Last week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 5-4 decision that homosexuals should be afforded the right to marry one another and entitled to all of the legal protections and advantages of marriage. This is now the law of the land. For many states in our country, today looks very different for them. For others of us, like those of us in New York, this news simply repeated on a Federal level what was already established in our state (though the language of the law was more vague on the Federal level relative to religious…
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Introduction:The goal of this brief article is to gain some insight into the idea of church governance. Particularly, these thoughts reflect church governance related to independent, non-denominational churches. The governance structure of denominational churches is easily observed and often clearly documented in formal ways through the specific denomination. Independent, non-denominational church governance is not as easily observed and documented, so the purpose and explanations of this brief article will be aimed in that direction.As…
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Thought I would post for you an article that Dr. Dwight Smith and I wrote about the gospel. It's long, so I won't be mad at you if this is not something that fits your appetite. Here you go:
Toward a more Holistic Understanding of The Gospel
Jerry Gillis and Dwight Smith
The Purpose
Any attempt to fully articulate the idea of the “gospel” will undoubtedly be found wanting, and this brief document will be no different. Our posture is that the whole of Scripture must be considered in the construction of the idea of the gospel because…
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This week, I have been interviewed on multiple occasions about what my reaction is to the Same-Sex Marriage legislation that came before, and ultimately passed, the lawmakers in Albany. Many of you at The Chapel saw some of those (edited) interviews; many others did not. So, I thought I would outline for you some of my thoughts regarding this issue in an unedited format.
Let me start by noting a few items of importance. First, in no way is this small article a full, exhaustive treatment of the subject of the Same-Sex Marriage debate. Second,…
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Ok, so there’s a lot of commotion around the recent book from Rob Bell called “Love Wins.” Rightly so. Rob wanted to influence the dialogue surrounding questions of heaven, hell, and the fate of everyone who has ever lived. I have received a fair amount of questions asking about my thoughts regarding this, so I will offer a few. But, before I get to commenting about the book (which I have read in its entirety), allow me to note a few things.First, I really don’t have any question that Rob Bell loves Jesus. Nor do I have any…
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"You may say to yourselves, 'These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?' But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD our God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt." Deuteronomy 7:17-18
The Scripture repeatedly calls us to remember. Remember God. Remember what He has done. Remember His faithfulness. And it seems that the purpose of remembrance is not to dwell in the past, but to give strength and courage for the present and future. Keep in mind, remembering is not the same as looking back. Remembering is a "mind"…
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Well, to say that I am out of my league with this post would be an understatement. Trying to articulate the right idea of femininity is very difficultwhen only knowing the reality of masculinity (and though having a wife,we are still a majority"boy" house since I don't have any girls, and two boys,as children). But, since you are reading this blog, it appears that I am somewhat stupid enough to tackle the subject (speaking of "somewhat stupid" - is that possible? Isn't it akin to saying things like "I'mslightly drunk" or "I barely killed…
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Continuing our dialogue on what Biblical masculinity looks like, I think we need to recap a couple of things. Fundamentally, we learn what masculinity looks like through Jesus and all the gospel teaches us about Him. From that, and from our review of Philippians 2:5-11, we highlighted two aspects, or descriptors, of masculinity as seen in Jesus: humility and servanthood.
So, if we can agree that the characteristics of humility and servanthood are two large, general descriptions of masculinity as seen in Jesus, then it becomes easy enough to…
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The world we live in sure has ways of defining what it is to be a man. If we were to watch enough commercialsfor beer, we would discover that apparently real men drink a lot of beer, hide out in their sports memorobilia man-cave that is actually made of beer cans, and often have the intelligence quotient of the hops in the beer.
Other pictures of manhood might teach us that we are truly a man when we can beat someone up or physically dominate them. You know the type - they feel they have to have on a piece of "TapOut" gear at all times so…
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Ok, I am going to do something a bit different than I typically do on this blog (like I do a good job of keeping up with this blog anyway...).
Here is an overview of what I am going to do over the next few weeks, and why: I was reading in Proverbs 20 this morning and I found myself thinking about v.7:
"The righteous man walks in his integrity; how blessed are his children after him."
So, I began to think about what that means for me as a husband and a dad while I took some time to meditate on this verse. Sometimes, though, "meditating" ona…
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