There are a handful of hymns I associate with Thanksgiving, and they remind us of what may be our most crucial habit and privilege: being grateful. We are summoned by God, and by one another to “Come, ye thankful people, come.” If we weren’t in a thankful mood when we... In these emails about church, I’ve said more than once that the early church was born and thrived during a long season where everyone loathed their government, when most of the population was intimidated and crushed economically. There’s some beautiful secret in that... I’ve always admired and found surprising comfort in Thomas Merton’s striking assertion about Gethsemani, the abbey in rural Kentucky where he lived the last 27 years (to the day) of his life – calling it “the real capital of this country. This place is the cause and... I’m unsure whether to shiver or to laugh when I recall Anthony Trollope’s witty sarcasm in his novel Barchester Towers: “There is no greater hardship inflicted on mankind than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preacher has the power of compelling an... You back out of your driveway to go to church, and wave to your Lutheran neighbor getting into his car to go to his church. Or at lunch after worship you see a finely dressed family at the table next to you, and you nod. You’re strangers, but not. There’s a bond, a... The single most unusual thing about the early Church wasn’t their belief in Jesus – as startling and even scandalous as that was for even the most religious people of the day. What blew outsiders’ minds was the way Christians took care of the poor – and not just... Last week, we spoke of one of the four key pillars of the Church: fellowship, or love and care for our church family, mutual support. The Greek word koinonia, meaning sharing everything in common, captures our dream and joyful reality. We share life together. We share... A couple of weeks before I began work as pastor of a medium-sized church in the suburbs of Charlotte, the lay leader called me to say “We’ve organized a bunch of meetings in people’s homes during your first month. You can meet everybody, and we’ve asked everyone to be... What does the Church do? We worship, we learn, we reach out – and we care for one another. Most churches excel at this. It’s harder, the larger the church – but I hear from our people that we do well at showering our people with love when we know they’re treading... As Church people are always learning, we’re wise to think of Church as a school. We have classes, curricula, seminars, and group studies. Jesus called “disciples,” a word that means students, and with some discipline (did you detect “disciple” in “discipline”?) about... 