Christian Church

I am a pastor in Pennsylvania. And I appreciate my brothers who are laboring hard to understand how to handle the governor’s guidelines. As an aside, guidelines are almost a euphemism for dictatorial power. On March 6 th Governor Wolf declared a state of emergency and placed himself in charge of...

The more we have explored the theme of grace as it unfolds in different ways throughout Scripture, the more we have discovered its variegated beauty and its far-reaching implications for our lives as Christians. It is more pervasive than we often imagine and, as we have noted in an earlier post,...

It was a hot, humid afternoon in July, 1505. A brilliant young law student was traveling near the German village of Stotternheim in what was then Electoral Saxony. Having recently earned his Masters degree, he had by all accounts, a promising and lucrative law career ahead of him. But as often...

There is a certain view of church that regards it (especially as expressed in the local congregation) as a ‘voluntary association’. The idea has been notably prevalent among Christians in the United States, but has been embraced more widely in other parts of the world. Interestingly this perception...

In the Northern Hemisphere, December is the darkest month of the year – a fact that gives added poignancy to the message of the incarnation and its centrality to the gospel. Intentionally or otherwise, when the church chose to adopt 25 th December as the date on which to mark the birth of Christ,...