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Bible Liturgical Calendar Scripture

How Your Whole Worship Service Can Proclaim the Gospel

Where is the Proclamation? Sometimes older church leaders will look at younger innovative churches and wonder if the proclamation of the gospel is being lost. They wonder if there is still a place for preaching in these new church models. It is true that churches like mine—which often rails against preaching that is individualized, overly rationalistic, […]

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Christology ecclecia ecclesiology Jesus Christ Liturgical Calendar missional Recent Posts

Being the Temple for the World, #4

Here is the complete series: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4, 5, 6. So we have talked about how Heaven and Earth are best thought as God’s Temple, and that God rests in his temple residence as the ruler of the cosmos. This naturally leads us to ask, “Ok, so what does humanity have to do with […]

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ecclecia ecclesiology Liturgical Calendar missional

The Practice of Living: All Saints Day

Why do we run from death if death has been defeated? Why do we forget those who have gone before us and pretend that we have to go it alone? All Saints Day is good for us here in America, in the West, where we are prone to ignore death and live alone. All Saints […]

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ecclecia ecclesiology evangelical Liturgical Calendar prayer Top Posts

Telling the Story: The Eucharistic Prayer

Last month, at the Ecclesia National Gathering, I had the privilege and honor to preside over communion for the whole group. I led through the time as we usually do here at Life on the Vine, but many people not from a more liturgical background asked about the prayer leading into the Table.  Many commented […]

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Lent Liturgical Calendar Recent Posts

Lent and Human Limitations

I often always tell people the best spiritual thing they could do is get a good night’s sleep.   Sleep is a necessary limitation to human striving, to the pride of achievement, or of the folly of wasted time.  Eventually we have to sleep. And I hate that.  I find it hard to take my own […]

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ecclecia ecclesiology evangelical Liturgical Calendar politics

Pentecost: Babel Overcome ≠ Babel Reversed

I often hear that in Pentecost the curse of Babel is reversed. But this is not true. Babel is overcome, but not reversed. The idea that Babel is reversed goes something like this. Because humanity, in its pride, sought to raise themselves to God’s level, God confused them with multiple languages and they were scattered. […]