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.

All Articles

Summer is almost over! School has started, vacation is done and it’s time to get back to the grind. Do you feel well rested? I suppose that depends on what I mean by rest right?
God's doing for us that gets done is Word and Sacrament stuff. Everything else flows from His speaking to us, baptizing us, bodying and bloodying us. Jesus sees our need.
We focus on what we have, what we don't have, and how and when God is going to give us what we need. This the opposite of faith.
One thing that makes John different than the other three Gospels is the absence of the Lord’s Supper.
Standing before Jesus is one of the cultural groups that the Lord sought fit to eradicate for their wickedness to preserve the line that would eventually birth Jesus.
An orphan girl lives a monotonous life filled with loneliness serving as a slave to her stepmother and stepsisters.
We sinners share a common problem when it comes to Jesus’ parables. We read them with an eye to our own righteousness.
The Christian Church is one of the last refuges in modern American society where people who have perpetrated or suffered trauma and violence can gather together to receive the truth about themselves.
The love of God in Jesus is our confidence when the world seems to teeter on the brink of self-destruction.
Not afraid, Jesus decided to take a different mode of transportation across the rough waters—his feet.
We get the exact opposite of what we deserve.
The conversation between four year-old Jackson and his mom in the car after dropping off his siblings at school was all-too-typical.