“The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence—congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we do and the way we do it, congruence between what is written in Scripture and our living out what is written, congruence between a ship and its prow, congruence between preaching and living, congruence between the sermon and what is lived in both preacher and congregation, the congruence of the Word made flesh in Jesus with what is lived in our flesh.” – Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God (New York: Waterbrook, 2017), xviii.
Monthly Archives: February 2018
“We Are Beggars”: An Ash Wednesday Sermon
The following sermon was preached on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2014 at Good Shepherd Community Church in Scarborough. The Scripture readings were Genesis 3:17-19; 1 John 1:5-10; Luke 18:9-14.
Bonhoeffer on Human Freedom and the Image of God
Tonight is the final night of the four week teaching series, “Bonhoeffer: Following Jesus in a Fragmented World,” that I’ve been leading at Whitby Christian Assembly. That 200 people would come out on Wednesday evenings in January to hear about a dead German theologian is testimony to the commitment and passion of this extraordinary congregation. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is no ordinary dead German theologian! Continue reading Bonhoeffer on Human Freedom and the Image of God
Wycliffe College Preaching Day
Wycliffe College will be hosting their annual Preaching Day on Monday, February 26, 2018. Wycliffe always manages to put together an excellent program featuring keynote speakers that are among some of the most theologically insightful preachers and teachers of our day. This year’s conference looks to be no exception to the rule as Wycliffe welcomes Jason Byassee to speak on the theme of “Christ Meets Us in the Psalms.” Continue reading Wycliffe College Preaching Day
Bonhoeffer on What it Means “To Believe in the Church”
I taught an intensive intercession course on the “Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” during the first week of January this year. While the students were responsible for completing some reading prior to our week together in class—including Christianne Tietz’s excellent, new short biography, Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—most of the major engagement with the primary sources in the Bonhoeffer corpus has been taking place over the past few weeks following the conclusion of our time together in class. In recent days, the students would have encountered this remarkable passage from Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation in which he addresses the question of what is means “to believe in the church.” The passage is noteworthy not only because it was penned by a theology student who was a mere twenty-one years old at the time, but also because it anticipates in many ways the central themes of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology that will come to the fore throughout his life. Continue reading Bonhoeffer on What it Means “To Believe in the Church”