Life Of The Body
It often feels like the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together […]
(PART THREE OF A FIVE-PART SERIES) If we can tell anything about him from the brief epistle that bears his name, Jude was not one of those people who always walks on the sunny side of life. His letter hoists the danger pennant for the Christians to whom he’s writing at the very beginning and […]
“How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church” by C. Christopher Smith
How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church By C. Christopher Smith Brazos Press, 2019 222 pages (paperback), $16.99 Some of the most profitable, God-glorifying, and personally challenging conversations I’ve had in the last decade occurred with a deacon in my local church. With our union in Christ at […]
It’s no secret the church in America is struggling. We’ve lost the cultural wars, and our kids are being seduced by the siren call of secularism. It’s rare to find a family where I live in the Northeast where all the grown children of Christian parents are believers. Having lost the cultural high ground, we […]
For many evangelicals, Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago was the benchmark for successful ministry in the latter decades of the twentieth century. But in 2007, after a survey of over thirty churches in the Willow Creek network, founding pastor Bill Hybels and Willow Creek leadership publicly admitted the failure of their approach to […]
Cody is confident in his walk with the Lord. He reads his Bible at home, prays every day, and regularly shares his faith with others. He listens to a John Piper sermon on the commute to work and various Reformed podcasts on the way home, and he attends no less than two conferences a year. […]
Skandalon is a word dear to the first-semester Greek student’it literally means ‘stumbling block.’ To English speakers, scandal connotes a lewd CNN headline or a story from the next church over. Scandal is engrossing and lets us shake our heads in superior disgust. We would never do anything so icky and dumb. The Greek student, […]
We live in an age of unprecedented richness in discipleship materials. Vaults of old treasures of spiritual classics are unlocked daily to enrich this generation, and new treasures are being continually crafted by contemporary Christian leaders. The rise of the Internet, social media, tablets, and the like make these discipleship materials instantly available. The sermons […]
You can become anything you want to be.” I think I may have said that to my own kids before. Happily, upon further reflection, it’s not true. God handcrafts human beings, through nature and nurture, to fulfill a specific role in the web of relationships in society and, above all, in Christ’s body. “There are […]
Busyness is booming. People are busy everywhere you look, even on your computer screen. Instead of time-saving devices, we want gadgets that do more and more right alongside us. Busyness has become business as usual, if not business itself. Family is left first thing in the morning, and individuals pursue interests and activities of their […]
Who were your most formative influences in life? What experiences have made you into the person you are today? Our families’in both their healthy and dysfunctional forms’continue to shape and reshape all of us well into our old age. Sometimes we feel as if we’ll never be free from their unhealthy influence on us; sometimes […]
Almost every Christian will readily agree that the family is important. Family is the one truly natural institution, and of all the many institutions that influence us through our youth, our families’for better or worse’usually end up shaping us the most. Recent decades have witnessed rather profound changes in cultural attitudes and practices regarding family: […]
Over the last decade, community has been a rising buzzword among Christians in North America. From the emergence of new monastic and missional communities to the publication of books with titles such as From Couch to Community and Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable and Consistent Community, there is a deep hunger in our age […]
