“To this kind of super-spirituality, we should respond the same way that Luther did to his enthusiast opponents. He did not care if they had swallowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 19).
When Submission is Visible
“If a husband were to ask his wife to put on her best red dress so that they could go out to a fancy restaurant, she would not say, ‘Honey . . . I submit.’ The place where submission is tested is always at the point of significant disagreement. When we think we have only …
Sometimes God Does Give Do Overs
“When the book of Esther opens, Haman and Mordecai were already looking coldly at each other across the saloon, right hands twitching just above their holsters. Haman was an Agagite, a descendant of the Canaanite Agag, the king of the Amalekites, the king whom Samuel executed when Saul failed to. And Mordecai was a descendant …
Both Bad Moves
“As the leaven worked its way through the Christendom, religious forms of this man-centered mentality began to pervade the Church. In the ‘liberal’ sections of the Church, it took the form of exalting the intellect of man over the Scriptures. In the ‘conservative’ sections of the Church, it took the form of exalting personal conversion …
You Can’t Fill a Glass With an Empty Pitcherr
“Hollow theology cannot result in full lives” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 16).
Using Your Stuff
“Love is the measurement of all things spiritual. But the Bible teaches that love is defined by our behavior in the world of matter . . . from where I sit, the New Testament talks about Christians glorying in their doctrine and consequently loving one another with their bodies and all their stuff” (A Primer …
Camo-Contemporary
“The reason the contemporary expression is not noticed is because everything about it is so commonplace. The forms of contemporary worship are not hard to see because they are spiritual; they are hard to see because they have thoroughly taken on the color of their surroundings. While it is true that angels are hard to …
Well, Lookee Here
“When modern man finally figured out how to navigate across oceans (hooray for us!), and when Captain Cook first reached the Hawaiian Isalands, what did he find there? Well, he found people. It appears that some ancient men with rudiemtnary technology knew how to sail across the Pacific; otherwise, they wouldn’t have done it. They …
The Duty of Irrelevance
“There are at least two kinds of irrelevance. One is the irrelevance of offering a bicycle to an oyster. But there is another kind of irrelevance entirely, and that is the practice of setting forth the gospel of light and righteousness to those who love their darkness and iniquity. We are commanded to be irrelevant …
True Center
“All cultures have a cultus at the center. The center of every culture is its worship. There is no such thing as a religion-less culture, and the same is true of all sub-cultures” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 12).