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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I have tried to figure out what, if anything, to say in light of the significant moment we are currently witnessing. The epicentre of it is in America but that does not mean that Canada isn’t caught up in it- both in terms of culpability and result. The deaths murders of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor,…
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…
My mom recently mentioned to me a book she had heard about and was starting to read. It was by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. I had not really heard of her except the briefest of snippets I had seen on Twitter that had mentioned the title of her book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…
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…
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…
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…