February 20, 2023
You Have to Be There
We miss something sacred and “supernatural” when we absent ourselves from the body of Christ . . .
Articles for tag: Church Life
October 26, 2020
Discovery Questions for November 1, 2020
COMPANION RESOURCES Lesson for Nov. 1, 2020: God Is Faithful (2 Timothy 2:11-13; 4:6-8, 16-18) “Trimming Around the Edges” by David Faust (Lesson Application) ________ Study Questions for Groups By Michael C. Mack 1. What big challenge did you face last week? 2. With whom did you share your faith in and love for Christ since we last met? Ask three people—two readers and one reteller—to help. Ask the readers to read 2 Timothy 2:11-13; 4:6-8, 16-18 one after the other, preferably from different Bible versions. Ask the third person to summarize the main themes and subject matters from these
July 10, 2015
A Good Meal
By Daniel Schantz “For this reason many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (1Â Corinthians 11:30). Church services are well underway in a smalltown church of a hundred souls, when a little girl of 10 meanders down the center aisle, looking for a seat. She looks confused, as if she has never been inside a church before and she doesn”t know where to sit. Her bony shoulders are draped with a rag of a dress and her hair is matted and greasy. Her fingers and arms are gray with ground-in dirt, and she looks starved. At last she
May 27, 2015
Silence and Socializing
By Jim Tune Susan Cain, in her best-selling book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can”t Stop Talking, says at least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who generally prefer listening to speaking, who innovate and create but dislike self-promoting, and who favor working on their own over working in teams. Cain argues that we undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. There is a certain inner work we can do only by ourselves, alone, in silence. Meister Eckhart helps us understand that when he asserts, “Nothing
March 2, 2012
Sitting Pretty
By Daniel Schantz The wooden pew is a kind of symbol of the church in the past century. For a preacher”s son who grew up in the 1950s, the church pew provided me with stability, discipline, and plenty of fuel for a child”s imagination. Stability Almost everything in those old churches was made of wood. Wood was warm, smooth, pretty, and as stable as an anvil. Children sat with their parents during worship in those days before graded worship, a practice that many churches are reviving today. The first thing a child learned in church is that God is forgiving. The second
