January 19, 2026
Doug Redford contrasts Seasonal Affective Disorder with “Sin’s Affective Disorder,” tracing darkness back to Eden and pointing to Jesus as the Light. Communion each Lord’s Day restores spiritual order and hope in Christ’s victory.
January 12, 2026
Doug Redford traces Scripture’s imagery of God’s “mighty hand” and “outstretched arm,” then points to Jesus’ outstretched arms on the cross. At Communion, believers remember Isaiah 53 fulfilled and are welcomed
January 7, 2026
Doug Redford contrasts guided technology with misguided hearts, echoing Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning. He points to Psalm 20 and Luke 22 and calls Communion a weekly “GPS” that reorients believers to Jesus’ fulfilled mission and return.
November 17, 2025
This meal of Communion says grace to us each time we take it. Think of all Jesus has done for you and give thanks.
November 4, 2025
As we drink from the cup, may it speak of his blood, shed in the face of overwhelming darkness, securing our eternal rescue and freedom.
July 25, 2016
By Aaron Monts Joshua stood up and walked to the front, where the bread and the juice were waiting. A huge smile swept across my face and tears welled up in my eyes. Only a week ago we had talked directly, one-on-one about Jesus. Joshua wrestled with how to integrate his Jewish faith with this emerging understanding about who Jesus was and is. He struggled with the intellectual side of a faith that believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and yet was overwhelmed by the real-life stories of resurrection that were all around him on display in our church
By Arron Chambers Averie Blackmore Averie Blackmore is studying worship leadership and humanities at Milligan College. She has had the honor of leading a women”s small group and helping start a young adult worship service at her home church in Johnson City, Tennessee. She is an intern in the worship arts department at Mountain Christian Church, Joppa, Maryland. Averie”s Best Sermon: The best sermon series on emotions is by Steve and Holly Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is available at http://bit.ly/1pHcUEF. Why Averie likes this sermon: “I have always heard sermons that talk about emotions, but
January 6, 2014
By Neal Windham Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire William T. Cavanaugh Wm. B. Eerdman”s Publishing Company, 2008 The United States has one of the lowest savings rates of any wealthy country, and we are the most indebted society in history. What really characterizes consumer culture is not attachment to things but detachment. People do not hoard money; they spend it. So warns William Cavanaugh in his book, Being Consumed (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Cavanaugh published these words at the beginning of the Great Recession, just as millions of baby boomers were readying to settle into their 401(k) lives. Having
February 26, 2012
By LeRoy Lawson Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality Richard Beck Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011 Turn of Mind Alice LaPlante New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011 Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives David Engleman New York: Pantheon Books, 2009 Richard Beck”s Unclean is not a nice book. It”s about the disgusting things that shape our spirituality. While most people like their religion neat and clean””it”s what we usually mean by “holy”””life isn”t neat, and many of the people Jesus sends his disciples to reach aren”t clean. What then? The author, a professor at Abilene Christian University, is convinced that
August 2, 2009
by Ben Cachiaras One in four Americans calls himself Catholic. That”s 64 million people in this country””and an estimated billion people worldwide. There were lots of Roman Catholics in Minnesota, where I grew up. Many of my friends were Catholic. Some struck me as devout and genuinely committed to Christ, while others seemed halfhearted, as if they were going through obligatory religious motions. Then I discovered there were those same two kinds of folk in my own church. Later God moved my family and me to Maryland, and I have found a lot of Catholics here, too. In fact, Roman
July 12, 2009
 By Ethan Magness This article is no longer available online, but articles about the Lord’s Supper that appeared in the July 12/19, 2009, and June 10, 2007, issues of CHRISTIAN STANDARD–plus more–are available for purchase as a single, redisigned, easy-to-read and easy-to-use downloadable resource/pdf (a fuller explanation is below). The Lord’s Supper: A Memory and More Item D021535209 “¢Â $2.99    If you keep doing something often enough, long enough, it will change you. Take, for example, the Lord”s Supper. If we practice the Lord”s Supper in a meaningful way, week after week, it will change us for the better by
October 12, 2008
By Jared Witt Editor”s note: ImagineNYC is the latest project of Orchard Group Inc., a church planting organization in New York City. The new church will launch in September 2009 in two separate Manhattan locations, the upper West Side and Greenwich Village. Jared Witt is lead minister. Additional staff for the new church has yet to be selected. Â Â Â Novelist Tom Wolfe has suggested that New York City is no longer a real city inhabited by real people. It is, rather, a spectacle, a drama staged and orchestrated for the benefit of tourists, a massive public exhibition. New
May 7, 2006
By Jack R. Reese Everywhere I go these days””at conferences and workshops, in hallways and classrooms””I hear people talking about worship renewal. That”s a good thing, of course. Who could be opposed to renewal? Surely we all would agree that our worship could be better. We all want it to be more engaging, more effective, more uplifting, more spiritually forming. None of our churches is all it should be in this regard. We need to be renewed, to be sure. My problem is not that people desire worship renewal. Rather it is the assumption, among many at least, that such
April 7, 2026
John B. Penrose Jr
April 7, 2026
David Faust
March 27, 2026
Rick Cherok