Thinking After

Tag: confession

  • A Poor Church-Growth Strategy? (Series on “Minding the Web”)

    “That we are taught to confess our sin, particularly during Lent, is not something to which we look forward. We are not at all sure an emphasis on sin is a good idea. We are in a time of a dramatic loss in membership in mainline Protestantism. We need to attract new people. Telling people they are possessed by sin does not sound like a good church-growth strategy. (more…)

  • A Lifetime Project (Series on “Minding the Web”)

    “One of the great advantages of being a Christian is that we are in a lifetime project to discover how to confess our sins. To be able to confess our sins is a theological achievement that our baptisms have made pos­sible. For sin, as Karl Barth maintained, is only known in the light of Christ. Thus from Barth’s perspective, our fundamental sin consists in the presumption that we can know our sin without having become a dis­ciple of Christ. In short, to be a Christian means we must be trained to be a sinner. (more…)