Our Highest Calling
Church, ministry and worship are not simply categories or activities that affect some of us, some of the time.
Faith
All Are Valuable
I think it is important to anticipate a few of the challenges that might keep some of our ministers from participating in a spiritual community with their peers.
Continuing the Conversation
Today’s pace of life has accelerated the church’s anxiety about the future. Institutional change is sweeping throughout western civilization. Religious institutions are not immune.
Embodied Forgiveness
Whatever the disorder of her life may have been, there’s no reason to call Mary Magdalene a whore or paint her hair the iconographer’s devilish red.
Union with Christ
I began this column in the Record last summer with an unapologetic affirmation of the centrality of Jesus Christ for our church’s faith and life, now and in the future. My last word is the same.
Intentional Community
As I write this, the March issue of the Record has been available for only a couple of weeks. In that time I have had more feedback than I have received for all the things I have ever written combined. I hit on something significant: many ministers are burning out.
Our Comfortable Pew
I can still remember reading Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew. Berton was nothing if not prophetic. Perhaps not in all the details, but he did have a sense that organized Christianity, at least among Protestants and Anglicans, had lost its way.
Broken Yet Beloved
What if we shifted our approach to becoming smaller and more focused in our mission and ministry? What if we shifted our vision of church to a fellowship of communities less dependent on money?
Maturing Your Faith
Is it possible that faith and doubt can exist together?
Death Becomes Us All
Death stirs up many emotions. Whenever I prepare to preach at a funeral, or attend a memorial service, I often find my thoughts moving in different directions, swirling really.
That All May Be One
Can we say for sure Jesus’s prayer is for all of us who call ourselves by his name to belong to one, big church? Can we say for sure Jesus prays just for people we would recognize as Christians?
One Simple Rule
As Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, there is one simple, golden, ironclad rule that will bring life and vitality for us as individuals and our churches as families of faith.
Reading The Bible
How do we interpret Living Faith’s affirmations about the Bible, that it is “given to us by the inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life?” How do we distinguish between the Bible as the word of God and Jesus Christ as the living Word of God?
Clean Hearts, Loyal Spirits
Renewal, like commitment, is not something that happens once and is done with. Sometimes we forget that.
The Great Continuous Conversion
In a wonderful little book called The Return of the Prodigal Son, the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen reminds us that the world often seduces us to claim a false identity. It’s an illusion that we find everywhere.
A Different Kind of Strength
If we follow the statistics for the past several decades it would seem the Presbyterian Church in Canada is dying. But, perhaps there is something to be gained through our journey toward death. This is what I’d like to explore.
Unlikely Apostles
When did you last hear, or preach, a sermon on a story from the Acts of the Apostles? Other than on Pentecost? We don’t know what to do with these stories. Maybe the wildness of the Spirit and the confidence of the apostles trouble us.
Desiring Faith
Is it that as we make our way through life, with all its ups and downs, trials and joys, we look to certain people—perhaps to certain positions as much as anything—to help us measure where we are? To help us believe in our strength despite our weakness?
Trusting and Trying
Can we make any generalizations to explain why things are going in the right direction? Does some of the good have to do with introducing a strategic plan, or some praise songs, or different programs, or something else?
God and the Holy Spirit
We tend to be quite casual when it comes to the Holy Spirit. It is not that we don’t believe in the Holy Spirit; we do, but we generally tend to pay less attention to the Spirit than to other aspects of our doctrine and church life.