Background on Church And The Arts

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Defining What it Means to be Human

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Keywords

On August 20 and September 5, 1977, two spacecraft named Voyager were launched. Eventually leaving the solar system and heading into deep space, they represented a revolutionary and promising breakthr...

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God the Artist: Crafted to Make a Statement

Author

JR Woodward

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 2:10, Isaiah 64:8, 1 Peter 2:9, 2 Corinthians 3:2-3, John 17:18

When I think of masterpieces, I think of art. But what is art? I like the way that Thomas Hoving, who was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, put it: “Art happens when anyon...

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Pursuing the Common Good Throughout History

Author

Don Everts

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 22:39, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 10:24, Romans 15:1-2, Galatians 6:10, Romans 12:10, Acts 20:35, Matthew 25:35-40, Isaiah 58:6-7, Proverbs 19:17, Luke 10:30-37, James 2:15-16, 1 John 3:17, Proverbs 31:8-9, Matthew 25:40, Acts 11:29-30, 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26

Pursuing the common good has been a strong marker of the Christian church from the very beginning. The early church had many habits that they became known for, of course—including meeting frequently, ...

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Do Something Useful

Author

Robert Capon Farrar

Keywords

How much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses, and the juice of pine trees to realiz...

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The Church Losing its Place as the Center of Attention

Author

Tim Wu

Keywords

The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes-central role in education, that is exactly what i...

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Music: Yesterday & Today

Author

Jay Y. Kim

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:16, Psalm 100:1-2, Psalm 95:1-2, Revelation 14:2-3, Nehemiah 12:27

These days, music is everywhere. It’s on television and film, elevators and restaurants, public bathrooms and dentist offices. It’s in our cars and on our phones. With just a few taps to our screens, ...

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A Field of Chaff & Wheat Growing up Together

Author

John F. X. Harriott

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 32:1–14 , 1 Kings 19:9–18, Isaiah 6:1–8, Matthew 13:24–30 , 1 Corinthians 1:26–29 , Psalm 51:17

The Church is not a clean, well-lit place where everything runs smoothly and actions automatically match ideals. It is, in the words of the Gospel, a field of chaff and wheat growing up together and b...

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The Church of My Choice

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:17, Luke 15:11-32, Psalm 122:1

One Sunday morning at a Colorado prison, a group of inmates was being led to the Catholic and Protestant chapels. One young man, however, kept walking past them and headed toward the main gate. A guar...

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The Founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

Author

Esau McCaulley

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 1:1-4, Galatians 4:4-7

The African Methodist Episcopal Church began when Richard Allen and Absalom Jones demanded an equal place in the Methodist Episcopal Church and were refused. In their preaching and teaching, jus...

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The Separation of Church and State in America: What Did Their Separation Entail?

Author

Jon Meacham

Keywords

The wall Jefferson referred to is designed to divide church from state, not religion from politics. Church and state are specific things: the former signifies institutions for believers to congregate ...

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Six Factors Impacting our Understanding of Christ and Culture

Author

D. A. Carson

Keywords

We have the same biblical texts that earlier generations of Christians thought their way through, of course, but our reflections are shaped by six unique factors. (1) Especially in the Anglo-Saxon wo...

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Staying in our Christian Bubbles

Author

Sam Metcalf

Keywords

I was in London browsing one of the ubiquitous British tabloids and an advertisement for a new health club grabbed my attention. The picture was of a magnificent gothic church sanctuary that had been ...

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Don’t Let the Church Keep You from Being a Perfect Christian

Author

The Babylon Bee

Keywords

In this satirical excerpt from How to be a Perfect Christian by the Babylon Bee, the point becomes clear that our often-consumeristic approach to church leaves much to be desired: You want to be a p...

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Distraction is the Greatest Threat to Churches

Author

Andrew Sullivan

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:11-13, Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 , Isaiah 30:15, Luke 10:38-42 , Mark 1:35 , Psalm 46:10

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church, If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

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The Death of Christendom

Author

Tod E. Bolsinger

Keywords

In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

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Working on Our Muscle Memory

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 18:20, 1 Peter 2:5, Hebrews 10:24-25, Acts 2:42-47, Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 4:15-16, Romans 12:4-5

Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own sermons, as I was trying to help a congregation see itself not as a building, but the body of Christ. It has been adapted for TPW. No...

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Never an Only Child

Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

Whether we like it or not, the moment we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that is, from the time we become a Christian, we are at the same time a member of the Christian church … Our membe...

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Consider the Culture

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

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A Relationship Among Fellows

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:14-15, 1 John 1:7, Ephesians 4:3-6, Galatians 3:28, Philippians 2:1-2

Did you know that the history of the word “fellowship,” is, rather simply, a relationship among fellows? The idea of a fellowship being that two or more people have been bonded together in some signif...

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The Earliest Known Uses of the Trinity

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Many of us are aware that the Trinity is not specifically referred to in scripture, though it would eventually become accepted among all major branches of the Christian faith as an authentic interpret...

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In God’s Image

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value. The magazines are wrong when they suggest you are only as good as you are thin, muscular, pimple-free, or perfume...

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A Missional Hermeneutic

Author

Craig Van Gelder

Keywords

James Brownson describes what he calls a “missional hermeneutic” as observed throughout the New Testament: I call the model I am developing a missional hermeneutic because it springs from a basic obs...

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The Front Doorstep of Christianity

Author

Brian Fikkert and Russel Mask

Keywords

As the center of Christianity shifts from the West (North America and Western Europe) to the Global South, grinding poverty is on the front doorstep — and in the front pews — of the church of Jesus Ch...

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Creating Christian Consumers

Author

Jay Y. Kim

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:22-25, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Isaiah 55:8-8, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

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What We Preach

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Revelation 2:4-5, Colossians 1:18, Philippians 2:8-11, Galatians 1:6-9, 1 Corinthians 2:2

A strong church once inscribed these words on an archway leading to the churchyard. Over time, two things happened: the church lost its passion for Jesus and His gospel, and ivy began to grow on the a...

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Christians Can Cultivate Culture

Author

JR Woodward

Keywords

Scripture

Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

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Culture is Like Gravity

Author

JR Woodward

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Philippians 4:8-9, Ephesians 5:18-21, Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...

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The Advantage of the City

Author

Eric O. Jacobsen

Keywords

The Body of Christ

The advantage that cities and traditional neighborhoods have over sprawling suburbs with respect to interdependence is that they allow people of a greater variety of ages to participate meaningfully i...

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Culture is like an Iceberg

Author

Brian S. Rosner

Keywords

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

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Division in American Politics

Author

Arthur C. Brooks

Keywords

In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...

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