Category Archives: Christianity

And Can It Be?

Do you know Charles Wesley’s And Can It Be, a hymn written on the anniversary of his conversion? Some find the tune difficult the first few times, but consider the words. As with so many Wesley hymns, they are stuffed with good … Continue reading

Posted in Charles Wesley, Christianity, Hymns, Salvation | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Chosen, Season 5 Episode 6

So far Season 5 has begun each episode with vignettes from Jesus’ time with the disciples in the Upper Room. We see them seated at tables. We hear Jesus teaching, some from the synoptic gospels, quite a bit from John’s … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Jesus, The Chosen | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Texas Ten Commandments – a Little More

One of the new laws in the state of Texas mandates the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. You walk into a classroom and you see a poster that looks like this: Several interpretive questions come … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Church & State, Culture, Current events, Ethics, God, Jesus, Language, Public Schools | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hauerwas Lays Brick

Stanley Hauerwas came from a family of bricklayers. It’s natural then, that as he looks for a craft to analogize to discipleship, he settles on bricklaying OUR DISCUSSION of this section of his essay, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Discipleship, Jesus, Stanley Hauerwas | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Chosen, Season 5 Episode 3

We’re still in Holy Week, racing toward the cross. Jesus knows it. Sanhedrin leaders are plotting for it. The Romans are uneasy. The disciples are confused. Yet in the midst of everything happening this episode had many laugh out loud … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Discipleship, Jesus, The Chosen | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jesus vs the gods

I just finished a sermon series on Jesus vs the gods. The “gods” I referred to in the messages were names from the ancient world: Greco-Roman names plus one, Mammon, from the Semitic world. Those their names aren’t as much … Continue reading

Posted in Christianity, Consumerism, Culture, God, Jesus, Preaching | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A non-Hauerwasian Interlude

Last week we looked at this paragraph in Stanley Hauerwas’s essay, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community.” For example, one of the great problems facing liberal and conservative churches alike is that their membership has been schooled … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Discipleship, Doctrine, Ecclesiology, Salvation, Stanley Hauerwas, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hauerwas – “What Do You Mean ‘We’ Kemosabe?”

The essay we’ve been looking at, “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as a Disciplined Community,” was written with a particular audience in mind. He writes, In this respect it is interesting to note how we—that is, those of us in … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Discipleship, Discipline, Doctrine, Ecclesiology, Gospel, Jesus, Liberalism, Stanley Hauerwas, Theology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hauerwas – Minds Worth Making Up?

We continued our discussion of Stanley Hauerwas’s essay from The Christian Century (1991), “Discipleship as a Craft, Church as Disciplined Community.” We spent most the time talking about our culture’s infatuation with autonomous individualism and how that infatuation shows up … Continue reading

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Culture, Discipleship, Ecclesiology, Stanley Hauerwas, Theology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Willing Participants?

God invites people to be willing participants in what he’s doing in the world. Sometimes we join in… sometimes like Jonah, we prove to be unwilling participants. There is great blessing in store for those who join in God’s activity.

Posted in Bible, Christianity, Doctrine, Jesus, Old Testament | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment