Third, the church’s music and songs constitute what Richard Mouw describes as a compacted theology.
Things which are not in their intended position are restless. Once they are in their ordered position, they are at rest.9
The state isn’t just the guardian of rights; it is also a nexus of rites that are bent on shaping what is most fundamental: my loves. The state doesn’t just ask me to make a decision; it asks me to pl...
The music moves us very strongly, because it is moved, as it were; it captures, expresses, incarnates being profoundly moved. (Think of Beethoven quartets.) But what at? What is the object? Is there a...
The Scriptures function as the script of the worshiping community, the story that narrates the identity of the people of God, the constitution of this baptismal city, and the fuel of the Christian ima...
Marsh goes on to observe: The boycott year had renewed the mission of the church. The boycott showed the world a church whose power stemmed from its deliberate discipline, whose moral authority was th...
In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love.
He meets us where we are, as creatures of habit who are shaped by practices, and invites us into a community of practice that is the very of his Son. Liturgy is the way we learn to 'put on' Christ.
Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 NIV
But once you realize that we are not just thinking things but creatures of habit, you’ll then realize that temptation isn’t just about bad ideas or wrong decisions; it’s often a factor of de-formation...
But it is a principled pluralism because it simultaneously argues that all confessions and directional orientations should have the same opportunity and access. And so it ends up making a meta-argumen...
Because when the thin gruel of do-it-yourself spirituality turns out to be isolating, lonely, and unable to endure crises, the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd might find itself surprisingly open to...
As Blaise Pascal put it in his famous wager: You have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed.7 You can’t not bet your life on something. You can’t not be headed somewhere. We live le...
A reordering of creation has already broken into creation in the person of Jesus Christ, and we are gathering as a people in order to practice for the arrival of the kingdom in its fullness—and thus i...
There are no box seats at this table, no reservations for VIPs, no filet mignon for those who can afford it while the rest eat crumbs from their table. The Lord’s Table is a leveling reality in a worl...
Analysis of the story will sometimes undercut our antepredicative grasp of it).
Your love or desire—aimed at a vision of the good life that shapes how you see the world while also moving and motivating you—is operative on a largely nonconscious level. Your love is a kind of autom...
With hands raised, the minister extends God’s welcome and blessing to the gathered congregation, who may receive the welcome and blessing with hands open in a spirit of mutual welcome and expectation.
When we gather, we are responding to a call to worship; that call is an echo and renewal of the call of creation to be God’s image bearers for the world, and we fulfill the mission of being God’s imag...
What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?
