Letter 10 Themes: Spiritual significance of friendships and acquaintances; social, sexual, and intellectual vanity; pride; friendship and love of the world; avoiding being two-faced or duplicitous; hypocrisy.
Letter 11 Themes: Understanding human laughter and the risk fo sinning through joking; danger of flippancy.
Letter 12 Themes: Backsliding; dry times; loss of enthusiasm for spiritual things; slowly drifting away.
From the book: “Resident Aliens – A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know That Something is Wrong.” By Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon. In this chapter, we will discuss three different perspectives of what the church is within the world and our author’s challenge to each of these. The…
The theme of this Bible Study is to focus on the Apostle Luke’s perspective of the life and ministry of Jesus. The purpose of our study is to show that the nuances we often overlook or become desensitized to within the Gospels have a significant impact on our understanding of who Jesus is and the…
This gospel, as titled, is attributed to Lucan authorship “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14) and companion of Paul (2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 24). Its composition is typically placed in the later part of the first century, depending on the source and approach to placing Luke in its historical context though an actual date is not clear. Luke is widely accepted as the third of the four canonical Gospels. This Gospel, like the others,…
By Brett McCracken It’s easy to dream about the “perfect” church–a church that sings just the right songs set to just the right music before the pastor preaches just the right sermon to a room filled with just the right mix of people who happen to agree with you on just about everything. Chances are…
From the book: “Resident Aliens – A Provocative Christian Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know That Something is Wrong.” By Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon. Preface “The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another.” (p. 12) The poem No Man Is an Island by…
From the book: “Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community” by Brett McCracken Growth only comes when there is a challenge, and challenge is not comfortable. This is something that begins every morning when we decide whether to stay comfortably in bed or get up and start the day. A couple of historical…