I have come to love many features of worship with friends who emulate early Christian worship. No feature more so than the way we bridge from the ministry of the Word to the ministry of the Table.Read More

What are the connotations of “religion” to you? What are the disadvantages and advantages of thinking of the Christian life and faith as a religious life and faith?Read More

Denise comes to church wearing makeup to hide bruises from hands that had once been pledged to love and cherish her. Daniel comes wondering if anyone will notice scars from cosmetic surgery he hopes will slow his late Boomer life down. Jason comes resolving to find the strength to stop overeating. Ellen comes doubting whether...Read More

Roger wears two watches. Because he travels a lot, he sets the watch on his left wrist to whatever time zone he happens to be in. He sets the watch on his right wrist to the time zone “back home” in Switzerland, where his heart always is and where his family lives. Stability on the...Read More

Lent outlines the contours of the Suffering Servant’s servitude. Maundy Thursday – named, as it is, for the giving of the “new commandment” that we love one another as Christ has loved us – pivots on the occasion of the footwashing (John 13). Maundy Thursday’s washing and being washed creates in me a fresh hunger...Read More

A few years ago I took up samurai swordsmanship. It has not been easy, because the sword is not just about cutting stuff. It’s as much about how you move your body. My body doesn’t do Japanese well. When my sensei shows me what I look like to him, he bounces like Tigger and sways...Read More

This past Advent, I began chanting psalms in my daily devotions. I’m doing so using the eight ancient plainsong chant tones that have their origins in the Gregorian musical revolution of the middle of the 1st millennium, as recovered and restored in the late 19th century.Read More

Rouault comes upon this old clown “mending his glittering and colorful costume.” He sees the jarring contrast of “brilliant, scintillating things, made to amuse us,” on the one hand, and the infinite sadness in the man’s unguarded face, on the other. “I clearly saw that the ‘Clown’ was me, it was us. . .&nbsp. This rich and...Read More

In the summer of 1999 when I was in the middle of writing With One Voice, the following summary article appeared in The Reformed Quarterly. For many of my friends the article served as an entrée into my thinking about the many voices through which our Singing Savior sings in his church. For a long...Read More

A few — a very few — people you get to know in life are larger than life. The force of their character seems to enlarge a room when they walk into it. Of course, larger than life people can either be “black holes” that suck everything and everybody into themselves — you get smaller...Read More