by Adam Adams
…ositive change in the last 40 years are better addressed at a neighbor and com munity level. One key com ponent for making all of this work is for the church to define some terms. Inviting neighbors to our buildings and our programs should only com e after actively engaging our neighbors in real life. When we confuse an invitation with engagement, we won’t see the results we desire. So, why does Gary Johnson get my vote? First, I believe he has far m…
The Common Core: Good or Bad?
by Ed Starkenburg
…com mon core is part of the warp and woof of everyday life. On one hand our com pany had shirts made up proudly exclaiming that our curriculum is “uncommon” and at least once a week I find myself helping a (formerly) public school parent to transition into the ir new roll as home school parent using our curricula who sites this very issue as the ir reason for defection. On the other hand, I have yet to find anyone–whether in our organization or outsi…
iAt Book Club: The Benedict Option
by Gustavo Maya
…e of loss that carries a whiff of privilege threatened rather than witness com promised. When Dreher, for exam ple, laments the “loss of a world,” several people notice that world tends to be white. And what seems to be lost is a certain default power and privilege. When Dreher imagines “vibrant Christianity,” it is on the other side of the globe. He doesn’t see the explosion of African churches in the heart of New York City or the remarkable growth…
In the era of mean tweetsâŚand much, much worse
by Abby Foreman
…le, and prone, in our brokenness, to divide and separate and to break down com munity. Our com munal response should be one in which we hold each other accountable for our words in a grace-filled way. We should use words to build up rather than break down. In the next few days, my colleagues will offer insights into how to build com munity in our homes and on an individual level. Clearly, the uncivil are not always “other people” but is very often ou…
by Tanner Smith
…f a person. The person we receive in Jesus Christ, and the person we are becoming because our life is hid in him. (Colossians 3:3) We become people who are formed not by the land we live in, but by the person we follow, and the adopted family to which we belong, the Church. We become a people who find ourselves on the move from death to life, from old to new, from darkness to light. People who aren’t just looking for a new home, but who are lookin…
by Derek Schuurman
…eem bizarre, but David Levy predicts the se relationships will eventually become com monplace and that human-robot marriages will be legal by 2050. It is argued that robot com panions are helpful for those who would otherwise be lonely, but opponents of sex robots suggest such developments are potentially harmful. The online “Campaign Against Sex Robots” argues that sex robots are harmful because the y perpetuate the objectification of women. In her b…
Is Technology Bringing Us Together or Pushing Us Farther Apart?
by Liz Moss
…making-us.html Dave Mulder Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains includes some data on this, but I believe the re is some controversy about several of the studies he cites. Here’s the Amazon link: http://www .amazon.com/The -Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750 Liz Moss This is a great question, Scott. We are actually working on another article to answer you r question. We’ll let you know when we publish i…
by Jeff Taylor
…If interested, you can read more in the last section of the paper: http://www .frontporchrepublic.com /2016/11/trump-in-context/ But I can certainly understand why many Republicans do not think that Trump is a conservative. It depends on how you define the word. To give a counter-exam ple: Looking at his pedigree and record, I would not call George W. Bush a conservative. Pragmatism, Wall Street domination, and neoconservative globalism are not in t…
Taking the Gift out of Christmas
by Neal DeRoo
…ind actions, and instead engaging actively in forgiveness, social justice, com passion, encouragement, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, faith, hope and love. But we can never do all the se things, so we live our lives constantly aware of our own failure. We have been given a great gift, we think, but have not received it with gratitude. As a result, every day we fall further and further behind, creating a deeper and dee…
by Neal DeRoo
…f God gets lost amid the stereotypes and assumptions. And things get said. Things that do not honor God, or God’s image, or anyone or anything. Things that cause a great deal of pain and separation and brokenness. Things like those Yik-Yak com ments. And in those com ments, and the things that get said (or don’t get said) in response to the m, Christian com munities seem to perpetuate the pain, separation, and brokenness of sin, rather than offer ing a…
Imagine a World Where Faith Was More than Political Eye Candy
