Have you ever heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Appearing in chapter six of The Book of Revelation, only one of them was named, Death. Tradition named the other three War, Famine and Pestilence. Just think of them. War. Famine. Pestilence. Death. Whoa. Our attention is seized by the imposing, commanding appearance of […]
Is there a thought, a story, an event, something you heard about or saw with your own eyes, that when you recall it, still makes you stop? Something that still fills you with child-like wow? Still makes you wonder, marvel, want to say, wait did that really happen? There is for me. It came around […]
A bill recently passed in the Kansas House would allow any individual, business or religious group with “sincerely held religious beliefs” to refuse services, facilities, goods, employment or employment benefits related to any same-sex marriage or domestic partnership. It’s called “The Religious Freedom Protection Act” and I have friends who are on both sides of […]
Like so many others I was deeply touched and troubled by the recent death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. A supremely talented actor, he displayed a fascinating ability to reach down into the darker, deeply complicated nuances of human experience and bring them to life. “He will be greatly missed” is woefully inadequate for the […]
Can you remember Christmas Eve? It was only a few weeks ago. But for most of us life Christmas zooms into our lives and then silently disappears in the rear-view mirror as we rocket on. And we hardly think about it. But I’m still thinking about Christmas Eve because I know how difficult and despairing […]
I was a student at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California when Leadership Journal came on the scene in 1980. I’ve been a fan ever since. So when they asked to excerpt some of my story from my book, Ashamed No More, for the Fall 2013 issue (http://bit.ly/1fQBgnn) you can imagine it was a bittersweet opportunity. […]
This is the fifth of five blog posts exploring the question “what is the Gospel?” Not meant to be an exhaustive study, just a relevant one, we’ve looked at a number of New Testament passages. It might be useful, in thinking about the Gospel, to ask what is it for, or what it is the […]
This is the fourth of five blog posts asking the question “what is the Gospel?” We looked at passages from Paul, Peter and the writer of Hebrews. But do we have any good indication what Jesus himself understood the Gospel to be? Yes, we do. The Gospel of Luke contains a story that gives us […]
First century Jews who became Christians in the first years of the Church experienced enormous pressure to renounce Christ and return to Judaism. A letter was written to encourage them by clarifying the nature of Christ, his ministry and what it meant for them. We know that work as the Letter to the Hebrews. The […]