Worship never existed as escape from the world, but preparation for life within it.
For many years, I held piety as my god.
The reasoning was always the same. The gods were angry. The gods were hungry. The gods required payment.

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The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
Surely a division now called the "Great Schism" should command our attention, but it is vital that we do not impute similar significance to all modern disagreements in the church.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics, edited by John Bombaro and Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing 2016).
To embrace our creatureliness is to affirm the truth that we were created to worship.
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
Strasbourg’s hymnals are especially relevant to American Lutherans because much of what we experience in our churches comes to us from Strasbourg.
Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Your God is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2023).
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.
Jesus continues to do the same for me and for you as he did for his disciples. He still shows up for us. He still speaks his peace to us.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.