By John Frye: Believe it or not practicing the presence of God did not start with Brother Lawrence. That practice began in earnest with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. The Pharisees sparked a holiness movement that became popular with the common folk in Galilee and Judea.  The Temple managed by the Levites was far away for most commoners. The Pharisees, without diluting the unique importance of the Temple and the Levites, wanted to guide people to apply levitical laws to... Read more

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation,that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen. BCP Read more

Melissa Chen: One reason it continues is because too many parents believe that a certain kind of education is necessary for succeeding in life. Too many parents believe that it is necessary to get into the right pre-school in order to be ready for elementary school, because if you’re not identified as gifted by the time you leave elementary school, then you’ll be left out of the honors and advanced-placement tracks that are necessary to transcript-build in high school and... Read more

I recently picked up a new book by Ron Highfield The Faithful Creator: Affirming Creation and Providence in an Age of Anxiety. This book explores the concepts of creation, providence and evil and looks like it should lead to some interesting conversation and insight. Ron Highfield is a professor of religion at Pepperdine University (a place I’d love to visit some day), where he teaches courses like Systematic Theology I and Systematic Theology II, among others. Highfield’s approach is that... Read more

The post yesterday about Derwin Gray’s high-definitional leader can be complemented by a wider strategy seen in Brenda Salter McNeil’s Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice. Readers of my blog or The Kingdom Conspiracy know I get a bit nervous when social activism takes over ecclesial centeredness, but I find in both Derwin Gray and Brenda Salter McNeil a rugged commitment to the church and to the centrality of the gospel and the church in the process of... Read more

There is a debate now about the Wheaton professor who quoted Pope Francis that Christians and Muslims worship the “same” God. The issue here is in part Christian theology and in part the meaning of “same.” I return to a series of posts I did on Miroslav Volf’s book Allah and I want to bring back some of that 11-part series today. Here is how Volf understands “same” (not the same as “identical” but “sufficiently similar” to build a consensus of... Read more

Bob Smietana: A tenured Wheaton College political science professor who pledged to wear a hijab during Advent in support of her Muslim neighbors has been placed on administrative leave. Not for donning the Islamic head covering, but over “significant questions regarding the theological implications” of her explanation of why she was doing so. “Wheaton College faculty and staff make a commitment to accept and model our institution’s faith foundations with integrity, compassion, and theological clarity,” the college stated in announcing the decision.... Read more

By Jonathan Storment: When I look back on 2015, the greatest thing I think the LORD has shown me this year are how relevant the seven deadly sins are to my life and ministry.  Today we are coming to the last one, and it is the one that I have saved for the last because it is the one I struggle with the most.  And since this is a blog that a lot of pastors read, let me say, in... Read more