Jesus’ Salvation Reorients Everything or Nothing
For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. (Luke 19:10) Few words come with as much comfort as Jesus’ clarity here as to why He came to us. Some scholars even believe this is the central…
A Word Spoken for Ash Wednesday, 2021
By Kelli Sallman Reposted with permission from https://sallmanediting.com/resources-1/2021/2/11/a-word-spoken-for-ash-wednesday-2021 Based on Isaiah 55; Ezekiel 37:1–14; Ephesians 2–4; 6:10–20 With help from the body: Randy Bonifield, Dawn Heckert, Callie Johnson, Kia Hunt, Bobbie Jeffrey, and Emily Hobbs Complicity Under the steeple steeped in…
What is a person worth?
I love garage sales. Not just because of the great finds you can come across but because I love to haggle. I think it is my spiritual gift! Garage sales are designed for haggling precisely because of the challenge of…
Can You Celebrate Easter Without Lent?
Lent is the 40-day period leading up to Easter, beginning with Ash Wednesday, culminating with our celebration of the Greatest Day, the day death died and hope triumphed, our Resurrection Sunday. I didn’t grow up in a tradition that thought…
Learning to Trust (and Love) the Bible
My relationship with the Bible has always been one of intense love...and at times almost crippling doubt. And it all began for me with a fairly lukewarm prayer. Jesus, I’m going to try to take you seriously for a while.…
Training In Love
I am restless. There is a question I cannot get out of my head despite my best efforts. How did we end up with two billion Christians in the world? Or, to ask more provocatively - how did the early…
Psalm 1 in Winter
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his…
Why We Can’t Have Priorities
We have a very peculiar relationship with time. We find ourselves needing to kill time and make time. We experience time flying by and standing still. Sometimes we want time to slow down and other times we want it to…
Informed But Still Deformed
The Great Failure Some of the greatest failures in the church over the past few years have had less to do with what is professed in our words and more around what is performed in our lives. Nationally visible leaders…
Where is Christ Community most vulnerable in 2021? (Or: What Muskoxen Can Teach us about Spiritual Warfare)
The local church’s greatest vulnerability is the same as the greatest vulnerability of musk oxen in the Arctic. What? Stay with me. Recently my kids and I watched the National Geographic special The Kingdom of the White Wolf. It follows…