I’ve been thinking about the call for the church to be more inclusive. There is an event in the life of Yeshua that I think sheds some light on it. It’s in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John.* In the story, Jesus is teaching the people when some religious leaders, interested in catching the Rabbi in some inconsistency in His teaching, bring to Him a woman identified as an adulteress. The story famously recounts how the Lord refuses to be baited into the controversy and, instead, challenges the crowd to cast the first stone– but only if their righteousness qualifies them to do so. Put that way, nobody felt confident enough to render judgment, so they all slunk away, presumably irked that they had been outsmarted by Yeshua yet again.
A Pattern
As I read the story I notice a pattern for dealing with outsiders, people whose lifestyle and beliefs don’t fit within bounds of traditional Christian faith. Here’s what I see: Continue reading The Church: Inclusive or Exclusive?→
How quaint. How provincial. How parochial the words sound. So what other words could we use to describe the unspeakable wickedness and evil we have witnessed in Paris this day? Words fail if we cannot use these.
No sooner had the first humans screwed things up, the Creator was making plans for the first Christmas. The plan included a declaration of war. If you haven’t browsed my post, The Battle Cry of Bethlehem, this would be a good time.
The war of Christmas started rather quietly as wars go. It didn’t start with an opening shot; it started with the birth of the commanding general. Then it was 30 years while He grew into His rank. The opening shot, as it turns out, was at the baptism of this promised liberator (Matthew 3:16-17 and on into chapter four). In that instant, He assumed his role as the commander of the resistance; the leader of the revolution that would overthrow the illegitimate government of the serpent. He emerges from the water and is deployed to the desert to meet His Father’s ancient enemy in battle. Continue reading The Battle of Christmas→
Several months ago the fellowships in the Summit Network hosted one of our gatherings called “The Vine.” I overcame my allergic reluctance to doing formal “teaching” at our gatherings and actually took a seat at the front of the room and expounded.
One critical aspect for correctly interpreting scrip-ture is to accurately assess and identify the hearers of the message. It makes a difference when we discover the audience. When we stand back and take a look at Jesus’ ministry to the multitudes, we find Continue reading Who Does Jesus Trust?→
My journey as a song writer has been a mixed bag. To this day, when I sit down to write a song I feel an outside pressure. A pressure that creates an imaginary audience of my peers evaluating every chord I play and each word I sing.
It didn’t use to be that way. Not in the beginning. But in becoming a performing artist, I started to consider how people would respond to my music. While it is healthy and sometimes necessary to keep others in mind when you create, it can also be crippling. The enemy knows this and I believe it is one of his strategies against Christian artists…
I’ve been thinking about the call for the church to be more inclusive. There is an event in the life of Yeshua that I think sheds some light on it. It’s in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John.* In the story, Jesus is teaching the people when some religious leaders, interested in catching the Rabbi in some inconsistency in His teaching, bring to Him a woman identified as an adulteress. The story famously recounts how the Lord refuses to be baited into the controversy and, instead, challenges the crowd to cast the first stone– but only if their righteousness qualifies them to do so. Put that way, nobody felt confident enough to render judgment, so they all slunk away, presumably irked that they had been outsmarted by Yeshua yet again.
