acts on Real Estate

As in buying real estate, three principles are crucial to understanding a person’s words: location, location, and location. We cannot make sense of what someone says unless we understand the context i...

This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide. For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea “oceans.”  The poi...

For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea “oceans.”  The point is to relate our present-day affinity for the ocean, seashore, and beach...

[For Christians] the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiast...

I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving o...

Family and property, then, were not for the ancient Jew simply what they are to the modern western world. Both carried religious and cultural significance far beyond personal, let alone “individual,” ...

To focus our expectation in an otherworldly salvation has the potential to dissipate our resistance to societal evil and the dedication needed to work for the redemptive transformation of this world.

We are meant to be part of the flow of abundance: to open our hands to receive what we need and share what we have with others. Jesus taught his followers to be radically generous when he said: “Sell ...

Heavenly Father, thank you for a spiritual home For the legacy of those who have gone before us and welcomed us Lord Jesus, thank you for your church For the legacy of your word and witness across th...

Pastor: We who have been given new birth into a living hope, are sent now into the world - People: to look, live and love more like Jesus.  Pastor: Go in peace to serve the Lord! Pe...

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin: Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness a...

The new life is not a matter of mere moral reformation, but of spiritual transformation.

When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St....

The other way to destroy the relational bonds of gift giving is to turn a gift into a commodity. Let’s say it’s my birthday. Ten friends come over to my house, and we eat a good meal, and they all bri...

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

Most secularists are too politically savvy to attack religion directly or to debunk it as false. So what do they do? They consign religion to the value sphere—which takes it out of the realm of true a...

If our goods are not available to the community, they are stolen goods.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who after your resurrection from the dead did gloriously ascend into heaven: Grant us the aid of your loving- kindness, that according to your promise you will always dwell with u...

Many Christians don’t give. Others determine to do their part but sigh deeply before writing a check to their church or ministry. They give strictly out of a sense of duty and obligation. Better to gi...

May the Holy Spirit empower you now and always to speak and live the Good News of Jesus for you and for all. Amen.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom: Enlighten by your Holy Spirit those who teach and those who learn, that, rejoicing in the knowledge of your truth, they may worship you and serve you from gen...

A friend once told me about a Christian singer he knew who rented a recording studio. After an extensive setup and sound check, she began performing her first song. The sound technician thought it sou...

In terms of time and space, the scale of Jesus’s earthly ministry was small—three years in a parcel of land where the corners of the world came together.

For Christians, to share in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, means to live as people who know that they are always guests – that they have been welcomed and that they are wanted. It is, perhaps, the...

The early apostolic communities cannot be understood outside of the matrix of intense expectation. They were communities awaiting Christ’s return. They gathered in Eucharist for, among other reasons, ...

Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God is the announcement by word and deed that God is acting and manifesting dynamically his redemptive will in history. God is seeking out sinners; he is inviting them...

Loving and faithful God, You save and sustain us. What marvelous good news You give us through Jesus!Yet we are oblivious to opportunities to share Your grace and love. We fail to see, as Your Word sa...

Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...