community on Atheism

Part of the problem was that the atheist movement had primarily rallied around what it was against —religion. Consequently, it had struck a negative tone ever since its inception. Aware of this, ...

Preaching Commentary A Sound Foundation Acts 2:42 would make for a solid outline for a worship service, checklist for a congregation’s life together, or personal schedule for an afternoon. Most of ...

For the psalmist there is no autonomous spirituality. There is only a faith that is lived in the company of God’s people.”

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority, Obtrude no more.

“Christianity promises to make man free,” Anglican priest William R. Inge writes; “it never promises to make them independent.” Freedom and independence are polar opposites. The former leads to wellne...

A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p...

Almighty God, in raising Jesus from the grave, you shattered the power of sin and death. We confess that we remain captive to doubt and fear, bound by the ways that lead to death. We are slow to perce...

Within the spiritual community there is never, nor in any way, any immediate relationship of one to another, whereas human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for im...

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...

Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc...

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...

Individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtues, but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all the others and is finally absorbed into egoism.

Preaching Commentary Different Levels of Maturity? There is an interesting dynamic I have noticed that often occurs as people begin to mature into adults. In my life it was a stage that took place ...

Gracious God, you call us to a life of intimate relationship with you and with one another. You call us to a life of community, where we actively seek the needs of others before our own. We acknowledg...

Different Levels of Maturity? There is an interesting dynamic I have noticed that often occurs as people begin to mature into adults. In my life it was a stage that took place following high school, ...

One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life w...

If you never left your home and avoided all interaction with other people, you couldn’t be characterized as a loving person. Instead, you might even be unloving because of your lack of concern for oth...

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

Better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. Almighty God, we are sorry for the times we’ve failed to help others experience the goodness of your presence. For the times we’ve intentiona...

If this world was made by a triune God, a being of community, then relationships of love are what life is really all about.

The Text Encounters with the Living Jesus This text from the Gospel of John is so rich and full that it could be divided up into several sermons. The entire chapter is a record of how different disc...

Gracious and loving God, you invite us to the table, yet we resist your grace. It is sometimes easier to float around outside of the Christian community than it is to invest fully in it. You invite ot...