imagining how the church can reorient around mission

After attending the services at our church last night, I am still speechless. Good Friday commemorates perhaps the greatest mystery in the history of the world. How is it that God Himself—the Creator of the Universe—can suffer death at the hands of His creatures?

via michaelhyatt.com read more

The day of freedom arrived for my mother, sister and me on April 25, 1961. It was several days after Fidel Castro’s military squelched the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion…

via: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/14/2167789/how-we-left-cuba-just-days-after.html# read more

Simply beautiful (HT – Parker).  Sometimes music is the only way…

 I just had to put this up before the NBA season ended.

Onion SportsDome

“The Kingdom is primarily the dynamic reign or kingly rule of God, and derivatively, the sphere in which the rule is experienced. In biblical idiom, the Kingdom is not identified with its subjects. They are the people of God’s rule who enter it, live under it, and are governed by it. The church is the community of the Kingdom but never the Kingdom itself. Jesus’ disciples belong to the Kingdom as the Kingdom belongs to them; but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the rule of God; the church is a society of men.” read more

1. United States
2. Netherlands
3. Germany
4. France
5. United Kingdom
6. Spain
7. Canada
8. Belgium
9. New Zealand
10. South Africa

WHAT IS HEALTHY SEXUALITY?

Ok, here is the second half of my friend, Nancy Janzen's email about "Healthy Sexuality."  If you didn't get a chance to read Sex Talk – Part 1…then proceed with caution.  Just kidding.  Terrific and thoughtful stuff about sex and commitment – obviously cross-grain with much of the drivel-ish romanticism we get force-fed from the media/cinema.  Enjoy. read more

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’  All that are in Hell, choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” 

(C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, p. 72)  

Last week Robi and I were asked to speak to a group of college students about “healthy sexuality.”  It was a blast…the talk.  I was suffering from laryngitis, so my voice sounded like Barry White, which seriously helps when talking about sex.  Before we did our talk, I asked a few friends to weigh in on the topic.  One of the responses was so good that I decided (with permission) to post it here on The Drum.  The author is our dear friend and brilliant thinker, Nancy Janzen.  Here is the first part of her email (I’m not kidding, this is an email): read more