When I see the term “ministry,” I picture a pastor standing behind a pulpit, or a deacon visiting the sick and the widows. But that is not the image that Dietrich Bonhoeffer presents in his chapter entitled “Ministry.” Rather, this “ministry” is the ministry that each Christian performs in service…

The Day Alone. My introvert heart delighted in the thought of reading this chapter of Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together. I love being alone. I love silence and solitude. I love sitting with God in the mornings before the world wakes up. And I live alone, so I have a lot…

Recently, I’ve been processing the meaning and nature of prayer after teaching a Sunday school lesson on the intercession of Moses (Exodus 32). What does it mean to be an intercessor? What does it mean that Jesus is our intercessor? What does it mean to pray in the Spirit? …

I debated for years. Is this really the church I want to attend? The preachers are uneducated, the songs are old, the outreach is weak, and the faith of many seems nominal. Yet, I stayed. I stayed because I felt the hand of God keeping me there. But I stayed…

Growing up in a conservative Mennonite church, I’ll be honest: when I see a church whose mission statement includes words like “inclusive” “tolerant” “social justice” “diversity” “healing journeys,” etc., I am immediately skeptical. Even if their statement of faith sounds orthodox, I wonder what they really mean by it. I…

In Chapter 7 of the book Christianity and Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen, the author sets out to defend the Christian doctrine of salvation against liberalism. Up until this point in the book, Machen has been pointing out what liberalism has gotten wrong: doctrine, God, man, the Bible, and Christ…

Casually, we ascribe divinity to good food. “This chocolate cake is divine.” But what do we really mean by that? I don’t think there’s anything inherently sinister to calling chocolate cake divine — we understand that the language is being used metaphorically. There is nothing intentionally deceptive in the statement. …

“My religion is kindness.” Is this quote talking about Christianity? Or Atheism? Or Tibetan Buddhism? It’s hard to say, because the quote doesn’t really say anything. It’s actually popularly attributed to the Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhism), but it could sum up an accurate description of a lot of what goes…

The gospel doesn’t intuitively make sense in our culture anymore. And it’s due to the fact that we have lost two basic assumptions about how the world works. As a whole, Western culture has lost an understanding of both the nature of God and nature of man. Machen warned against…