Category: Marketplace Christian
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A God like us
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) Here are a few things Chandler and I found on the road during our recent trip through the southwestern United States. Small towns are dying. We came upon town after town where more than half of the buildings were dilapidated and boarded up. It seems…
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Something about that name …
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes Given that I am setting out on a road trip this morning with Chandler to Colorado to look into some possibilities for his future, I was short on time to write the Catch this morning, but I found this…
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God’s HR Department
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) “I can say I have met the most amazing people on this planet when I have pushed the walls aside and just gotten to know people for who they are.” So writes one of our Catch members. He works in the Human Resources Department of…
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Christianity and
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) In his book Screwtape Letters where an underling demon learns how to trip up Christians so as to render them useless for the kingdom of God, Lewis introduces the sinister idea of “Christianity and” where one’s faith is bound up in something in addition to…
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Lessons in seeing people
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36 If we ever needed an example of what it means to stand in some else’s shoes and see what they see, hear…
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Testing positive for Grace Turned Outward
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) It’s about time. It’s been almost a year since we last published the Grace Turned Outward test. So how ya doin’? Here we go …
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The Word
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.) Who can you trust anymore? It’s a rather helpless feeling, isn’t it? News sources are all biased — even the “unbiased” ones. Used to be you could trust anyone in a lab coat, or anyone wearing a badge, or anyone in a pulpit, or anything…
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Monkey business
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8 Kudos to those who took my challenge to think a little more deeply about the song by Steve Earle, that I’ve been talking…
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What does ‘Christian’ mean?
For here we do not have an enduring city … Hebrews 13:14 Here’s where the Christian subculture went off the rails some time ago. Of course by the Christian subculture I’m speaking of that part of the global church that has gained cultural significance as a moral and political force in society — with an…
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Go
Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this:…
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Whose kingdom?
We are now at a critical juncture in our cultural history as Christians in America. We are discovering that the kingdom of God has nothing to do with the kingdoms of this world, be they governmental, social or religious. We’ve had 2,000 years of making these same mistakes over and over again, but then again,…
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The Advocate
Angela walked off the Greyhound bus in downtown Los Angeles near skid row with a paper sack of belongings and $200 minus her bus fare that got her there from prison. She was dusty and scared, with nowhere to go and no hope of changing the circumstances that put her in prison in the first…
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Come together
It’s a silly, nonsensical Beatles song (even George Harrison admitted that), but its most memorable line is the word for the church in 2021: “Come together, right now, over me,” if by that we mean: Come together over Jesus.