Why I Call New York City Home
Introduction Over eight million people live in my hometown. Many call it the Big Apple, a financial hub, an artist’s inspiration, a tourist’s destination. I call it home. When I think about New York City, I don’t picture the Brooklyn Bridge, the World Trade Center, or yellow cabs. My mind … Read More
Where the Good Way Lies
In the real world, many things don’t fit neatly into spiritual categories. How should a congregation process these things? We all live them, inevitably. And in the process, a sort of practical culture arises. We try to respect each other, and we do things similarly to each other. Then we begin to recommend those things to each other. That is to say, we develop traditions.
Always Together, Halfway
There’s a frightening irony about our modern lives: as we become increasingly interconnected with others, we risk succumbing to loneliness. This is tragic, because we have more tools at our disposal, not less. That’s the problem, though: we can use good tools at the wrong time and forfeit opportunities for … Read More
Bring Them Home
Let me introduce you to a sphere in which vulnerabilities lie. Some lie hidden behind facades of wealth, religion, and our downtown districts. Sometimes we merely see the city towers, the mirage of cultural diversity, the success, and still think the needs lie in a foreign land, dusty and scorched— … Read More
Holy Spirit as God’s Temple Presence
In a previous post, I started a three-part series on the Holy Spirit—a topic that is often either ignored or misunderstood among Christians. In that post we surveyed the Spirit’s “hovering” presence which brings about creation and new creation. But the Holy Spirit’s roles are as multifaceted as one would … Read More
Should You Read the Bible on Your Phone?
Have you ever heard a preacher discourage people from reading their Bible on their phones? If you haven’t, no doubt the very idea sounds silly. Why does it matter what format we use to read the Bible, just as long as we make sure we are reading it? Especially as … Read More
The Answer to Dealing with Technology: Becoming Pure in Heart
We live in an era of great evil where the atmosphere of our planet is literally saturated with every kind of sexually immoral act. In 2019, one major pornographic website reported that on average, every single day 15,958,080 hours of internet pornography was consumed on their site alone. If you … Read More
That They All May Be One
That They All May Be One Perspective on strong spiritual culture at a congregational level Why culture? It’s the only recorded prayer Jesus made for us who would follow him later: that we all would be one (John 17:21), that we would find the same unity among us that he … Read More
Phones, Meditation, and the Modern Christian
Now that technology has become such an ubiquitous part of our daily lives, it seems nostalgic to imagine life any other way. The past decade has seen rapid acceleration in society’s adaptation to a virtual lifestyle. Technological changes have been par for the course for a couple of centuries now, … Read More