Stream Off
Let me tell you the story of a church. Not a megachurch, but not small either. Across two services on a given Sunday, 400-600 folks in the pews. Nothing fancy about the church. You’ve never heard of it. But a...
Dragons in the Deep Places
Ross Douthat’s new book, a memoir of his experience with chronic illness, is far more than that simple description would suggest. It recounts, in excruciating detail, his journey with Lyme disease, which began in 2015. It tells of the pain...
Market Apocalypse
Rodney Clapp. Naming Neo-Liberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021. 250 pp, $24.00 In recent years liberalism has been on the ropes. Not the liberalism of the Democratic Party, where the L-word means “left of center.” Liberalism...
To See God in the Darkness: On Tish Harrison Warren’s “Prayer in the Night”
I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles with a set-square, I hear you murmuring to yourself in a notation Beethoven dreamed of but...
Advent I: The Face of God
The deepest desire of the people of God is to see the face of God. The Psalmist gives voice to this desire in the form of exhortation: “seek his face always” (105:4). The invocation of Israel’s priests answers this desire...
Befriending Books: On Reading and Thinking with Alan Jacobs and Zena Hitz
We like to think, of course, that we think; but what people allow to pass for thinking is usually about 90 percent reshuffling of images. —Robert Farrar Capon Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you...
Be Fearful as Christ was Fearful
Be not afraid. Thus does Holy Scripture instruct the people of God time and again. In every manner of situation, God or Christ or an angel of the Lord disarms the fright of mere mortals overawed by divine glory or...
Sacraments, Technology, and Streaming Worship in a Pandemic
To stream or not to stream? That is the question facing empty churches across the country. At least, that is, how to stream and what to stream—few appear to have considered the possibility of not streaming at all. But why...
Against Pop Culture
Christians love pop culture these days. But the subset of Christians who love pop culture the most is pastors, writers, and academics. Pop culture as a mode of “engagement”; pop culture as a means of “reaching” this or that group;...
Five Theses on Preaching
(originally posted on Resident Theologian) 1. The principal subject matter for preaching, always and everywhere, is the triune God of Israel attested and revealed in the good news about Jesus, the Lord and Messiah of Israel. If a sermon could...