All tagged baptism
Christ’s life becomes our life. Christ’s death becomes our death. And Christ’s resurrection will become our resurrection. Because in Christ, and through Christ, and with Christ, we are drawn out of the river of sin and death that all started at a town called Adam.
I don’t think there’s one “silver bullet,” as they say, but I think that we can be bolder about some of our worship practices. If we are willing to “go big” on some central practices, they can help us have both a strong center and an open door.
The “where” to put the baptistry really isn't that big of a deal. We will always find water. A pool. A hot tub. A stock tank. A cattle trough. We will find water.
We were created to be filled to overflowing with God’s love and presence. May we all be filled so much that others will see it and say, “Surely the Spirit in this place!”
Knowledge has power, but only when it is put to use. If this is the case, we must ask ourselves what we are doing with the knowledge we have of Christ.
Where is the balance between offering gifts of service to the local congregation and implementing structures required for the kind of leadership by which the congregational body will feel truly supported?
What sort of church structure describes Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and other non-denominational congregations?
How do we keep from trending toward extinction? How do we convince people that church life is much more than just a tradition or formality?
We fail to understand baptism unless we understand that baptism marks us as disciples of Jesus Christ who obey his calling every single day.
The Bible portrays time as a series of connected loops, each one taking us back to the past, even as it moves us into the future.
Do you remember bus ministry? I recall a time when those of us enamored with church growth smirked about bus ministry and considered it a fad at best.
It is a tragedy if certain children are more invited into this beautiful ritual than others are.
Baptism is not merely a ritual of initiation; rather, it is an active participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We are forgetful creatures who need rituals and celebrations to mark the time and place where something happened.
It is--and always has been--a problem. But I do think we can be more intentional with our new disciples in order to help them understand what God expects of them.
We put great emphasis on how to live for Jesus. We talk about treating people well, making behavioral decisions that follow Jesus, and serving people the way the Good Samaritan did.
The gift of the promised Holy Spirit may mean many things for the Christian life, but for those newly initiated into Christian discipleship it means one thing. It means you’ve been marked with God’s tattoo.
