LOVE THE SINNER, HATE THE SIN

I’m not going to use this phrase anymore: Love the sinner and hate the sin.  In our current mission context, it has lost whatever insight and help it might once have offered.  In fact, to use the phrase and try to guide ministry with it in mind may actually subvert the mission. I don’t quarrel …

With Jesus on Death Row

During the season of Lent we wait with Jesus as he awaits execution.  Our waiting, however, is not a passive waiting—just being there as detached observers.  No, it’s an active, intense, strenuous waiting with Jesus. If we can use modern imagery, we join Jesus on death row and it’s as if we are waiting for …

Set Free to Set Free!

I remember often thinking to myself, “how could anyone with even an ounce of decency, let alone the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, seriously support slavery?”  I asked myself that question after watching the celebrated Roots miniseries years ago.  I asked myself that question when I read or heard about the heinous Apartheid system …

FORGETTING TO REMEMBER

I enjoy the” hinge” connecting the old and new year.  For a couple weeks we commonly look back to recall the most memorable or important or funny or stupid things that happened in the year past.  Likewise, we anticipate the things we will do in the New Year—both the things we vow not to do …