As a parent myself, now, and a teacher and an Anglican priest, I’ve been revisiting the Lewis of my childhood. What did I learn in Narnia? Did the stories of the Pevensie children encourage me towards virtue? More importantly, through loving Aslan was I better prepared to love Jesus? Read More
I read the Narnia Chronicles for the first time when they were first published. I began with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the only way to begin the Narnia Chronicles in my way of thinking. Otherwise, the stories lose their magic. I have read the Narnia Chronicles over and over again since then. At the age of 72 I am still reading them. They touched my heart as a child and they still touch my heart. They have not ceased to bring tears to my eyes. They may teach virtue but I believe that they teach much, much more. We learn to love Aslan so we can learn to love Jesus even more in our world. Lewis wrote that the stories came to him in dreams and mental images. They began as a faun walking in the woods on a snow day. Lewis stopped writing them when the mental images and the dreams stopped.6 Truths to Prepare the Church for Post-Christian America
Take time to read the Narnia Chronicles to your child or your grandchild. Read them to a group of children at the public library. Encourage children to read them for themselves. The movies, while they are well done, do not do justice to the magic of Narnia. But the books do. Find the wardrobe in the upstairs room and enter Aslan's kingdom.
Ministry in post-Christian Europe taught me a lot. In Europe, you’re definitely playing the long game, but somehow it seems richer and fuller. As the U.S. seems to be growing more secular like Europe, six truths about ministry stand out. Read More
Coronavirus Has Unveiled the Liturgical Poverty of Evangelicals
If I have to go to another church service and turn to the people around me to discuss something-or-other, I think I’ll cry. Seriously, is that all we’ve got in this period of lockdown? Zoom breakouts and socially distanced groupwork? Without the singing or the preaching, evangelical church services just resemble a staff development day. Why are evangelicals so impoverished when it comes to Christian liturgy? Read More
Don’t Fear Satan, But Don’t Ignore Him, Either
In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis said that Christians make two primary mistakes in regard to Satan: Some people give Satan too much credit, where they blame him for any sin in their life. On the other side—and perhaps even more problematic—are those who don’t recognize Satan at all. Re>ad More
10 Ways the Enemy Infiltrates the Church
In some ways, this post is just a Bible review. As I think about ways the enemy seeks to infiltrate a church, I find many of those ways in Paul’s correspondence to the Corinthians. While this list isn’t exhaustive, here are some ways we should recognize.... Read More
Jesus’ Decisive Victory Over the Rulers of This Dark World
The contention of this series of articles is that the Bible is set in the land of wild things. That is, the Bible is more fantastical—beautiful, dangerous and strange—than we give it credit for. What we incorrectly call the natural and the supernatural, as if they are distinct and isolated realms, are actually part of a single, fascinating, and intertwined world. In the Bible, heaven and earth constantly interact and are alive with all kinds of creatures, forces, and powers—both seen and unseen. Read More
What Pastors should Look for in Safe People
In a previous blog post I wrote about how many pastors suffer with relational anorexia. Pastors can find a cure for this devastating issue when we seek out and find people with whom we can process the pain ministry inevitably brings. As you consider the traits you’d look for in a safe person, consider these Scriptures and the guidelines they infer, because these people are often difficult to spot. Read More
7 Tips for Preaching to Teenagers
This isn’t an exhaustive list of everything you need to know. But hopefully these tips will help some of you not have to learn the hard way like I did. Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment