Articles for tag: Mark W. Hamilton

November 7, 2016

By Mark W. Hamilton What does a just community look like? Is the American church such a community?Â Do we live out the call of the prophet Micah to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God?”* These questions confront anyone who studies the history of American Christianity. From that history we learn that Christians used the Bible to defend slavery and oppose it, to silence women and empower them, to cheer on Bull Connor”s corrupt police in Birmingham, Alabama, and to walk through hostile crowds in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Selma, Alabama, during the civil rights movement. Today,

April 12, 2015

Christian Standard

Care & Counseling Grief & Suffering

How Should Christians Suffer?

By Mark W. Hamilton The Bible helps us answer the question. A good beginning point is in the psalms of lament. Pain and suffering. This word pair names one of the most difficult problems facing Christian faith and practice today. Some Christians seek to dodge the problem by imagining that suffering always marks the presence of sin and that God, because he is good, wishes us to escape pain in all instances. This despite the obvious facts that the pain of Jesus lies at the very heart of the gospel, and that he called us to imitate him as suffering

December 13, 2014

Christian Standard

Culture & Public Square Justice

A Biblical View of Poverty

By Mark W. Hamilton A paradox confronting modern Western Christians is this: we who are rich serve a Lord who was poor. At the first Christmas, Jesus and his family did not hang their stockings by the chimney with care. Instead, they haunted stables and fled their home as refugees. Nor did things improve for the adult Jesus, who survived on the generosity of women who embraced his message of the kingdom.Â Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20); “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or your body, what you will wear” (Matthew

November 18, 2011

Christian Standard

Church Leadership

Advice for New Ministers and Their Churches

By Mark W. Hamilton Too often neither new ministers nor the churches they serve understand all the ways to help make their first year successful. Every year here at Abilene (Texas) Christian University, men and women receive degrees in theology and head off to their first work in a congregation. They pack a U-Haul, say goodbye to friends, eat their last West Texas barbecue and jalapeÃ±o cornbread, and embark. They are soon hip-deep in teenage angst, finding replacement teachers, or visiting the sick. They will try to remember what we have taught them about Scripture and systematic theology and church