The Last Great Gnesio: Remembering Oliver K. Olson
By 1517 Staff
08/08/25
11mins

The Last Great Gnesio: Remembering Oliver K. Olson

Oliver was a friend, chaplain, professor, author, and loyal church reformer. This Gnesio-Lutheran giant will be missed.
Gen-X, The Church Needs Your Scars
Donavon Riley
Donavon Riley
08/07/25

Gen-X, The Church Needs Your Scars

We don’t need another brand. We need a people who remember who they are. And that’s us, Gen-X.
The Parable That Preaches the Cross
Bradley Gray
Bradley Gray
08/06/25

The Parable That Preaches the Cross

Just as each servant was sent to bring back the Master’s fruit, so did God send his prophets to bring back the fruits of a life shaped by the Word.

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/21/14

Clothing for the Naked Eye: Seeing Things as They Really Are

A cemetery is a hard place to confess because the cemetery itself seems to confess, “You, O mortal, have lost.”
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/02/14

I've Spent the Better Part of My Life Trying to Kill a Man

If I had hated him even while a child, in his late teens I grew to loathe him as the very antithesis of the man I wanted to be.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/31/13

Unlearning Evil: Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

“Let’s face it,” my mom once told me, while delivering a lecture on making the right moral decisions in high school, “sinning is fun.”
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/19/13

"I Would Have Surrendered My Bethlehem Hotel Room to Mary and Joseph" and Other Self-Serving Fantasies

But when I let my mind go there, in truth all I’m doing is this: bellying up to the bar of sentimentality to drink my fill of falsehoods that leave me intoxicated with feelings of saintly superiority.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/10/13

Drinking with the Dead: Country Music and the Communion of Saints

The details vary, of course, but we too struggle to repair the heart broken by the tragic death of someone we love. We're dazed, angry, speechless.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/09/13

The Uncivilized Baptist: Why John Beckons Us to the Wilderness

Why does John make you uncomfortable? You know. It’s not just the clothing; it’s not only the hair; it’s not even really the diet. John the Baptist is uncivilized—that’s the problem.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/26/13

God Doesn't Celebrate Thanksgiving: A Turkey Day Reflection

Eat, yes, but season your turkey with the ashes of repentance as it preaches just how little your faith is, just how little you trust God, just how little you believe the Father is good to you.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/22/13

Norman Rockwell's Nightmare: The Screwed Up Biblical Family

There is no whitewashing of evil within the biblical family. The sheer fact that it is recorded, that of all the events in these people’s lives, these were chosen to be chiseled into the stone of the church’s remembrance, tells us something.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
10/30/13

Burying the Hatchet: Why Forgiving Others Is So Hard Yet So Liberating

I believe, however, that lurking behind every reason we don't forgive is one fundamental impulse: the desire, real or perceived, to control the offender.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
10/22/13

Waking up with Leah: Learning to Love a Disappointing Church

Like the patriarch, Jacob, who after his wedding night, awoke to the wrong wife in his bed, I too one day opened my eyes to find that the Rachel with whom I had fallen in love, for whom I'd labored long years, was not the one beside me as the sun rose.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
10/16/13

The Three Friends Who Sought to Kill Death: A Cautionary Tale for Preachers

What is most remarkable about this tale is not how clever it is, but that the original storyteller was just as greedy as the three fictional young men were.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
10/08/13

Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Sermons of Creation

But this dying world is still the world of our living God, who graces us with tokens of a final renewal. As leaf subsides to leaf, and frost to snow, and snow to ice, there comes a day when the gold of nature sprouts anew.
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