This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
Authentic proclamation, then, is the love of Christ for our souls, which we have seen and experienced through the under-shepherd’s pastoral care put into the words of Christ Himself.
The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
The sermon takes place in the context of a multi-facetted set of relationships experienced through the weeks and months of being together in congregation and community. Those relationships shape the credibility of the preacher in the pulpit. 
The word which justifies by bringing faith in baptism is the same powerful word that recreates, regenerates, and re-births a human being in baptism.
Toy Story is indeed a Christmas story.
Despite our best efforts to avoid him, King Jesus remains very much unavoidable.
Rejoice with Mary as she would rejoice with you. Be blessed, like her, with humility from God, so that you may serve joyfully and willingly wherever and in whatever role God has placed you.
When and how did the church start this season of anticipation?
All our sin and shame is answered for in the death and resurrection of our Lord.