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Working on Our Muscle Memory
Editor’s Note: The following illustration came from one of my own sermons, as I was trying to help a congregation see itself not as a building, but the body of Christ. It has been adapted for TPW. No... -
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Don't take the fence down until you know the reason it was put up. -
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New and Classic Coke
In 1985, losing market share to Pepsi, Coca Cola decided to revamp its taste, coming up with new formulas and doing blind taste tests. Thus, New Coke was born—a byword for failure. In response, instea... -
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Honoring and Leaving
The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P... -
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Innovation or Heresy
It’s funny how sometimes members of the church can associate anything new with “heresy.” We often make the mistake of confusing technological innovations or scientific discoveries for changes to the g... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Mark 7:1-23
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ... -
lectionary
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ... -
Quote
How do you deliver the authentic faith and great wisdom of the past into the new cultural situation of the twenty-first century? The way into the future, I argue, is not an innovative new start for th... -
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We can love what we are, without hating what- and who we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings. -
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G. K. Chesterton: The Great Defender of Tradition
G. K. Chesterton was well-known (and iconoclastic) in his defense of tradition in a time when progress was all the rage in Western Europe- in technology, in the sciences, in philosophy. Chesterton, on... -
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How Stories are being used by Companies to Shape Character
Why a story? We all think of our lives as stories, each with a main character (us) theme, and plot (interesteing so far, but as yet unfinished). We also love to hear stories about others and even abou... -
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Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire. -
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Waking People up to Christ
It takes a great deal of freedom and love to be therapeutic with a group. Many years ago when Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, was lecturing in this country, it was reported that when he prea... -
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Tradition is a willingness to read Scripture, taking into account the ways in which it has been read in the past. It is an awareness of the communal dimension of Christian faith, which calls shallow i... -
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Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. -
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Reasons for the Rules
Season 3, episode 21 of Bluey (an episode called “Tina”) opens with Bandit telling his daughter Bluey to put her plate in the dishwasher. When Bluey pushes back and asks why, Bandit replies, “Be... -
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The Calf Path
In this well-known poem, the Calf Path , Sam Walter Foss presents an allegory of the foibles that go hand in hand with an unthoughtful allegiance to tradition. One day, through the primeval wood, ... -
Quote
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely ha... -
Quote
Jesus appears in the Gospels as a theologian who begins with a mastery of the tradition and then reshapes it by offering a new vision centered on his own person. -
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The Proclamation of Good News
When I remember that the literal translation of the term gospel is “good news,” I recall a wonderful encounter with her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. In the summer of 2001, I f... -
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Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. -
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A Christian Alzheimer’s Disease
Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,... -
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Why Do you Cut off the Ends of the Meat?
A little girl asked her mother, “Mommy, why do you cut the ends off the meat before you cook it?” The girl’s mother told her that she thought it added to the flavor by allowing the meat to better abso... -
Quote
Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church. -
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The Nicene Creed: A Rope to Hold On
The farmers in the old prairie days used to prepare for a winter storm by putting up a rope between the house and the barn. They did this because they knew that in a swirling blizzard, even a brief di... -
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The Church: Divine and Human, Sinners and Saints
In this short excerpt, Father Roderick Strange speaks to those who want to write off the church. It is written primarily to a Roman Catholic audience, but it relates quite well to Protestants as well:... -
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The Church does not stand in a vacuum. Beginning from the beginning, however necessary, cannot be a matter of beginning off one’s own bat. We have to remember the communion of saints, bearing and bein... -
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In particular, there is a noble Christian tradition which takes evil so seriously that it warns against the temptation to “solve” it in any obvious way. -
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A Christianity for Those with their Backs Against the Wall
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... -
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The Centrality of the Cross
The fact that a cross became the Christian symbol, and that Christians stubbornly refused, in spite of the ridicule, to discard it in favour of something less offensive, can have only one explanation....
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