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The three historic doctrinal standards of the Reformed Church in America (the Belgic Confession of 1561, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, and the Canons of the Synod of Dort of 1618-1619) offer up a standard Reformed portrait of the Lord of the Church. Jesus Christ was present with the Father at the creation of the world, and all things were made through him. Eternally begotten, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, he possesses both the…

It was Sunday, November 1, the first beautiful, dry, warm day in weeks. And this was the day I chose to visit the Reformed Hispanic church, Amistad Christiana, a joint effort of the Reformed and Christian Reformed Churches in Sioux Center, Iowa. By the way, my Spanish is non-existent. As I entered the building I was given a bulletin, a single page with three columns, back and front, all in Spanish. The back page has an explanation of the Reformed…

Do you know where you are going to be buried or who will be buried alongside you? Great numbers of people no longer know how to answer this question. This is striking because for millennia the place and community of one's burial could simply be taken for granted. One had a sense for home, knew where one belonged, even if one was not necessarily at peace with one's home or community. Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh have written an…

Attentiveness is in short supply these days. Perhaps more accurately, attentiveness is rarely practiced anymore. There just isn't much social demand for it. Consider our relationship with media: we have an unprecedented freedom to choose what we watch, read, and hear, as well as how and when. Music may be the best example of this driver's seat-oriented paradigm. The ability to adjust volume, skip tracks, or pause without consequences is a deeply-ingrained and widespread assumption. This sort of control profoundly…

Shane Claiborne is the de facto leader of the "New Monasticism," a movement predominantly among young adults who have forsaken the trappings of middle-class comfort to move into poverty-stricken urban communities. There they seek to incarnate the Kingdom of God through work with the widow, the orphan, the alien, and the poor. Claiborne is a founding member of The Simple Way, a redemptive community located in inner-city Philadelphia. His co-author Chris Haw, a Villanova University graduate student in theology, is…