Jemar Tisby on The Spirit of Justice
The Black church has deep experience of suffering and being denied God-given and legal rights. As turbulent times affect more people, Jemar Tisby’s book The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance describes how Black Christians have kept the faith.
June 3, 2025
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6 min read
Reuben Kigame on Music that Expresses the Full Gospel
Not many churches in Africa or elsewhere often include songs about social justice in worship. Kenyan scholar and musician Reuben Kigame believes that re-examining what the Bible says about justice and the good news should shift what we define as music appropriate for worship.
February 3, 2025
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8 min read
Demetrius K. Williams: African American Christians Enlarged the Meaning of the Cross
Through spirituals, freedom narratives, conversion accounts, and Black preaching, enslaved African Americans shared the embodied hope of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Like Paul, they proclaimed that the power of the cross of Christ should advance how the church participates in and quests for a more just and equitable world.
January 14, 2025
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8 min read
Demetrius K. Williams: Reclaiming the Full Power of the Cross
Probably every Christian knows that Paul preached about the power of the cross of Christ for personal salvation. But Christians often miss Paul’s discourse on the power of the cross of Christ to bring about social transformation. Reclaiming the full power of the cross should bring about unity and equality—in body, soul, mind, spirit, and voice—in the body of Christ and society.
January 2, 2025
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8 min read
Nuestra misión cristiana hoy: Relaciones cotidianas con la familia, el Estado y la creación
El segundo tiempo ordinario del Año Cristiano y el Calendario litúrgico (noviembre). La manera en que vivimos nuestras relaciones de cada día en la familia y con las instancias de poder, como el Estado, son otras formas de cumplir nuestra tarea misionera, de ser luz del mundo y sal de la tierra. No menos importante y sin duda más urgentes nuestra responsabilidad hacia la creación: la tarea ecológica.
November 26, 2024
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47 min read
Helen Rhee on Early Christianity’s Views on Wealth and Poverty
Many Christians think that how they acquire and use money is peripheral to the gospel. Relatively few preachers address wealth and poverty in their sermons. Yet early Christianity proclaimed and practiced the countercultural value of caring for the poor. Their worship services reflected this value.
November 7, 2024
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7 min read
After
Have you thought about what you are going to say to your congregation the day after? The Sunday after?
October 28, 2024
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9 min read
Helen Rhee on Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity
Accounts from ancient historians and early church fathers show that caring for and visiting the sick was an essential marker of what it means to be a Christian. Their example of addressing illness, pain, and health care for everyone, not just Christians, holds lessons for today’s worship planners.
October 25, 2024
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8 min read
Daniel I. Block on God’s Grace in Ezekiel
Although Ezekiel’s strange visions and often shocking images perplex readers, Old Testament scholar Daniel I. Block explains why the book of Ezekiel is worth reading. The judgment, grace, and love God spoke through Ezekiel to Israel also apply to the church today.
April 18, 2024
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7 min read
Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer on Worship and Power
Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Andrew Wymer, two Free Church scholars in worship and liturgical studies, break new ground in “Worship and Power”, a book edited with other scholars in this tradition, and celebrate what these insights offer for ecumenical conversation and learning around liturgical authority.
December 18, 2023
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24 min listen
Sarah Travis on Unsettling Worship
Sarah Travis explores how Christian worship, through its rhythm of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, both unsettles us and equips us to do the work of conciliation and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
December 18, 2023
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16 min listen
Ronnie Farmer Jr. on Positively Addressing Racial Difference
Some Christians think that even talking about racial differences is racist. But the church has a crucial opportunity to promote honest cross-cultural conversations that help people recognize the image of God in every person.
June 19, 2023
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6 min read
