culture on Teaching

When Martin Luther discovered that some had begun calling the first Protestants “Lutherans,” he strongly objected. It is funny to think that some 500 years later, many are still known by his name: ...

Jesus is teaching us to stop loving things and using people and start using things and loving people.

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

Jesus Prepares for Departure John 17 is part of a larger section of John’s gospel known as the farewell discourses (13:31-17:26), in which Jesus prepares for his imminent departure from earth after h...

Jesus Prepares for Departure John 17 is part of a larger section of John’s gospel known as the farewell discourses (13:31-17:26), in which Jesus prepares for his imminent departure from earth after h...

Preaching Commentary A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a t...

A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a trap set for him by the ...

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent th...

My Early Soundtrack What music shaped your early life? For most of us, our parents’ musical tastes probably were our starting place. That music made a deep impression on what we like — and don’t like...

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus Two events recently collided in my mind and coalesced into this short essay: The first was a relatively in...

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

Different Attitudes on Prayer This past Sunday was the first time I've been in worship at our local church in some time, and it was a wonderful service. The liturgy was inspiring, the praise musi...

Gracious God, in six days you created all things. On the seventh day you finished your work by resting. You also blessed and hallowed the seventh day, setting it aside as a day of rest. Teach me, Lord...

I found out the hard way that if we don’t disciple people, the culture sure will.

I recently visited a missions school at a large church in Waco, Texas, and decided to try a similar test in a class-sized proportion. “Tell me,” I said to the group, “what is the gospel?” A young lady...

Note from TPW: Kara Martin addresses life in the secular workplace, sharing insights to help you lead your congregations to understand their faith and work and also to bring the Kingdom into your o...

Culture, like the air we breathe, is a powerful force that cannot be seen but felt. In this short excerpt, the British writer George Orwell describes in The Road to Wigan Pier how his education includ...

A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why.

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...

As a missionary … it was always comforting to realize that I did not bring God along with my physical and cultural baggage to my new host country.

For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. Th...

Western Christianity has long taught that we are changed by what we believe and what we choose—that is, by the human will responding to God. Attachment to God would functionally replace the will as th...

Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese...

Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is ti...

The first phrase, “be fruitful and multiply,” means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, “subdue the earth,” means to harness t...

Cultures like ours encourage us to consider all aspects of our lives in terms of self-interest. How do we cultivate a life marked by God’s love – a love that is always directed toward the needs of oth...

Jesus is understood in the light of the assumptions which control our culture.  When “reason” is invoked as a parallel or supplementary authority to “Scripture” and “tradition,” what is happening is t...

Culture consists of concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior and are widely shared by people. . . . [These] are transmitted generation to generation, rarely with explicit instr...

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

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...