God works in extraordinary ways. Perhaps you’ve heard this truism. I suppose it’s true. But usually, God works in ordinary ways. What we do each week in church is all very ordinary–it’s an invitation to work the simple means of grace. Sing. Pray. Confess. Preach. Eat. Drink. Listen. Think. Just like we see in Acts 2: teaching, fellowship, breaking bread,…
A recurring theme of this series is that Christian worship is participatory. Perhaps nowhere is the participatory nature of worship more clearly seen than when we eat bread and drink juice (I’ll say wine and juice interchangeably) at the Lord’s table. I grew up in churches that did not observe the Lord’s Supper very often. I remember doing it occasionally–probably…
What’s the point of preaching in a worship service? What am I (the preacher) supposed to do? What are you supposed to do? Why do I work so hard on a sermon every week? Paul commands the Colossians to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly. Listen to this instruction to the church at Colossae about how they…
We sing to an audience of One, but we also sing for each other and for ourselves. // Sing to and for Each Other 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord…
I confess I’m not a big music guy. I’m more into podcasts than music, lectures than concerts, and though I love how Charleston comes alive in the summer, I have less than no desire to go to Live on the Levee. No offense, it’s just not my thing, but you should totally go. It’s not that I hate or even…
Healthy churches are not all about one person or one group of people. Healthy churches don’t merely gather to consume the content of gifted speakers or listen to gifted musicians. They understand that the pastor or team of pastors exist not to perform for them, but to equip them to do the work of ministry. To be clear: the ministry…
To be fair, if you flip through the Bible, you will not find a single verse that says, “Thou shalt join a church.” But that’s not how we do theology. The BIble is not a giant fact book that we just directly pluck verse from without any context from the passage the verse is embedded in. Here, in the Word,…
We’re not a business, or club, or friend group per se – we are the body of Christ and family of God in the world. Healthy local bodies have six common characteristics, and today we’re going to talk about the first one. Healthy churches gather regularly for worship. But why do we gather? First, we gather because it’s commanded. Because…
The Body of Christ 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 1…
To be honest, we don’t need more content about COVID-19 & the church. But alas, you’re reading & I’m writing. It is neither my responsibility nor my intention to speak definitively about what churches should do, nor is it time to speculate on how this may impact the way we understand & do church in the future. (I think that…