The Perfect Relationship

When I am building a guitar I am striving for something that I know I will never achieve: perfection. That I will never achieve it has to do not only with my experience and skill level in guitar building, but in the very concept of “The Perfect Guitar.” Every player has a different idea about what...

One Kingdom, Many Languages

Apparently a lot of people were offended by Coke’s Super Bowl commercial, in which “America the Beautiful” was sung in eight different languages, one of which was Arabic. And because a good number of those who seem to be offended are evangelical Christians, I thought it might be good to take a look at what...

The Full Tithe and Caring for the Poor

Listen to any sermon series on stewardship and invariably Malachi 3:8-10 will be invoked. It makes for a powerful message: it has an accusation—if you don’t give at least 10% to the church, you are robbing God (vs. 8-9); it has clear instructions—“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse” (vs. 10a); and it...

Discipleship: The Walk

This is the fifth and final in series on discipleship in the church.  See parts One, Two, Three, and Four. In previous posts I pointed out that most of the discipleship training I had in churches taught me to be a good church member, but not necessarily a transformed person; I learned to talk about a lot of...

Discipleship: Talking The Talk

Fourth in a series on discipleship in the church.  See part 1, part 2, part 3. In my last post I said that the process of a disciple becoming like the teacher involves at minimum two things: talking about the things the teacher talks about, and doing the things the teacher instructs the disciple to do.  The...

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