“I ain’t afraid to die anymore. I done it already.” - Hugh Glass, The Revenant
What kind of church is ready to plant a church? What kind of people are ready to be a part of a church plant? Its simple: the kind that are ready to die. Because death in Christ is life forever.
Our pastor had the opportunity to speak on this topic this past Sunday to our brothers and sisters at Reformation Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, NC. Listen here!
“Rather than calling us to transcendence, God forms us and guides us through place.”
- Hannah Anderson
What if part of our problem as Christians in the West is that we have swallowed the lie of “liquid modernity”: That the place where you are at present is secondary to where you are going, and what you might become? Read this excellent article on the importance of place in the Christian tradition.
Christmas, like faith, is thoroughly domesticated. But Christmas, like faith, is really something that comes like John the Baptist, or a Christmas tree- howling from the wilderness, stuffed into a home. New sermon on Matthew 3 below!
“The only real remedy for the dangers of false belonging is the true belonging to a fellowship of people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted.”
-Alan Jacobs, How to Think
Why do we always leave, whether physically, spiritually, emotionally, or geographically? James KA Smith summarizes the problem:
“It might be youth. It might be the reptilian impulses of a species with migration encoded in its DNA. It might be your inferiority complex or the boredom of small-town claustrophobia or the exhibitionist streak you’ve never told anyone about.
It might be the hungers of ancestors whose aspirations have sunk into your bones, pushing you to go. It might be loneliness. It might be your inexplicable attraction to “bad boys” or the still unknown thrill of transgression and the hope of feeling something. It might be the self- loathing that has always been so weirdly bound up with a spiritual yearning. It might be the search for a mother, or a father, or yourself. It might be greed or curiosity. It might be liberation or escape. “
The author thinks an Augustinian spirituality holds the answer to our wanderlust. Read the rest of the post here.
Western culture values two things: image, and ease. Put them together and we have created people stuck in what Mark Sayers calls the P.A.C.T- the Passive Aggressive Consumer Trap. What sorts of structures and leadership is necessary in a world like this? Listen to our sermon at the link below.
In this article in the Atlantic, Derek Thompson argues that “workism” has replaced Christianity as the de facto religion of American life- to devastating effect, because workism sacrifices others for advancement to a job or career that will fill life with meaning and purpose. The DNA of the early Christian community is exactly the opposite- wherever you found people confessing Jesus as Lord, you found them sacrificing their relationships, time, and even money for one another. Listen to our sermon, “The Sacrificial Community” at the link below, from Acts 2:36-47.
Any good confession does three things: it accounts for all the facts, it establishes motive, and provides inside information that only somebody who was personally involved could have known. This is exactly the sort of confession the Christian community has always produced: That God has revealed to his people that he is keeping his promise to save the whole world under the Lordship of Jesus. Listen to our sermon on living as a confessional community at the link below.
What is the primary enemy of the church in her mission to be a community of reconciliation? As Arthur Brooks points out in the New York Times, its an enemy common to us all: Contempt, or the “unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” What would it look like for the church to begin taking her view of the “other” from Scripture- that all mankind, though fallen, is also made in the image of God- instead of from the politics of the moment?
In 1984, Apple changed the world. They did it with a commercial that talked, not about what their products did, but why their products did it. The “why” was so powerful, so compelling, that we all live in the world in which that commercial created.
If the “why” is so powerful, the question needs to be asked- Why did God bring his people into his family? The way you answer this question shapes the trajectory and lived experience of the Christian faith. Check out our sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, “The Uncommon Community: the Embassy of God” at the link below.