Throughout Jesus’ parables,  He refers to “The Kingdom of Heaven” and “Kingdom of God”.  Here are the ones I came across in my search, perhaps not complete but as you can see there are a lot of parables about The Kingdom. The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat  Matthew...

Over on the Jesus Creed blog, Scott McKnight asks the question, “Is 1st Corinthians 15 a sketch of the full gospel or only part of it?”  Here is the heart of the passage under consideration,  1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you...

Since moving into our new home at Baptist Theological Seminary, I have been blessed to meet a number of young pastors who are either in seminary or who have recently graduated and are looking for opportunities to do urban community based ministry.  One of these impressive young pastors is...

photo © 2006 Jose Mesa | more info (via: Wylio) “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” – ML King, Jr. In just one week, my post titled “Will Gandhi Burn” became one of my top five most popular posts of all time.  It...

Over the past few weeks, I have read a large number of posts related to how we define the Gospel and how we communicate it in a way that leads people to faith in Christ.  Scott McKnight’s post Viral Gospel takes the conversation a bit deeper.  He attempts to define two consensus points...

Over the years I have met many people who have said to me “I gave up on serving the poor” for a variety of reasons; they became too busy, they got burned, they did not feel like they were making a difference or did not feel like they were appreciated.  However, Claudio Oliver...

Steve Holt, in his post appearing on Jim Wallis blog “God Politics” titled “God is Big Enough to take our Doubt and Anger” writes “What if, little by little, we started to believe that God is big enough to take our doubt and anger? What if we changed our culture...

I have made a few minor changes to this post because as a friend of mine pointed out, I committed an error of omission, by saying “I don’t know” and not explaining further.  Apparently my original post gave the impression that I did not believe anything profound happened on...

Why don’t Christians all get along?  Why are there so many divisions in the Body of Christ? I grew up outside the church and always marveled that my “Christian” friends seemed to belong to different tribes.  Each tribe had their own customs and ways of believing and each told me that...

Do you believe that you can take a radically diverse group of people and in all that diversity find unity while still respecting differences? When I wrote the vision of Embrace Richmond in 2005, I never dreamed it would be so difficult to live out.  Our vision is “a city united to...

Albert Mohler writing about the life of Cecil Sherman?  I was too curious not to check it out.  As a graduate of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, a seminary formed out of the Cooperative Baptist split from the Southern Baptist Convention which Cecil Sherman was an instrumental part...

This past week we concluded a three week training session at a local church.  This particular church is very active in urban missions.  They provide shelter through CARITAS, participate in feeding programs, the members sit on a number of non-profit boards, they assist with housing rehab for...