Articles about Christian Life
I don’t know about you, but I tend to think, like most people, that bigger is better….
Editor Tom Loghry’s outline for an Advent Christian reset.
Loosening our grip on some of our distinctives would only amount to extinction if we are a movement, not a church. Movements must be steadfast in maintaining their niche points of concern, but churches need not…If the Advent Christian church shifted to positions of neutrality on certain secondary doctrines we would remain the church no matter the degree to which we redefine Advent Christian identity.
The aim of this post is somewhat narrow. I won’t attempt to comment on the entirety of the Ephesians passage that follows and contains what some scholars call a household code. What I want to challenge is the commonly accepted interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 that claims that Paul is teaching that there is to be mutual submission in a Christian marriage of both the wife and the husband to one another.
Evangelistic church planting is missional church planting as it contextualizes the Gospel without losing its transformational edge. Missional church planting does not seek to dispense spiritual products but seeks to work with the Holy Spirit to take the hope of Christ into the world in an intelligible context.
Not all of you know me well...some may wonder about my own history in the denomination and my desires for the Advent Christian church. I thought now would be a good time to share my own story so that you might appreciate the diversity of backgrounds and thought among the “younger” generation. I encourage my peers to do the same.
When a friend texted me last week and suggested that I watch the new documentary about the Duggar family, Shiny Happy People, I thought it was worth a look. I had heard of the Duggar family but like all reality TV, I ignored them. I may have seen them once or twice on The Today Show but a story about a family with 19 kids struck me as unrealistic at best and bizarre at worst.
Like so many, I’ve thought much about the death of Tim Keller this week. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020, many of us who benefited from his ministry and his published works knew that he faced a serious life-threatening challenge. Yet, when we heard the news of his death last Friday, it was still a shock. For many, myself included, Keller was the most important Christian apologist of our day.
We often confuse the law, what we are to do and even what Christ calls us to do or commands us to do, like follow him and love one another, with the Gospel. For example, Jesus in Mark 8:34 (and elsewhere) said to the crowd and to his disciples. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is the call to be his disciple. Yet this is not the Gospel. To be his disciple you and I must heed what Christ’s commands here but this is still not the Gospel. Yet, without the Gospel we could not heed this command.
For some time I have been fascinated by the way the Apostle Paul lays out most of his letters. In a letter like the one he wrote to the Roman believers he lays out the Gospel using the indicative mood. That means that everything he writes from 1:1 to 6:10 is descriptive. There are no imperatives or commands given until 6:11, where he urges his readers to consider themselves to be, by God’s grace in Christ, dead to the rule or dominion of sin. Yet, he really does not give more detailed directives until he comes to 12:1-2.
Therefore, I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your reasonable act of worship; and do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of your mind for the purpose of you being able to approve what the will of God is, the good, the pleasing and the perfect.
Anxiety can be debilitating.
Time for a quick breakfast. I flipped off the television and picked up the Charlotte Observer to scan the headlines. All of a sudden, Renee called me from I-77 telling me to turn on the TV because a plane had run into a building at the World Trade Center. I ran to the set and the first image was fire coming out of the north tower. Whatever hit it seemed to be big, and the anchors were speculating about what had happened. The early speculation was a plane had gone off course and accidentally hit the tower.
Then I saw it live. A passenger jet aiming for the second tower, and “Bam!” Fireballs explode. Siding shatters. Black smoke now pouring out of both towers. This was no accident. Something awful was happening. And we knew that the world had changed in front of our very eyes. I called my mother in New Mexico and told her to turn on the television immediately. Then I realized that I had to get to work because our agenda for the office dramatically changed.
Despite having believed the gospel for decades, over time I had begun to love a works-based self-righteousness that I had accumulated over years of faithful labor as a Christian, a church member, and a pastor. There are many tear stains on my copy of “Dangerous Calling,”, and some of the first of those tears came at the end of the very first chapter, where I wrote in the margin, “I compete for righteousness through theological and Biblical literacy and accuracy.”