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The other day I heard something that I often hear in various Christian circles. “My husband and I have a heart for bringing Jesus to people,” someone said. And, I can appreciate the sentiment behind the remark. But, bringing Jesus to people? Whenever I hear that line, I tend to shudder just a bit.  Kind…

It is frankly absurd to believe that God came into this world as, of all things, a human being.  Fully divine, yes, but fully human, too. Yet the whole crux of Christianity, I believe, hangs on this one great, scandalous mystery called “the Incarnation.” Here are missional church thinkers Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost in…

In the last several years, fellow saint and sinner Tammy Perlmutter has, like many of us, witnessed a whole lot of change, much of it just downright sad, hard and disenchanting.  Tammy posted this wonderful little entry on change in yesterday’s “five minute Friday” challenge.  (Fellow blogger Lisa-Jo Baker began “Five Minute Friday” as a…

Some people really know their Bibles.  One of them is Steve Hayner.  Steve is the president of Columbia Theological Seminary, in Atlanta, Georgia, and has taught missiology, pastored churches, and worked at the helm of the student ministries organization, InterVarsity.  He also has gotten three degrees in biblical studies, and has written a book on…

Did God help Gabrielle Douglas win?  That was the question posed by Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams in a recent piece penned for the magazine and forwarded by fellow saint and sinner Irene Lin.  It’s an interesting question, one that Williams poses with a bit of heartburn:  the “clearly authentic image of a hardworking girl…

This past Sunday I had the joy and privilege of joining in worship with the people of Old First Presbyterian in downtown San Francisco.  The following sermon belongs to our ongoing series, Jesus Epithets:  All the Names Jesus Gets Called in Scripture, and takes as its inspiration John 11:17-27 and Isaiah 65:17-25. When Jesus arrived,…

In an op-ed piece for The New York Times, titled “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?,” Ross Douthat makes the observation that last week, as the Episcopal Church was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere.  “They showed something between a decline and a collapse:…

“If any of you come to me…and don’t hate your father and your mother, your wife and your children, your brothers and your sisters- yes, and even your own life!- you can’t be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26 So much for “family values.”  Maybe that’s because Jesus, as N.T. Wright reminds us in his commentary…

Fellow saint and sinner Saskia de Vries, whom we recently spoke with about neuroscience and theology (see our four-part interview, The Brain on Faith) is also a preacher.  She preached the below sermon to her congregation yesterday, and kindly agreed to share it with the rest of us.  Her elaboration on the essence of biblical faith,…

Two days ago someone I know who I would prefer not to know made me very angry. I was so angry that when I went grocery shopping, I left all of my purchased bags of groceries in my shopping cart in the parking lot and then drove all the way home to discover they weren’t…
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