church on Exclusion

There is a story of a public sinner who was excommunicated and forbidden from entering the church, He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "W...

Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...

God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You loved us before we ever knew You. Give us such a deep love for You, that we can see the world as You see it, feel the compassion You feel, and be a people ...

IDENTITY AND SUFFERING The key to understanding today’s readings lies in the first half of 1 Peter. Two themes dominate Peter’s encouragement to these early Christians: identity and suffering. Knowi...

A Note of Understanding The Lectionary and the Liturgical Calendar Preaching from the lectionary isn’t always easy. When the assigned texts align with major moments in the liturgical calendar—Christ...

Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...

The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...

The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...

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

Many people have misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that religious views shouldn’t play a role in public discussions and lawmaking. Someone might say, “We shouldn’t restrict abo...

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in...

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 ...

A theology which asserts that only the organized Church should be involved in mission, that theology has a very serious quarrel with history.

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united b...

People don’t enter a church; the church enters a building.

We must face the sad fact that at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing.... we stand in the most segregated hour of America.

I grew up in church. However, this church was part of a denomination that avoided mentioning the Holy Spirit whenever possible. Our denominational leaders treated Him a bit like the crazy uncle who sh...

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...

Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e...

The mysterious choosing of the people of Israel forms the imaginative backdrop to the New Testament concept of election . The mystery of the election of the church is not, as in Augustine’s framing, ...

Jane Addams (1860–1935), a leading American social reformer, was a dedicated advocate for racial equality, women’s suffrage, and pacifism. In 1931, she was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1900,...

The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community...Let him who is not in community beware of being alone...Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plu...

I grew up attending churches designed for church people. No one said it, but the assumption was that church was for church people. The unspoken message to the outside world was, “Once you start believ...

As [Timothy] Keller said, “To not be political is to be political.” American churches in the early nineteenth century did not speak out against slavery because that was what we would now call “getting...

The excellence of the church does not consist in multitude but in purity.

Christian disunity is and remains a massive impediment to the gospel itself—the proclamation of which is and should be evangelicalism’s strong suit.

It makes little sense to attract people on the basis of their own self-interest and then expect them to embrace an invitation to self-denial.

It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of pre...

Don’t be sorry for yourself because you are going to so remote a parish. Be sorry for the [Alaskan] Indians. You know nothing and they must teach you.