday parade is literally Jesus and needs to hear the explanation that he is Mr. Jones, acting like Jesus. Beyond toddler literalism, middle-grades school children focus on fairness […]
Read MoreI once read a book by a psychiatrist who recommended to his counselees that they go to church frequently. The benefit he described is learning patience that could break them out of their self-centeredness at least for that hour in church. Apparently, in his experience (perhaps in a Catholic mass) Sunday worship is very tedious […]
Read MoreReference to the African proverb is intentional: It Takes a Village to Raise a Child. Exposure to the insights and experiences of many adults enriches the setting in which children learn about themselves and the world around them. It also multiplies the number of “eyes” watching and encouraging the good behavior of the child. But […]
Read MoreBarn-raising was a community event in rural areas. It still is among the Amish. Timbers for the side walls were assembled on the ground and hoisted up into place by teams pulling on ropes from one side and pushing with poles on the other. Take barn-raising as a spiritual metaphor for helping a believer grow […]
Read MoreSomewhere there may be someone who read the Bible one day and came to saving faith all by themselves. But that is not the way it works for most of us. We read and hear God’s Word through filters set by relationships with others around us. It’s from other believers that we learn what the […]
Read MoreThe practice of infant baptism shapes much of the church fellowship experienced in traditional mainline churches. We are not taught how to look for and recognize the work of the Holy Spirit within us. We have had the experience but missed its meaning, to quote the poet T. S. Eliot. Most American Evangelical churches stress […]
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