• How can we have an effective pastorate? • How can our ministries, our preaching, support church health? • How can we be faithful in our ministries? There is a parable for young preachers in Walt Disney's Dumbo, the little circus elephant that Continue Reading
March 22, 2013 2 Comments
Thoughts on Faith from a Garden in March and Pastoral Ministry
For a gardener, like myself, March is an in-between month. The dried, gray-brown stalks on the oak leaf hydrangea, left over from last autumn, stand at attention, like a proud, old war veteran in his outdated, ill-fitting military uniform. And like a Continue Reading
April 9, 2012 1 Comment
I Will Not Let Go of Easter
I will not let go of Easter. More properly, I affirm that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not something that I will celebrate and remember on one day of the year. In the Reformed faith, that is in the Protestant faith of Martin Luther and John Calvin Continue Reading
October 30, 2011 Leave a Comment
A Singing Faith: The Reformation and Music (with free download of “I Glory in the Cross”)
The Christian faith is a singing faith. The Reformation recovered this because the Reformation recovered the Gospel of God’s grace revealed from the authority of the Word of God, which was recovered through a revival of the supremacy of preaching. The Continue Reading
October 25, 2011 Leave a Comment
Recovering Reformation Day
There are many Protestant churches that will have a October festival. There are some who will even have a hymn-sing this last Sunday in October—a wonderful tradition, for the Protestant Church is a singing Church to be sure. Others will seek to redeem Continue Reading
November 7, 2010 Leave a Comment
A Delayed Salvation
“who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5). A friend came by the other day to talk about salvation. Those who characterize themselves as unbelievers may find this strange, but Continue Reading
November 4, 2010
Now What? Some thoughts after the Election on Lessons and Expectations
On the other side of the election, what can we learn? What can we expect? For the believer, our lessons and our expectations are grounded in the Word of the Lord. Our hope for our nation is grounded not in electoral victories, but in "victory in Jesus" Continue Reading
July 10, 2009
John Calvin’s 500th Birthday
Perhaps no figure since St. Paul has influenced Western civilization like the man born 500 years ago this date, Jean Cauvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564), the pastor-scholar of Geneva. Through the ordinary means of God's grace in Word, Sacrament and Continue Reading
Bulletin: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Filibuster for Prayer as We Approach the Fiscal Cliff
Oh if only there were a Jimmy Stewart, a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” congressman who would interrupt the “Fiscal Cliff” negotiations and cry out with the passion of an unadulterated patriotism. The cynics called it political naïveté; but the Continue Reading