Christian Living on Tradition

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Tradition is a willingness to read Scripture, taking into account the ways in which it has been read in the past. It is an awareness of the communal dimension of Christian faith, which calls shallow i...

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Robert E. Webber

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How do you deliver the authentic faith and great wisdom of the past into the new cultural situation of the twenty-first century? The way into the future, I argue, is not an innovative new start for th...

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Thomas Aquinas

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Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.

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Karl Barth

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The Church does not stand in a vacuum. Beginning from the beginning, however necessary, cannot be a matter of beginning off one’s own bat. We have to remember the communion of saints, bearing and bein...

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Reasons for the Rules

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Darren Pollock

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Scripture

Mark 2:27, Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:2-6, Mark 7:3-13, Colossians 2:8, Galatians 1:14

Season 3, episode 21 of Bluey (an episode called “Tina”) opens with Bandit telling his daughter Bluey to put her plate in the dishwasher. When Bluey pushes back and asks why, Bandit replies, “Be...

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Reading the Gospels for the First Time

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Os Guinness

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Scripture

Revelation 3:15-16, Matthew 6:24, James 1:6-8, Luke 14:34-35, Revelation 2:4-5, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 1 Corinthians 1:18

Thomas Linacre was king’s physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII of England, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of the great Renaissance thinkers Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Late i...

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Elie Wiesel

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2 Corinthians 4:8-10, Isaiah 61:1, Psalm 143:3, 1 Peter 1:6-7, Romans 5:3-5

My tradition teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith is as solid as a wounded faith.

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The Spirit-Inspired Imagination in Church Tradition

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Gregory A. Boyd

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Genesis 28:10-17, Isaiah 6:1-8, Acts 9:1-9, Revelation 1:12-18 , Daniel 7:13-14 , Psalm 16:7

Following the biblical pattern, the church has always assumed that God can communicate spiritual truths to people through their imaginations, especially through dreams and visions. Church history is r...

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Christmas: A Tradition of Gift-Giving

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Emily Hunter McGowin

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Matthew 2:11, James 1:17, Matthew 2:1-12, 2 Corinthians 9:7, Proverbs 22:9, 1 Timothy 6:18, John 3:16

While Christmas traditions vary the world over, gift-giving is a central practice just about anywhere Christ's birth is celebrated. Sometimes gifts are exchanged on December 6, the feast day of S...

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William Wood Seymour

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According to tradition, [during the crucifixion] our Lord’s back was turned toward Jerusalem, which was in the east and his face toward the west. This may have been a refinement of cruelty on the part...

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The Meaning of Rituals

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JR Woodward

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Exodus 12:14, Exodus 13:8-9, Joshua 4:6-7, Acts 2:42, Joel 2:15-16

Rituals are procedures or routines that are fused with meaning. Ritual actions include various rites of passage (birth, marriage, death) or calendrical rites (religious holy days, national holidays), ...

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The Image of a Lamb

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Derek Vreeland

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The image of a lamb doesn’t evoke feelings of confidence or strength. Sports fans will never hear an announcer say, “Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together to welcome the mighty Fighting Lambs!...

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The Church: Divine and Human, Sinners and Saints

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Roderick Strange

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Exodus 32:, 1 Kings 18:19 , Isaiah 6:, Matthew 16:18, Ephesians 5:25–27, Psalm 130:

In this short excerpt, Father Roderick Strange speaks to those who want to write off the church. It is written primarily to a Roman Catholic audience, but it relates quite well to Protestants as well:...

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Christian Geese

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Isaiah 40:31, Romans 13:11, 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, Galatians 4:9, Hebrews 5:12; 12:1, 1 Peter 2:9

The Danish philosopher and contrarian Soren Kierkegaard once compared Christians of his time to a flock of geese in a barnyard. Every week, they listened to an eloquent speaker who recounted the stori...

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The Centrality of the Cross

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John Stott

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The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christians stubbornly refused, in spite of the ridicule, to discard it in favour of something less offensive, can have only one explanation....

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To Remember & Observe: Sabbath in a Jewish Home

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A. J. Swoboda

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We must begin by remembering. If you journey into a contemporary Jewish home prepared for Sabbath, you will likely encounter two candles lit by (more often than not) the woman of the home. On Friday e...

