relationships and community on Theology

Karl Barth arguably was the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. His twelve-volume Church Dogmatics, alone, consists of over ten thousand pages of systematic theology. Toward the end of his l...

Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.

God of grace, love, and hope: Your grace comes when we least expect and don’t deserve it. Your love comes when we can’t comprehend why but we need it the most. Your hope comes at just the right time t...

Heavenly Father, forgive us for delving so much into our own lives that we forget the love and purpose with which you have created us. When we are faced with doubt and despair, help us to turn to you ...

I pray that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and heig...

Deacon or other leader In peace, let us pray to the Lord, saying, "Lord, have mercy" ( or "Kyrie eleison"). For the holy Church of God, that it may be filled with truth and lov...

We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one n...

Give us, Lord, a clear vision of the truth, faith in your power, and confident assurance of your love.

We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift.

The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

O God, your mercy is infinite and in your will is our peace. We learn your way so slowly; we choose your will so reluctantly. In this season of learning the limit­lessness of your love, help us throug...

We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which ...

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...

Heavenly Father, You shower Your love on us throughout every stage of life. We praise You for Your steadfast love. Through Your Son we see the extent of that love while through Your Spirit we experien...

We sometimes find God’s forgiveness to be offensive: “It reveals us to be distressingly like everyone else!” (And we are so special.)

Even as we eagerly await your return, Lord Jesus, we must confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart, with our entire mind, nor with all of our strength. We have loved our rituals and our...

Prayer of Adoration We praise you, Lord for you are all-wise and all-powerful, faithful, loving and gracious, holy, just, merciful, constant and pure, omnipresent, intimate and immortal. You are big...

Love that reaches up is adoration. Love that reaches out is affection. But love that stoops is grace.

Everyone: Holy God, we live our lives struggling in our own burdens and failing to trust You with all the things that hold us down. Leader: Your Scripture says, "Come to Me all you who are wear...

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from God’s love. St. Paul reminded the Romans of this when he wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things p...

The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

How many prodigals are kept out of the kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside!

There’s a gut–wrenching scene in the Korean film Secret Sunshine that captures the scandal of grace better than any film I’ve ever seen. The scene takes place in a prison, as protagonist Shin-ae (Jeon...

The Parable is a form of speech that has a style all of its own. It is a way of saying something that requires the imaginative participation of the listener. Inconspicuously, even surreptitiously, a p...

The child became a man and the man became a preacher whose sermons were full of commonplace things: seeds and nets, coins and fishes, lilies of the field, and birds of the air. Wherever he was, he had...

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

Loving God, you show us grace and mercy, again and again and again. You shower gifts on us that we could never earn, and you are slow to punish us when we most deserve it. All too often, we forget to ...

Leader: Blessed Lord Jesus, before your cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused you to be made a curse, the evil that provokes divine wrath. All: Show me the enormit...

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...