I have always been a fan of Christmas. More recently, I have come to realize that I love Advent almost as much. It is a season to prepare and a time to wait. It is when our hearts and minds, ears and voices can set the stage for the incredible crescendo of God’s incarnation. This year, I have set out to do a weekly reflection piece that follows the lectionary readings for each Sunday in Advent and included Christ the King as well. I hope they help add some thoughtfulness to your Advent and Christmas this year.
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We want our pastors to be vulnerable but without any wounds.Ok, maybe wounds are allowed so long as they are healed wounds. We want healed wounds without any scars.Well, maybe scars are ok if those scars are covered and no longer show any weakness. We want weakness but no struggles.Then again, maybe we can deal…
I spend a lot of time thinking about ecclesiology and how it relates to church practice in this post-Christian era. Beyond this, how is our praxis of church shaped by our culture rather than our praxis of culture being shaped by our ecclesiology? I keep asking myself what it means to be a faithful church…
I want to pick up from my last post and consider an implication and approach to ecclesiology that differs somewhat from what is often presented. As I continue to wrestle with questions about the purpose and function of the local church, my conviction is that one of the reasons it exists is to make the…
In the preface to the 2006 edition of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Ligon Duncan has a most telling comment. Pagan ideas underlie evangelical egalitarianism, based, as it is, on ideas borrowed from cultural feminism. Egalitarianism must always lead to an eventual denial of the gospel. When the biblical distinctions of male and female are…
Pete Ward’s Introducing Practical Theology: Mission, Ministry, and the Life of the Church presents an overall framework that practical theology is “a kind of theology that takes seriously both practice and theology.”[1] But this is offered less as a definition but more as a “rule of thumb” that shapes his inquiry process. Ward allows this…
There is no better time to reflect and re-tell the Christmas story than on Christmas Eve. The story doesn’t change, we might notice or highlight different aspects but it is the same story. I heard a pastor say that the story doesn’t change but the sermon must- I think we all agree. Tonight, we had…