A Review of
By Amy Mantravadi
07/21/25
12mins

A Review of "The Church: A Guide to the People of God" by Brad East

“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
What Christ Gave Up for Us
John Bombaro
John Bombaro
07/18/25

What Christ Gave Up for Us

The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.
The Pulpit is No Place for Political Endorsements
Scott Keith
Scott Keith
07/16/25

The Pulpit is No Place for Political Endorsements

The IRS says churches can endorse candidates from the pulpit. But just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/04/14

“There Goes My Life”: A Father's Day Reflection

One day I walked about that place I had tried to make home. I realized it was a prison cell of my own devising.
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.
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
10/25/13

Dying to Pray

The reason is much simpler than that: to learn to pray, you must first die. The language of prayer is taught in the school of death.
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