I ran across this quotation from Thomas Merton in an online article by Gordon MacDonald at Leadership Journal. It stopped me and made me think about how I live. Some of us need to Discover that we will not Begin to live more Fully until we have the Courage to do and see And taste …
Five from Jonathan Edwards
I recently finished reading George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards: A Life. Edwards is one of the premier thinkers of early colonial America and a pillar of American Calvinism influenced by the English Puritans. For more on Edwards, you can read a biography here. For Edwards' influence on a contemporary pastor, read John …
What I Learned from ‘Leaving Church’ (pt 3)
What if the church was ‘more like a way station than a destination’? When I first became a Christian, I read an article by J. I. Packer that introduced me to the idea of the church as a hospital. The gist of Packer’s thought, as I recall, was that church is a community where we …
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What I Learned from ‘Leaving Church’ (pt 2)
Recovering the mysterious fear of the Lord There is a phrase throughout the Bible that we tend not to talk about a lot these days in church: “the fear of the Lord.” In many ways, it is understandable. The word ‘fear’ does not offer a lot of positive connotations for us. Who wants to connect …
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What I Learned from ‘Leaving Church’ (pt 1)
When a friend recommended a book to me called Leaving Church, I was surprised by two things. My first surprise was that the book was written by one of the best preachers I have ever heard, Barbara Brown Taylor. But the second fact surprised me even more: she had left vocational ministry after a considerable …
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Matthew Erickson 