I stumbled upon the joyous thought that our local church has been so good during the rehearsal when I watched our friends practice their vows in the same place Sarah and I had done so four and a half years ago. In retrospect we were just a small yet integral couple to the ever increasing life of our local church. When we look at so many of our friends wedding pictures we all have the same background. We all have our church’s baptistery behind us, and the communion table whispering to us “Do this in remembrance of me.”
Entries categorized as ‘Church’
The Slow, Beautiful Goodness That Is The Local Church
January 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Categories: Church
Tagged: God, Jesus, liturgy, mission, religion
Lying to God
October 16, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Our central lie is in the discrepancy between the language of worship and the actions of worship. We confess “Jesus is Lord” but only submit to the part of Christ’s authority that fits our grand personal designs, doesn’t cause pain, doesn’t disrupt the American dream, doesn’t draw us across ethnic and racial divisions, doesn’t add the pressure of too much guilt, doesn’t mean forgiving as we have been forgiven, doesn’t ask for more than a check to show compassion. We “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” expressing our desire to know Jesus, but the Jesus we want to know is the sanitized Jesus that looks a lot like us when we think we are at our best. Despite God’s Word to the contrary, we think we can say that we love God and yet hate our neighbor, neglect the widow, forget the orphan, fail to visit the prisoner, ignore the oppressed. Its the sign of disordered love. When we do this, our worship becomes a lie to God.
-Mark Labberton
Categories: Church
Tagged: Benevolence, God, Jesus, liturgy, mission, religion
Can a Liturgical Church Be Missional?
September 3, 2009 · 1 Comment
It should not surprise you that we think that one can. Some of our reasons are shared by Grace Lutheran Church in Tulsa, OK, and they’ve put together a video introduction to their fellowship.
HT: iMonk
Categories: Church
Tagged: God, Jesus, liturgy, mission, religion
A Physician’s Office, Not A Courtroom
August 8, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Have you sinned? Go to Church and wipe out your sin. As often as you might fall down in the marketplace, you pick yourself up again. So too, as often as you sin, repent your sins. Do not
despair. Even if you sin a second time, repent a second time. Do not, by indifference, lose hope entirely of the good things prepared … For here [the Church] is a physician’s office, not a courtroom; not a place where punishment of sinners is active, but a place where forgiveness of sin is granted.
– St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Penance, AD 387
(HT: Gabe Martini)
Categories: Church
Tagged: Benevolence, God, Jesus, liturgy, mission, religion
