Pentecost and the Beautiful Mess of the Church
By Ryan Couch
06/06/25
15mins

Pentecost and the Beautiful Mess of the Church

Every time someone is baptized, every time bread is broken and wine poured, every time a sinner hears, “Your sins are forgiven in Christ,” Pentecost happens again.
Hymns at Midnight
Bradley Gray
Bradley Gray
06/05/25

Hymns at Midnight

They were still praying, trusting, and hoping. Why? Because they knew who was with them and who was for them: the risen Christ.
What Now?
Wade Johnston
Wade Johnston
06/04/25

What Now?

So Christ is risen, but what now?

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/12/14

Adam's First Sunset: When All You’ve Known Sinks Away

For who of us, at some point in our lives, has not watched with horror and grief as our own “sun” vanishes? You stand around a rectangular depression in the ground to watch a box of wood that cradles your beloved slowly lowered into the dark earth.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/11/14

The Small Huge Gift: A Remembrance of Ken Korby

Though I had studied four prior years at that institution, the one course I had with him shaped my pastoral care more than any other. Ken Korby was this pastor’s name, and when I grew up, I wanted to be just like him.
Jessica Thompson
Jessica Thompson
03/11/14

Proclaim the Good News (to Children)

Why is it that we are so afraid to give the message of grace to our little ones? We bombard their ears with law on a constant basis.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/24/14

Smut and Smug: Secret Religious Delight in Society’s Moral Degradation

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/21/14

Look Who I Found in the Grave

God must kill me. He’s got to slay me, put me six feet under, and shovel dirt atop my corpse. Then, it’s like, “Hey, I finally understand! You’re God and I’m not.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/19/14

Tripping Helen Keller

Why, given all the things we wish God had told us, but didn’t, does he “waste our time” by stating the patently obvious? Was there, in Moses’ day, an outbreak of violence against the disabled?
Rod Rosenbladt
Rod Rosenbladt
02/10/14

Gift? An Imaginary Dialogue on the Gift of Grace

Sinner: I see. I see for the first time. It’s clear to me. You died for me and for my sin. You took my verdict. God: I did.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/27/14

A Tale of Two Sodoms: The Difficulty of Escaping from Our Past

It shows the extent to which an environment of iniquity can seep into the souls of believers, transforming them from the inside out, so that even when they “flee to the mountains,” like Lot and his girls, they take Sodom with them.
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.
1517 is a Christian non-profit (501(c)3) multi-media organization. Our mission is to declare and defend the Good News that we are forgiven and free on account of the death and resurrection of Jesus alone.
1517.org
Search
Academy
Donate

1517 grants permission for our free online resources to be printed, photocopied, and otherwise used freely for private and church use. We require that authorship and source (1517.org) are referenced and maintained. These resources may not be sold or included in any publications for sale.