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

The church is a home for the family of God. It’s not a mall, a café, a coffee shop, or Amazon. It’s where we usually don’t get what we want, but what we need.
All other wonderful teachings of Holy Scripture from creation to Christ’s coming again are absolutely worthless without being understood in light of Jesus, death, and resurrection for sinners.
Where once we confessed reliance only in ourselves and our own power, now we confess reliance on Christ alone. So, for our relationship before God, our confession of faith matters.
The question at hand was quite short, “Who is Jesus Christ?
At times, evangelical Christianity can be a paradox. For as much as Protestants have spurned Roman Catholicism, they’re much more Catholic than they’d ever like to admit.
Advent accents preaching, making known that it is the Lord who comes to bring salvation, to proclaim this in all the earth.
There is a difference between preaching about Christ and preaching Christ.
Many Christians are worried—perhaps legitimately—that the state is a short step away from turning the Law of God into hate speech and silencing the legal preaching of God’s Word.
The miracle of Pentecost is not obvious; it is the miracle of faith created through the preaching of the word of the cross.
In an age when families are already fractured beyond comprehension, are we seriously going to separate parents from children in the one service in which God himself is present to unite us to himself and one another?
Preaching is a dangerous and difficult task. Some occupations might involve more harrowing situations and circumstances but I will continue to contend that there’s not a more perilous or vulnerable position to be in than behind the pulpit.
Heaven is as near as the Word proclaimed from the mouth of the preacher into the ear and heart of the sinner. It is as near as the bread and wine in your mouth. For, you see, Word and sacrament are where Jesus is.