Coronavirus and a Gospel Bigger Than Dying and Going to Heaven
If we think the biblical gospel is getting sins forgiven to die and go to heaven we won’t think the gospel has much to do with our present coronavirus crises. If dying and going to heaven is the gospel, why did Jesus heal people and hold up the gospel process of getting them to heaven? […]
Why A Biblically Robust Gospel is Essential To The People of God
What is the Gospel? How we answer that question says a lot. For many people the Gospel is that Jesus came to die for my sins so that when I die I can go to be with God in heaven forever. There is a lot of truth in that summation but we have to examine […]
What is the Gospel? (Part 1)
In Scot McKnight’s excellent book, “King Jesus Gospel” he asks a question that is so simple but so profound – Did Jesus preach the gospel? This is an intriguing question because we typically think of the gospel as the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus that gives us future hope in heaven through our promised […]
Back to What is Most Important – The Gospel
I find it increasingly beneficial to focus on things that are of top shelf importance. There are so many distractions out there and so many ways to spend your time, energy and money. I am going to launch into a series on the Gospel over the next few weeks that I think you will find […]
Making Complex the Simple and Dreaming Dreams
It takes a lot of work to take a complex idea and make it simple. It takes relatively little work to take something simple and make it complex. Disorder comes more easily than order…chaos is the natural course of a broken world. Entropy doesn’t just affect physics and thermodynamics. Entropy affects communication. Order takes discipline. […]
Broadening Our View of Gospel and Salvation
The term for gospel as a noun only occurs in Matthew and Mark about a dozen times. It doesn’t appear in Luke or in John. It doesn’t show up again until Acts 15:7. The verb form (to preach or proclaim the good news) does show up a few times in Luke and the early chapters […]
Losing Our Way in Churches of Christ and Finding the Answer in the Gospels
I intend to spend a lot more time in the Gospels this year and I would like to tell you why. In 2015 I tackled N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I started it while on jury duty via my kindle app and when I first downloaded the book it told me I […]
Two New Small Group Series Uploaded to Kingdom Living
I just uploaded two new small group lesson series. I wrote these for Northwest to use in my absence in order to help them transition to a new way of developing small group curriculum next year. Here they are: Generations Seeking God Together The Gospel
The Gospel is Not Just a Set of Facts, It is Those Facts Proclaimed
When I think of the Gospel I often think of information. Usually that information is summed up as the death and resurrection of Christ that brings us forgiveness and eternal life. But if you look up how the word “Gospel” is used in the New Testament it is almost always used in the context of […]
What Did Jesus Mean When He Talked About Causing “Little ones to Stumble”?
Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. ” – Luke […]