Coop's Column - Simply Fellow Strugglers
My years as chaplain among college students have convinced me that many young people suffer from what I call the "immortality virus": "Death-accidents, illness, and weakness, too-can, and sometimes do, happen to others. But it won't -read: cannot- happen to me." Or so they foolishly imagine.
Coop's Column - God Everlasting!
Learning what it means to be human involves learning to locate one’s place in the grander scheme of things—to figure out where one “fits.”
Coop's Column - There I Have Pledged to Set My Foot, Too
"Being alive is very difficult. Human beings are very complicated. I know. I've spent my whole life being one, and I still can't totally figure it out." So commented one elderly gentleman as he looked back over the seemingly haphazard trajectory of his life's course of events.
Enter the Drama of God's Story
Entering the biblical narrative requires looking at the story you actually live by and pondering why God gave the Bible as a sprawling story.
Speaking and Acting the Bible
A session from Symposium 2010 with Jeff Barker and Tom Boogart.
Going Deeper as Members of One Body
Meeting the 'invisible' people who help put food on their tables helped Westminster Presbyterian middle schoolers see how Scripture, life, and worship connect.
Singing the Psalms Against a Backdrop of Persecution: A View from Pakistan
Find out how the psalms bring hope to suffering Christians in Pakistan and how the psalms can challenge theologians, poets, and musicians around the world to strengthen faith, ministry, and worship.
In Other Words: A Conversation on Preaching
Sermons usually say in other words what Scripture says, and do in other words what Scripture does --assure, warn, encourage, inform, inspire--. But they say and do Scripture in a great many ways and they can sound very different from each other depending on the acoustics of time, place, and audience.
Matthew's Sermon on the Mount
This study of Matthew 5-7 investigated the main teachings of the whole sermon and their relation to us, the Church, and the world.
The Sermon and the Short Story
Preachers are always searching for illustrations, and if you know where to look, short stories are an excellent resource.
Preaching the Great Stories of Genesis
An absentee father with a son of blistering hate; a frightened man pimping his wife; a penniless mother left to die; a husband beaten down by his wily woman. The stories from Genesis read like last night's news.
Worship: A Spring of Life and Shalom
Worship helps us answer fundamental questions of human existence regarding our identity, calling, main purpose in life, and how to be empowered for service to God?