Church Blog (Page 10)

When we think about all of the various sins there are in the world, we might think there are hundreds or thousands of different kinds of sinners. However, if we narrow it down, we may come up with a number much smaller, representing the types of sinners on earth. In Luke 7:36-50, Jesus was in a house with two sinners. However, these two sinners were very different from each other. The first sinner was the owner of the house. He…

So, as you walk through the church building or when sitting in a pew you see a person who is a visitor. What do you say to them? It may be an awkward moment, but it is obvious that saying the right thing is so important. Below are seven ideas of what each of us can say to cause visitors to return again. These ideas are not original (I found them in a blog by Thomas Rainer), but they might…

The words of Paul to the Corinthians reveal so much about the response to the gospel when the lost hear it. “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called” (1 Cor. 2:26). Why is this true? All of mankind is invited to come to Jesus, but so many of the mighty and noble do not answer the invitation. Much can be learned by looking at those…

One of the most “controversial” topics in the new testament appears in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, when Paul addresses the subject of a woman’s public role in the church. Through the last half of the twentieth century, and especially now, in the twenty-first, much of western society has recoiled in disgust from the very idea that there could or should be any distinction at between the roles of men and women within the church. Liberal protestantism led the way in asserting…

Some of the most specific biblical instructions about prayer appear in 1 Timothy 2. Here, the Holy Spirit not only gives us direction about the various “types” of prayers we may employ, he also points us toward some of the “objects” for whom our spirits and voices should be raised in prayer. While Paul does not give an exhaustive list of “prayer topics” in this context, the words of verses 1-2 show that the prayers we offer to our Father…

The scholarly community generally describes the letters Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus as the “pastoral” epistles. This is not really an accurate description because it derives from the denominational concept of a preacher as being THE “pastor” of a congregation. The new testament shows a distinctly different picture of the church, with each congregation having multiple “pastors” (i.e., shepherds, elders, overseers), not the “one-man-rule” so common in modern denominationalism. (Acts 14:23 shows clearly that each individual congregation had plural…

Yiddish folklore offers a telling tale about gossipers and rumormongers. One such man told so many malicious untruths about a local resident that he became overwhelmed with remorse and went to his neighbor begging forgiveness. “Sir,” the penitent man pleaded, “Please tell me how I might make amends.” His neighbor replied, “Take these two feather pillows; go to the public square and there cut the pillows open. Wave them in the air. Then return that we may at once settle…

And those twelve stones, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch [set up] in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord…

In 1884 a young man died. After the funeral his grieving parents determined to establish a memorial to him. With that in mind they met with Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University. Eliot received the unpretentious couple into his office and asked what he could do. After they expressed a desire to fund a memorial, Eliot, noting the appearance of the couple impatiently said, “Perhaps you have in mind a scholarship.” “We were thinking of something more substantial than that—perhaps…

In addition to serving as the 25th President of the United States, William F. McKinley achieved the rank of major in the Union Army during the Civil War and served two terms in the United States House of Representatives. During one of his congressional campaigns he was followed from place to place by a reporter for a paper of the opposite political party. The reporter was shrewd and persistent; always at work, quick to see an opportunity and skilled in…

Theagenes of Thasos, an ancient Greek Olympian from the 5th century B.C., was renowned for his extraordinary strength. He became distinguished in every kind of athletic contest, and gained numerous victories at the Olympian, Pythian (Delphi), and Isthmian (Corinth) games. He was said to have won 1300 crowns in the games and came to be known as The Prince of Wrestlers. The Greek traveller and geographer Pausanias, in his work The Description of Greece, recounted a rather curious incident in…

During World War I a Protestant chaplain with the American troops in Italy became a friend of a local Roman Catholic priest. In time, the chaplain moved on with his unit and was killed. The priest heard of his death and asked military authorities if the chaplain could be buried in the cemetery behind his church. Permission was granted. But the priest ran into a problem with his own Catholic Church authorities. They were sympathetic, but they said they could…