I chose to look at these topics together since they are interrelated—they both regard dealing with sin. Confession is done by the sinner and confrontation by someone else. (Here I am discussing personal confession and not corporate confession.) It seems to me that many Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, are very interested in pointing out people’s
Category: Christian Living
What Virtue is Primary?
Christianity is known in large part for belief in certain virtues. Among them are love, grace, mercy, honesty, truth, peace, integrity, purity, etc. (While many people may not think of these things when they think of Christians, they think these things are what Christianity is about. Many do not have positive opinion of Christians, precisely
Book Review: “One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven”
Overview I recently read the book “One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven” by Mark Cahill. I must admit, the title alone turned me off. It said to me that the author held to a common view of evangelism, one which I believe has some significant shortcomings. However, since a group I am a part
Spiritual Conduits
There are different ways we connect with God. Different people connect with God better through some means than others. Below are listed nine spiritual “conduits”, which is adapted from “Spiritual Pathways”1: Study (Intellectual): connecting with God through study, ideas and theological concepts. Exhortation (Activist): connecting with God through actively challenging people in the areas of
God and Country
Last week I was at an outdoor church service. They did communion and during this time, they put various “color” shots up on the video screen. (“Color” is lingo for camera shots of scenery, settings, objects, etc., which are nice backgrounds but aren’t the main programming.) During communion I noticed that they put up a
10. How Can We Translate Our Quest Into Action?
10. How can we translate our quest into action? One of God’s core qualities is love (1 John 4:8, 16). He shares that love with us and wants us to participate in it. In order to do so, we must learn to love like he does. In fact, he says that we are to be
Church Karate Studio
This is what I’ve been trying to say: “Church should be more like a karate studio (or dance lessons) and less like a college lecture.” The idea that I think is super important is that the Christian life is supposed to be a practice, a way of life, or in other words, something you do.
People or Ideas Comic
David Hayward just published this comic which really captures what I’ve been trying to say: Again, the practice of loving people MUST be a higher priority than beliefs, ideas, doctrines, theologies, etc.
Brothers And Sisters
I was reading a book recently in which the author was talking about how the early believers called one another “brother” and “sister”. He made the point that they were using these terms for one another because of how close they were to each other. While this seems like a simple concept, I hadn’t specifically
Making Disciples
“Go and make disciples…” (Matthew 28:19) How should we do this? Well how did Christ do it? Christ lived constantly with a group of men and women for three years. Those men and women were his disciples. Was it effective? I’ll let you be the judge of that. My question is, if this is how