April, 2026

Dear Friends,

What you and I believe about God has immense impact upon how we live and die. But is there a revealed formula (theology) for how we should understand God? What attributes should we ascribe to God? Is there a theology of God found in ideas like omniscience, omnipresence, or perhaps omnipotence? These words, which appear in the front of almost every theology of God I encountered for decades, are clearly not found in the Bible itself. Yet these word massively color our thoughts about God.

In my tradition we said we believed only what was revealed in the Bible. In fact, we used words like “Bible believing Christian” to define ourselves over against other Christians. But is this enough? The Bible clearly has much to say about who God is: God is holy (Isaiah 6:3); God is light (1 John 1:5); and, God is love (1 John 4:8). Hundreds of biblical texts could be added to these few. I remember hearing people say things like: “If the Bible says it, I believe it and that settles it.” Well, it doesn’t take a degree in theology […]

January 15, 2026

I have mentioned on a number of occasions how I have adjusted my worship life to sync with the liturgical church calendar. This has been a process for me over twenty-five years. I find this approach deeply satisfying. I will give one example here; the liturgy for January 11 had the title: The Baptism of Our Lord. The Gospel reading and preaching text was Matthew 3:13-17.

The prayer before the sermon went as follows:

O God our Father, at the baptism of Jesus you proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit. Make all who are baptized into Christ faithful to their calling to be your daughters and sons, and empower us all with your Spirit, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

I do not recall praying anything like this in worship in my free-church evangelical background. (There have been friends in this background who have embraced a more liturgical approach.) But hearing the Gospel read, and then praying this particular prayer, brought me into the […]