Christianity need not retreat from investigation. Its central claim is that the Word became flesh, entered history, was crucified, and on the third day rose from the dead. That is not an embarrassment to be overcome. It is the claim we have been given to declare and defend.
In the end, your story isn’t an epic of personal glory. You aren’t the hero. Your Savior Jesus is.
Whether a Christian enjoys high church, low church, or something in between, aesthetics in the Church are not about any one individual person and their particular tastes. Aesthetics are, fundamentally, not a matter of legalism, but of edification—that the Gospel of Christ might be preached and taught to all peoples, unhindered by its medium.

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The whole point of Church is to be in a place that hands over the gifts and promises of Jesus Christ to dirty rotten sinners who are in desperate need of them.
Faith isn’t something that needs to be done. It’s something to be enjoyed because faith is a gift bestowed by God’s word through the hearing of the Gospel.
In Christ, we live beneath an open heaven having the definitive proof in the cross of Christ that God is outrageously for us, not against us.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021), 122-125. Now available for preorder.
Those called out for their sins, who find themselves knee deep in their transgressions, always need grace.
The result of this day’s proceedings, in Luther’s mind, was likely to be a painful death at the stake.
Forde’s work testifies to the liveliness and vitality of confessional Lutheranism, and its promise for the continuing need to preach Christ crucified in this, and every, age until the Lord’s return.
I can look at all of my failings and foolishness because I know who Christ is for me. I rest in his wisdom and life not my own.
Each day gives us occasion to die to our sinful identities of all kinds and to live out a life in Christ’s footsteps as children of God.
Golgotha is the point where not only Mary and John’s family life assumed a new character, but it is the point of orientation for all human community that uses the cross to straighten out the lives of individuals turned in upon themselves.
The cross does not remain on a hill far away. It pursues us into the valleys, the ravines, the crevices in which we get trapped as we wander in search of a fixed point for our lives.
This is an excerpt from Vocation: The Setting for Human Flourishing written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2021). Now available for preorder.