Posts by Liberty Church of Christ (Page 4)
The Theology of Potluck
As someone pointed out recently, we eat together as a church a lot! We have been intentional about doing that more and more since we began to emerge from COVID restrictions. This week, Wes McAdams, the preacher at the McDermott Road Church of Christ, published this article that I thought spoke really well to the deeper meaning of these gatherings. I commend it to your attention, and urge you again to check out his blog, “Radically Christian,” for more deeply…
Jesus Rose Again
This morning, we will conclude our study of the Gospel of Mark by looking at the resurrection narrative in Mark 16:1-8. Our focus will be on the meaning of the resurrection in the story rather than on the historical reality of the event. But its significance assumes as a given that it really did occur; the way that Mark and other writers speak about the resurrection will not let us get off the hook with metaphorical explanations that are popular…
What Do I Do?
A few weeks ago, we began a new adult class on Wednesday evenings where we are studying Christian ethics; more specifically, we are thinking through how we make decisions when we are faced with difficult moral dilemmas. This should be practical for all of us, not only as we grapple with controversial ethical issues that our contemporary culture is struggling with, but also just on a day-to-day basis as we all strive to choose to do God’s will. This past…
A Hard Day
Today is Mother’s Day. The holiday was first organized by Anna Jarvis, who held a memorial for her mother at St. Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where she had been a Sunday School teacher, in 1907. An official worship service was observed in the same place the following year, accompanied by a larger ceremony in the store of Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker. By the year after that, it was being celebrated in New York City. Jarvis then launched…
The Cholera and the Christian Religion
In the summer of 1873, cholera struck the city of Nashville. From a population of 25,865, about 1,000 people died—4% of the city, in other words. David Lipscomb lived about 10 miles outside of town, yet he remained in Nasvhille throughout the epidemic to tend to the sick and the dying. He was disturbed, however, that a number of his fellow Christians fled rather than staying to minister to the needy. In response, he wrote an article in the July…
O You of Little Faith
The most pressing matter in the news this week is obviously the Coronavirus. Searching the term in Google returns a number of articles, and there are constant updates. As I type this, I see a warning that cash could be spreading the virus; the King County, Washington government, dealing with the worst outbreak in the US, have bought a quarantine motel; and that one official in a news conference promoted common sense measures to check the spread of the disease…
Don’t Let Your Politics Trump Your Christian Principles
Here is another excellent article from Wes McAdams’ blog “Radically Christian.” I shared this on Facebook this week, but I know that not everyone has an opportunity to see that, so I am reprinting it here. Especially in light of recent national events, I believe this is a timely reminder for those on both sides of the aisle. BP During the political season, some of us seem to say and do things unbecoming of Christians. I suppose it has always been…
4 Things Christians Should Do When Tragedies Occur
By now, all of us know about the tragic attack at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas last Sunday. Reactions have run the gamut from grief to shock to fear to anger. All of those, and more, are understandable, but not all responses are appropriate for Christians. What should we do? This article by Wes McAdamas addresses the question as well as any I’ve ever seen. It is slightly abridged here; you can access it in…
He Settles the Solitary
Psalm 68 emphatically celebrates God’s defeat of his enemies and enthronement in Jerusalem. It lacks a superscription tying it to any particular historical circumstance, but some scholars have speculated that it was composed for the procession when David first brought the Ark of the Covenant to his new capital city of Jerusalem. So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing (2 Sam 6:12). The psalm begins with…
The Christians in the West
A tradition of restorationist thinking, despair over denominationalism, and a commitment to religious liberty combined in the young United States to produce 4 movements, emerging almost simultaneously and independently, that looked to Scripture and the faith and practice of the New Testament church as their guide. We noted 2 of these last week: the O’Kelly Christians in the South and the Smith-Jones movement in New England. The most numerous of these grew largely from former Presbyterians and Baptists in Kentucky…
“Restoration Movements” in the Middle Ages
The very concept of “Restoration” indicates that something needs to be restored. What do we mean by that? Acts 2 portrays the Jerusalem church in the immediate aftermath of Pentecost as a model: they were devoted to the teachings of the apostles, they engaged in regular prayer and fellowship, and they grew exponentially. But the rest of Acts as well as the NT more generally make clear that the early church had problems too: there was division in Corinth, Judaizing…
Why Study History?
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples…