Posts from March 2024

Consider this article on where the resurrection of the dead fits into the gospel from Wes McAdams’ blog “Radically Christian.” As always, I recommend you go check out the entire site. -BP When modern Christians teach people the Gospel, we typically begin by trying to convince them they have a problem about which they are blissfully unaware. We try to teach them that their biggest problem is, “God is angry with you and will soon punish you forever.” In reality,…

Our Easter Egg Hunt for children occurring immediately after the worship assembly caused me to think about celebrating religious holidays more generally. Today is Palm Sunday, the day where many religious groups commemorate the Triumphal Entry; indeed, our sermon will be on that theme, too. This begins what is known as “Holy Week” leading up to Easter. Easter is the oldest of all religious holidays celebrated by Christians. The earliest Christians did not practice an annual observance of the resurrection;…

Some of our small groups are recognizing St. Patrick’s Day as they meet this afternoon. I believe that Ken Coleman’s group is having all green foods—hopefully, that is not an incentive for anyone to clean out any science experiments from the back of the refrigerator. Robert Ward’s group will meet at our house, where we will have some traditional Irish dishes. It is fun to do things like that on what is more or less a second-class holiday in this…

This week, Focus Press’s podcast, “Think Deeper,” tackled the issue of when someone is ready to be baptized and ancillary topics. Among those was the subject of rebaptism. That got me thinking about this area; we just published an article in this space a few weeks ago dealing with what a person needs to know prior to baptism, so it seemed good to deal with rebaptism in particular. Many of you have heard me speak about this over the years,…

As a preacher, you become more familiar with death that most people. In some cases, that is through visiting someone, maybe even sitting at the bedside, as they are getting close to the end of life; in others, it might be through performing the memorial service, hopefully helping grieving loved ones to find some measure of comfort. And all that has only increased in frequency since I became a hospice chaplain a couple of years ago. But whether or not…