Who's Playing Hooky? There’s a local market not too far from the church – and, sometimes, I’ll go there after Sunday morning services to grab some sweet corn to go with dinner (it’s New Jersey, b...
Context This week’s reading from Acts recounts the call to Paul on his second missionary journey to go to Macedonia and his encounter with Lydia in Philippi. Textual Context The structure of the B...
Context This week’s reading from Acts recounts the call to Paul on his second missionary journey to go to Macedonia and his encounter with Lydia in Philippi. Textual Context The structure of the B...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
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. The poin...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...
John 4:7-26, John 6:1-15, Galatians 4:21-31, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 121:null
New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains. There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously. Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...
John 4:7-26, 1 Corinthians 2:12, 1 Peter 12:12-23, John 6:1-15, Galatians 4:21-31, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 121:null
New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains. There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously. Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...
It was the reception of the Holy Spirit that first offered the church hope of a social and spiritual community composed of people from “every tribe and nation” and unified by the centrality of Christ.
In 1988, I (Randy) moved with my wife and two sons (ages two and eight weeks) from Texas to Sulawesi, an island north of Australia and south of the Philippines. We served as missionaries to a cluster ...
This is the place and this is the time: here and now God waits to break into our experience: to change our minds, to change our lives, to change our ways; To make us see the world and the ...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
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. The poin...
Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, Acts 10:34-35, Galatians 3:28, Romans 1:16, John 4:21-24, Psalm 22:27-28
[Speaking of the early church] A cosmopolitan spirit grew, particularly in the cities, that transcended national barriers. Old tribal distinctions and identities were breaking down, leaving people rip...
A classic mission dilemma: The chief of a village in a remote area, whose people practice a tribal religion, becomes a believer and declares the whole village is now Christian. Most of the leading m...
2 Kings 5:1-14, Joshua 12:1-3, Joshua 12:1-3, Luke 4:27
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...
These people always find God in the sunsets. And in walks on the beach. Sometimes I think these people never leave the beach or the mountains, what with all the communing with God they do on hilltops,...
One simple sentence, from my first pastoral supervisor, has significantly shaped how I seek to discern God’s personal will. Each Wednesday during my first year of congregational ministry, we met to re...
My brother, who attended a Bible College during a smart-alecky phase in his life, enjoyed shocking groups of believers by sharing his “life verse.” After listening to others quote pious phrases from P...
A missionary friend of mine once said, ‘Things were simple before I went to Africa. I knew what the African’s problem was, and I knew the answer. When I got there and began to know him as a person, th...
There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier...
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...
Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:
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...
For the believer in Jesus, every trial of suffering is an opportunity to grow in the faith, to grow in our relationship with the Lord, and to see Him work in our lives in a uniquely personal way that ...
Matthew 6:28-29, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 31:30, Romans 1:25
Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...
James Brownson describes what he calls a “missional hermeneutic” as observed throughout the New Testament: I call the model I am developing a missional hermeneutic because it springs from a basic obs...
One of the gifts John Wesley left the church is the Quadrilateral. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral refers to the four ways we come to know something as true: Scripture (what the Bible teaches), tradition (...