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Scars Tell Beautiful Stories

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Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart

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John 21:15-25

In their excellent book, Mending the Divides , Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart describe a Japanese pottery tradition that articulates the power of peace and reconciliation: When we speak of peace, we c...

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The Boodle Feast

Author

Rick Love

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Scripture

John 13:34-35, Galatians 3:28, 1 Peter 4:9, Matthew 25:35, Luke 14:12-14, Romans 12:13, Hebrews 13:2

In his helpful book Peace Catalysts , Rick Love shares a poignant example of how sharing a meal can break down the familiar walls of status, power, and economics: In 2011, my wife, Fran, and I we...

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A Kingdom of Priests

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

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Scripture

1 Peter 2:9, Isaiah 11:6

When the Hebrews, recently enslaved but now free, were gathered at Sinai to begin their formation as a free people, God spoke the words that defined them over against their four centuries of slavery i...

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Baptism: A New Beginning out of the Watery Chaos

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Rowan Williams

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Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 8:6-12 , Isaiah 32:14-17, Matthew 3:13-17, John 3:5-8, Romans 6:3-4

At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great...

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Where are the Nails?

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The Pastor's Workshop

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Deuteronomy 13:1-3, 1 Kings 22:19-23, Isaiah 53:3-5, Matthew 24:23-25, John 20:27, Psalm 34:18, John 20:25, 1 Corinthians 1:23; 2:2, Galatians 1:8-9

St. Martin of Tours was a Frankish soldier in the Roman army who abandoned his military post to follow Jesus at a time when Christianity had only begun to take root in France. He later became the bish...

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Shame, Hypocrisy, and Empathy in The Scarlet Letter: A Pastor’s Take

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Scott B. Bullock

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The Puritans in American Literature “Welcome to Honors American Literature!” You probably haven’t heard that line since high school, right? After his first couple of weeks of school, my boy came home...

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What is the Christian Imagination Deficit? How Do We Fix It?

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Brian Brown

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There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...

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Psalm 22 | Feeling Forsaken by God

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Scott B. Bullock

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Psalm 22:, Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34, Hebrews 2:12

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

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Sacred Space: Lessons from Ethiopia’s Church Forests

Author

William Rowley

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Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

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Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine

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Scott B. Bullock

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Scripture

Psalm 107:null, John 21:15-19, Ruth 1:16-17, Matthew 22:37-39, Isaiah 61:3, Romans 5:8

A Valentine’s Day Tradition What better way to say, “I love you,” than passing your beloved some sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, and glycerin wrapped in a chalkly Necco wafer heart? Maybe some of you re...

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When the Next Generation is Our Priority: Modeling the Faith for Our Children

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Scott B. Bullock

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Matthew 19:13-15, John 20:24-29, Psalm 100:null

The 2023 survey that was conducted by the Wall Street Journal in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago found that only 39% of the 1000 adults polled deemed religion “very important” to ...

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Preaching on Parables: A Simple Framework to Teach Them Effectively

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Matthew 22:null, Matthew 22:1

A Special Kind of Story Most Christians have some idea of what a parable is. Ask an adult Sunday school class and you might hear: “It’s a story!” Another might chime in, “with a moral message!” Mer...

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Emotions are Divine: Why Pastors Need Biblical Permission to Feel

Author

David Lamb

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Scripture

John 11:35, Psalm 5:5, Psalm 6:1, Psalm 78:58, Psalm 78:40, Psalm 18:19, Psalm 25:6, Psalm 5:7, Exodus 20:5, Exodus 22:23, Isaiah 15:5, Luke 15:null, Genesis 23:2, Genesis 42:24, 1 Samuel 1:10, 2 Samuel 1:11-12, 2 Kings 8:11-12, 2 Kings 22:18-20, Mark 14:72, John 20:11, Acts 20:37, Revelation 5:4

When the Professor Weeps: A Personal Story About ten years ago, I was teaching a course on the psalms for my seminary students in the midst of a personal health crisis. It wasn’t in my notes, but I ...

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Five Types of Illustrations & Why They Matter

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Preaching

For most of us “seasoned preachers,” when we come to the conclusion that we need a sermon illustration, our minds instantly think “story.” Many preachers use the words interchangeably, but as we will ...

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