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.

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The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
I don’t care why you left the ministry—moral failure, congregational politics, burnout, whatever—the Christ whom you proclaimed has not left you.
Every Christian is abundantly rich through baptism.
The Word of God wrecked the room. The wise and seasoned pastor along with the smart mouth vicar were all silenced in the fear and awe of a God who can seem so absent at times.
Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Richter scale, our friends over at Wikipedia define it as a 1930s invention that "is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude."
The time constrained authoring of the Augustana caused great angst, for the part of Melanchthon that was never satisfied with his own literary output.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
Brothers, the rich and diverse education you have received has more than adequately prepared you for the ministry of temptation to which you have been called.
But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?
If you want to find God, he’s hiding in plain sight. Christ is in the very things that we would never select as a vessel befitting divinity.
For many, there are days when they’re as excited about going to work on Sunday morning as you are about going to work on Monday morning.