God adopted the unadoptable—you and me. He did not care for our defects and disabilities. He just wanted to make us members of His family, to be our Father again, to make us His beloved children again.
All tagged identity
Church Renewal Is Impossible Without Knowing Your Strength
Do you know what your church is actually good at? What your congregation’s core strength is? What key value underlies the heartbeat of your faith community?
Servants Called and Set Apart
What kept Paul’s fire for Christ burning even in his old age? I believe it was the conviction of his calling. He knew exactly who he was and what he existed for.
Offering a Posture of Praise
Our ability to enter into His presence with thanksgiving and praise comes only from His power within us. Often, we find that the cards we have been dealt could never warrant thanksgiving or praise.
Asking More, Not Less
Before we ask people to do more in our churches, we need to make sure that what we are asking them to do creates identity, community, meaning, and purpose.
The Way of Ink and Conversation
For many, tattoos are a way of marking one’s identity to the world. Asking about their ink is a window into their heart, to see what is most important to them.
Identity Quake
My prayer for all of us is that we are so secure in Christ’s love and acceptance, that it changes what we think about others, changes the very words we choose during the most difficult of times, with the most difficult people, and when we feel the most defensive.
Ontological Musings
Koinonia means we share, in equal parts, the instability of our humanity and the security of our identity in Christ; trusting God looks like trusting people.
What Does it Mean to Be Church?
What sort of church structure describes Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and other non-denominational congregations?
Reflection Roundup: Topics That Stretch
Christ confesses in his Phil. 2 hymn that every knee that bows brings glory to God the Father.
Reflection Roundup: The Many Faces of Empathy
Friday is National Lemonade Day, so buy an extra cup and share it in Jesus’s name, confident that it makes a difference for eternity.
Five Steps to Restore Your Church’s Vitality
Sometimes, a health crisis hits a church squarely in the face. If the church possesses enough self-awareness, it then faces the choice to either make dramatic changes or else permanently lose health and vitality.
Reflection Roundup: Identity Celebration
The doctrine of the Trinity is what the church represents as she bends knee to the other who is giving a hand up while standing on the shoulders of a third, infinitely in sync and completely acrobatic!
A Family and the Family
The church family creates proximity to Jesus and a centralizing focus on him, until his identity becomes clear to all in the circle.
You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught
These stories must be shared, and as adults we hold the power and the influence with which to make space for children and adults alike to tell their stories. We must look around our congregations for where we might be missing these powerful stories of diversity.
“Our Political Allegiance Is to Heaven”
Tragically, many Christians in the U.S. are falling into the trap of identifying with an array of issues on the right or on the left, resulting in a blurring and distorting of the Christian faith.
Be the Church: An Onsite and Online Congregational Initiative for COVID-19 and Beyond
We are asking everyone in our church family – whether onsite or online – to do three things each week: love, grow, and worship.
Courage, Prayer, and Hope
The pandemic is ushering us into liminal space – one that differs from the immediate past but is not yet whatever the future may eventually be.
Is Church Essential?
Regardless of whether you can gather soon with members of your local flock, the nagging question remains: “What is essential about being the church?”
Jesus Is not God’s Stress Ball
It makes no sense that we would be called out of our life of wrath by an act of wrath.