The Church to #Ferguson, With Love

The church of Jesus Christ is the alternative kingdom to the kingdom of this age.  She is the evidence that Jesus has begun reclaiming, restoring and resurrecting what is rightfully his: a people devoted to and pleased by God’s glory (Eph 5.26-27, 32).  God shows us through the church he is repairing what has gone wrong with our world through, in and for Christ (Eph 3.8-11).  And since we are what’s wrong […]

Would Jesus Join the Tea Party?

And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12.17). Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1862 about the Union and Confederacy’s conflict over slavery, “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the […]

Practicing for Heaven

“Is it true that what we will be doing for eternity is worshiping God?” he asked. “Well,” I said, “that seems to be what the Bible teaches,” briefly referring to Revelation 4-5.  “Hmm,” he said, “that sounds boring to me.” That conversation happened 11-plus years ago and still echoes loudly in my soul.  I was thrilled he was thinking about heaven. But he revealed more than personal contemplations about the […]

Juneteenth in Graceland

Today is Juneteenth (a.k.a. June 19th). Texas introduced me to Juneteenth during a pastoral stretch in the Republic.  I am thankful to reflect on its significance today especially living in one of the more racist regions of the country.  A region that has done its fair share of infecting my own heart as well. Abraham Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.  In it he ordered the freedom […]

A Tribute to the Fifth Sunday Sing

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands (Rev 5:11-12). One of the sweet traditions in churches is the 5th Sunday night hymn-sing (a.k.a. 5th Sunday Sing). Or was. Some months will have five Sundays and many churches would gather that fifth Sunday night to, […]

Gay Is the New Black

A homosexual agenda is hardly new.  By Genesis 19 there was already a community with a well-established homosexual identity.  We then read in Genesis 19 about “the men of Sodom . . . both young and old . . . all the people from every quarter” (v4) who demanded their right to gang-rape who they thought were two of Lot’s hunky high school chums.  This was no small contingent.  It was a multi-generational […]

Message in a Bottle

Every so often “the man on the island” gently stirs the waters about the necessity of evangelism in light of God’s sovereignty.  He sends out a message in a bottle that reads, “What must I do to be saved?”  Hopefully someone sends a message back to him saying, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved!” The church has long debated his question.  The bottle can easily wander adrift in a […]

Jesus Really Loves the Right Fielder

Right field.  Every kid knows what it means to play right field.  It means you’re not a playmaker.  You’re not fast or a good glove.  Coach doesn’t entrust bottoms of fifth innings to the awkward kid whose uniform doesn’t quite match.  Right field is where you play when you’re not a player.  You’re not there to make a play but so that you won’t have to.  It’s the little league […]

Being Baptist (Part 3)

What exactly is a Baptist?  What must one believe if he is to consider himself a Baptist? What makes the ordinary Baptist different from the ordinary Methodist, Presbyterian or Episcoplian? Parts 1 and 2 argued Baptists swim in the same stream of Christian orthodoxy flowing from the Protestant Reformation.  There is no “Baptist” version, for example, of the nature of God, sinfulness of men, deity of Christ, his substitutionary atonement, bodily […]