“Falling into Sin” – A Phrase We Need to Drop

I hear it all the time. It sounds so passive. I did it again…I fell into sin. It’s like a “woops” or an “uh oh.” I was walking along just doing the best I could and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back looking up at the sky…I slipped. I fell [...]

How Do You Motivate Once Guilt is Removed?

People still think of the Sunday morning service as the “have to” part of Christianity. There is no doubt about it in my mind. Why else would many churches only get 30-50% return, if that, on Wednesday night?
Things that have led to our current situation:

The motivation of guilt is being removed. Some used to attend [...]

Effective Evangelism – The Difference Between Conversion and Subversion

One of the things that gets people in trouble when it comes to evangelism is trying to subert people rather than convert them. The word subvert comes from a combination of the words sub – from beneath and the Latin vertere – to turn. The word convert is similar but rather than turning from beneath [...]

Misconceptions About Our Contribution to our own Salvation

There are a lot of misconceptions floating around out there about our salvation and what is expected of us in the process. Two misconceptions fall on the extremes of the pendulum of what is required of us to be saved. On one side, you have the misconception that because salvation is a “free gift” that [...]

The Motivation Gap in Christianity

The track record on what we have used to motivate in the churches of Christ seems to shift to extremes at times. As with many other groups in Christianity the modus oporondi of the day decades back was guilt communicated through legalistic means. Feel guilty if you don’t come when the doors are open. Feel [...]

Baptism – Related to Salvation but Not a Work

Two insights from Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament that help us get a better understanding of baptism:
1) Baptism is seen in the New Testament as part of God’s reconciling process. Here are some words from Oepke in Kittel,
“Christian baptism certainly has as its final goal new and eternal life…the new life stands in [...]

Balancing Faith, Grace, Baptism, and Works

I am re-posting this comment I left over at Jay Guin’s blog. He was discussing the necessity of baptism and I thought this might be helpful to mention here as well. See his post here as it is excellent and followed up by insightful comments. Here is my comment:
We have to understand what Paul meant [...]

God’s Desire for Christian Unity

The problem I run across the most in the letters of the New Testament seems to be unity in the early church. The newly established and multi-racial church of the first century really struggled with overcoming social, religious, and ethnic boundary markers in order to have full unity and acceptance of one another.
Why is this [...]

Romans 11:28-12:1 – The Mercy of God

Chapter breaks in the Bible can often be very distracting. One of those is the chapter break between Romans 11:36 and 12:1. Why on earth would anyone put a chapter break right before the word “therefore”? What is even funnier to me is that people will quote verses like Romans 12:1-2 and start the quote [...]

Rethinking Romans 12:1-2 – Hear it Again, Only This Time in Context

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard in a sermon or Bible class Romans 12:1-2. I am not certain how many times I have quoted this verse at different times to different people. It is a powerful verse on its own. But it is an even more powerful verse when heard in [...]