Watching church conflicts from a distance is like watching a water polo game — much of what constitutes the actual game is not happening above the surface, where you can see it from the back row. You can tell when the ball goes in the goal, but what you actually don’t see are the three …
Bloodless Syllogisms
Jesus taught us to evaluate arguments and doctrines on the basis of the lifestyle of the teachers — by their fruits ye shall know them. Gnostics want detached, abstracted arguments that can be evaluated in the pristine laboratory of the brain. Gnostics like to pretend that the ad hominem is a necessary fallacy, which means, …
Salt and Vinegar
I spent a good portion of the day in the air, working my way back to you, babe. No, no, that’s not right. Working my way to the ACCS convention in Covington, KY. And, as is my wont on airplanes, I got a goodish bit of reading in. The book I finished today was Ann …
The Pursuit of Hospitality
Hospitality, where it is still practiced in the church, is largely an unstudied virtue. The demands of modernity and the frenetic pace of life around us dictate that we neglect our responsibility to have our brothers and sisters into our homes. Nevertheless, the Bible is very plain in requiring us to be disciplined in our …
No Kidding?
“When you do away with the old High-Low [brow] hierarchy, people become more obsessed than ever with status” [John Seabrook, Nobrow (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), p. 168].
The Real Salt and Light Argument
“Rightly understood, this is the true ‘salt and light’ argument. Before we can win the children of this world, we have to stop losing our children to that world. And as we teach them their identity in Christ in such a way that they embrace that identity and the terms of the covenant that define …
Bear With Me A Little In My Folly
Introduction: The apostle Paul was a polarizing figure. You either really loved him, or you really didn’t. Not only was this the case in his day, it remains the case down to the present. The Text: “Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me. For …
Before the Dawning Sun
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! So then I cried with all my heart, Hear me, oh Lord, I pray. I will keep Your statutes pure, Again I cry, please save me now, And I will keep Your holy law. I rose before the dawning sun, And I …
Only Grace
We serve and worship a merciful God. One of the central lessons to learn as we approach this Table is that God loves us and wants us here. This is a hard lesson to learn—sinful men know how to flatter themselves, and they can readily believe (in their own conceits) that God loves them just …
God-centered Worship?
Reformed Christians have sometimes reacted away from the man-centered worship of much of the contemporary church, and they have lurched to another extreme, one just as dangerous. If you react away from a style of worship that seems to be saying nothing more than “gimme, gimme, gimme,” the temptation is to think that “God-centered worship” …