Embrace Active Worship With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #26. Beyond their worship of God and approach to him, two other things stood out about this minority congregation. First, the kids were an active presence during the […]
A Lesson for Today from Zephaniah A too-common practice in the United States (and perhaps around the world) is to take parts from different religions and philosophies, mashing them together to form a personal belief system. Doing so is a consumer-centric mindset. People keep the parts they like, and they ditch the rest. They grab […]
A Traditional, Friendly Congregation With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #24. The people at this traditional church were friendly, much friendlier than most. The message was good and gave me something to contemplate, but it was the […]
Don’t Hold a Church Business Meeting After the Service With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #23. It’s challenging to get members to attend a church business meeting during the week, as it requires an extra trip to […]
Sounding the Shofar at Church With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #21. Of all the 52 churches we visited, this one deviated the most from current church practices. It was a unique church service and a memorable […]
Embracing a Service in Mandarin With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #20. Although I’m uncomfortable in situations where language differences make conversation hard, if not impossible, something about this church draws me. Despite not knowing Mandarin, I […]
Liturgical Church Services With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #18. We’ve now been to three churches with liturgical services (Church #5, 17, and 18), two of them Roman Catholic. I’ve struggled with the liturgy at all three. […]
A High Church Experience With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #17. This high church experience gave me much to contemplate about worshiping God in a more formal, liturgical manner. In contrast, most all of my church experiences […]
Consider Your Sacrifices Do you worship your work? Of course we would say “no.” But consider that what we make sacrifices for is that which is important to us. If so, then perhaps we are at risk of worshiping our work. In doing so, might it be that we’ve elevated our vocation to the status […]
The Four Gospels Each Have a Story of a Woman Who Worships Jesus Each of the four accounts of Jesus’s life—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—give a story about a woman who anoints Jesus with expensive perfume, but the details in each report vary. It may be that this happens on four separate occasions. Or it […]