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Our 19-7 Bridge

It’s a long way from a short bridge on the Illinois Waterway to contemplation about synodical decisions on sexuality. We all seek connections to God’s truth the best we can. For me, this story about a bridge helped me think about the complex tension between tradition and change. One hard truth is that we all have 19-7 bridges in our lives.
January 8, 2024
Featured

Angels in Brown Boxes

Angels were very real to ancient believers and very significant. As we shall see, they were the embodiments of the love of God, and they depicted how this love flowed from the heart of God and gave life to the world. The story of Jesus’ birth cannot be meaningfully told without them. But angels are not real to believers living in the 21st century.
December 18, 2023
Featured

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Don later pointed out to the neighbors, who over the years annually thanked him for the spectacle, that this event had accomplished something quite significant in the annals of his family history. Perhaps the lesson learned is too obvious to mention. To this day, not one of his three children—now sensible and judicious adults—has ever tried to set a Christmas tree on fire, indoors or out.
December 11, 2023
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BIBLICAL MARRIAGE:  DO WE KNOW IT WHEN WE SEE IT?

We are not individuals placed in the world to seek our own pleasure but members of a community bound together in love, which finds one of its highest and fullest expressions in marriage and the family. In our intimate relationships, as in larger settings such as the church, we should show love and respect and live in mutual submission to each other.
December 4, 2023
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The Reformation According to Janet

As Janet spoke, though, it came to me again that religion mangles the Gospel sometimes. It had, for example, taught both Janet’s and Chester’s parents a harsh script, and they had acted it out; it was Janet who bore the spiritual pain of that bad teaching.
November 27, 2023
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Children Entering the Kingdom

One Israelite tradition, the dominant one, held that wisdom came with the experience of years and that the elders bore the responsibility of codifying and passing it on to children. ... The other tradition held that wisdom resided in children who saw the world afresh and often had a keener sense of God’s presence and purposes than their elders.
November 20, 2023
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A Reformed Theological Case for Same-Sex Marriage

Too often the debate over same-sex marriage is reduced to trying to sidestep a few tangential passages or throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Instead, we need a comprehensive Reformed theology of marriage that honors the full arc of Scripture from creation to eschaton.
November 13, 2023
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Look Where She Comes From

I don’t have a career. Most of my jobs have included me having to run the checkout, and sweeping and mopping the floor at the end of the night. My husband doesn’t have a college education or a career. He’s what is referred to as a cement dweller. He goes to a factory and spends his days standing on a cement floor bending and twisting metal all day. We don’t own a large house—up until a year earlier, we were…
November 6, 2023
ChurchFeatured

Digging In and Bailing Out: Religion, Politics, and the Rise of the Nones: Part Two

To understand the rise of the Nones, it is necessary to consider the broader cultural impact of the rise of the Religious Right in producing a broad backlash, but it is equally important to explore how these processes operate at a congregational level in which people who have worshiped together for generations find themselves having to make the difficult choice of leaving a congregation that has been an important part of their and their family’s identity.
October 23, 2023