Sublime

“If you will go after the lost, I will build the church.”

If Edwards was pushing his people up the hill of holiness, making priests of them all, Beecher layman-ized the priesthood, making the pastor just like one of the people.

Act 1 God’s Plan for All People

If we have suffered the loss of all things in order to gain Christ—no egos to protect or scores to settle—we are free to receive his power, courage, and love.

What makes the pastoral (or better, the ministerial) remain significant, even up against these transitions, is its ability to host an encounter with personhood. It appears, both in lived experience and the tradition, that divine action comes in and through personhood.

A Guide Is Empathetic and Authoritative

Here is the insight embedded in these verses. The only answer to one culture is another culture—not just a concept, but a counterculture. A church should offer the world such a counterculture, a living embodiment of the gospel. The culture we live in is “a pillar and buttress” for many false gospels. For instance, one of the destructive lies that i

“God comes to us disguised as our life,”