RATIONALISM IS NOT OMNIPOTENT Rationalists are admirable beings. Rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as a worship of…
Sermon Illustrations
BEST AIDS TO WORSHIP The best aids to worship are those that because of their simplicity or familiarity become clear as glass. We do not see them at all; we see through them to the…
DRY PERIODS OF PRAYERS We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don't we? I doubt... whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our…
PRAYER AS COMMUNION What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless…
FORTY YEARS BEHIND IN RELEVANCE At a church conference I attended in March 1992, I heard Lyle Schaller say: "If next year is 1953, American churches are going to be in good shape. However, if…
WORSHIP WITH WHAT WE HAVE The fellowship of the Body is always two-way; receiving and giving. Wanting only to receive is not fellowship. We may not be preachers, but when we come to worship, we…
CHURCH FOR NEW BELIEVERS New believers would need only one exposure to the dull atmosphere, the puny attendance, the boring worship service, the gloom on the faces of many of the members and the negative…
AN ADDED DIMENSION TO CHURCH A man once stood on the church steps watching a congregation assemble for worship. He knew most of them well. One by one they went up the steps and through…
WORSHIP IN THE EARLY CHURCH Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165) referring to the Eucharist writes in his First Apology 1.67: "And on the day called Sunday there is a gathering together to one place of all…
LARGER THAN OURSELVES ...Unless we are all drawn toward something larger than ourselves - toward the One who calls us toward praise, love, community and justice - we will be preoccupied by petty battles... From…
FRIENDS PASS THE PLATE In Walnut Cove by Collum, a couple and their neighbor are standing outside a Church. It's obvious that this is the first time that the neighbor has ever been to Church.…
THE SUPREMACY OF JESUS In his letter to the Colossians, Paul declared that Jesus has been and has the unqualified supremacy. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. He…
BEHAVIOR OR RELATION The error at the root of all false ideas of perfection is this: it is rating our behavior "before" God higher than our relation "to" God -- putting conduct before faith, deeds…
SERVING GOD FOR NOTHING The fundamental question that Job faced and that we all face in the midst of adversity is, "Will man serve God for nothing?" By Randy Marshall
BEYOND THE BULLETIN A one-line prayer recently found in a church bulletin: "Do something for us that is not printed in the bulletin."
IDOLATROUS WORSHIP Idolatry is worshipping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that ought to be worshipped. From Leadership, Fall, 1983, pg. 31
FINDING PHILLIP When Phillip was eight, he, his brother, John and sister Lauren, and all their cousins were in St. Louis on vacation. While downtown visiting all the sites, they went to the St. Louis…
A CHINESE BAPTISM One memorable day of Grady and June Lackey's experience in China was a baptism service at Yangzhou Church on a snowy Sunday in November. It was the coldest day since they had…
THE BEST WITNESS Prayer and praise are the most explicit and clearest testimonies to the reality of God in a God-denying or God-indifferent world. Patrick D. Miller, quoted by Martin E. Marty in Context, December…
PRISON WORSHIP I used to spend two to three hours a week visiting a young man named Don in the Nevada Maximum Security State Prison in Carson City. I have visited numerous penal institutions as…
