pastor || writer || speaker
I came across this stunning paragraph from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 commencement address to Harvard University when re-reading Stanley Hauerwas' book A Community of Character the other day. As I was working on my message from this past weekend at Eastbrook, I found Solzhenitsyn's words a helpful encouragement for the right direction I was going. If humanism were …
Continue reading "Solzhenitsyn on Life, Death, and Humanism"
When I was at a gathering with ministry leaders focused on the multi-ethnic church over a year ago, Professor Soong-Chan Rah recommended that anyone wanting to better understand the historical background of race relations in the United States should read Isabel Wilkerson's book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. I finished …
Continue reading "The Warmth of Other Suns (Book Reflections)"
Here are the discussion questions that accompany my message, "Dying to Live," from this past weekend at Eastbrook Church. This is the fifth part of our series, "Jesus at the Center," from the book of Colossians. This week we looked at Colossians 2:16-23. Discussion Questions: When have you felt judged by someone else? What happened and how …
We continued our series, "Jesus at the Center," this past weekend at Eastbrook by looking at a somewhat obscure passage found in Colossians 2:16-23. Here, Paul and Timothy push back against some wrong ideas that will lead the early believers in Colossae astray from the truth found in Christ. We face similar struggles today, so I …
Here are the discussion questions that accompany my message, "Jesus: God's Secret Revealed," from this past weekend at Eastbrook Church. This is the first part of our series, "Jesus at the Center," from the book of Colossians. This week we looked at Colossians 1:24-2:25. Discussion Questions: Answer one of these: What has been one the biggest surprises …
Continue reading "Jesus: God’s Secret Revealed (discussion questions)"
Matthew Erickson 