by Scott Culpepper
…not “engage” his culture as “a Christian.” He is represented to us with a funny kind of ‘I’ that asserts itself confidently to offer itself humbly. Luther’s famous definition of Christian free dom com es to mind: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”…
Getting Image Sizes Right
by
…tion in the Media Manager. Learn More Official WordPress.org documentation on Editing images in the Media Library Simpler instructions, with more screen images. (This is for the wordpress.com service, which is a little different and simplified) Detailed exam ples of how to crop and scale photos in WP. (Slightly dated but still accurate.)…
by Derek Schuurman
…hence minds, could be entirely simulated in a com puter. Ray Kurzweil, an accomplished com puter scientist and author of several books including The Age of Spiritual Machines, suggests that within the present century we will be able to download our brains into a com puter and thus escape our mortality. All that remains to achieve this is for neuroscientists to map the brain and for sufficiently powerful com puters to be developed. At that point, it is…
Weapons of Math Destruction
by Derek Schuurman
…sponsibilities beyond the immediate technical concerns of the ir work.” Our com puter science and engineering schools need to attend to ethics and values if we hope to build a just society. I would add that Christian engineers must see the ir technical work as a response to God, one in which even our mathematical models, com puter programs, and architecture need to enhance justice and show mercy as we walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). This artic…
by Joel Van Dyke
…unclean, Gentile and Jew. The Samaritan, unshackled from such allegiance, free ly com es to Jesus, understanding him as both a source of physical healing and a giver of social restoration. The verbs Jesus uses in this story reveal the progression. The ten were all initially “cleansed” (tharizo- “to be made clean or healed of a disease”). But the Samaritan, upon returning to Jesus, was “made well,” (sozo- “to be healed of spiritual disease and death…
by In All Things
…ter@dordt.edu, or write to us at: Dordt University, Attention: And reas Center, 700 7th St NE, Sioux Center, Iowa 51250-1606. Please provide a concise com munication with com plete information, including you r contact information….
A Psalm for the Night Shift
by Leah Zuidema
…he Levites might have been up to. Some of the m, I suppose, were on call to com fort those in distress. Like today’s pastors, the se Levites would have been ready for a knock at the door at any hour, prepared to pray with people who were overcome by worry, fear, shock, or grief. But I suspect that more often, the evening work of the Levites was more like the ordinary and routine night work in our churches. Picture the m: servants of the Lord after hou…
Seeing the Faces of Opioid Addiction
by Erin Olson
…rates of opioid addiction and overdose, no group of people is immune. Some com munities have been affected in greater numbers, but almost all com munities have been impacted in some way. What drove Matt to start using? Why did a kid who seemed to have so much going for him end up dead from an overdose? In work with people who are abusing or addicted to various types of substances, professionals are often asked to consider what the addicted person mi…
Giving up Excess for AdventâHope
by April Fiet
…. We would cram drawers full and force the m shut, hide blankets and school papers and notebooks in cupboards and close the door on the chaos. When the time came for us to leave the home where we’d raised our kids for eight years, we owned way too many things. We packed it all up and moved it to our new home in Nebraska, a home with about one-quarter the square footage and almost exactly zero storage space. We downsized a lot, got rid of furniture…
From Our Basement to God’s World
by Ginger Culpepper
…f the presidential libraries as possible. Our kids’ first written research papers centered around this goal, as well. The y each chose a president at random and we spent a month learning how to research about that president, his early life and his political life and his goals and his accomplishments and his legacy. The y the n organized that information and wrote simple term papers . We now call those “president reports,” as it became an annual projec…
Compass Plant Leaves and Apparent Randomness
by Jeff Ploegstra
…random. So much in this leaf seems unpredictable; and yet, I know it is a compass plant leaf (Silphium laciniatum). Even given the variability of the se leaves, the y are always recognizable, identifiable, knowable. Somehow this leaf assumed a meaningful form that is incredibly well suited to its environment on the Great Plains. What appears sheer chaos at one level, becomes predictable and recognizable form at another. This sermon has two lessons….
Rhetoric in the Worship and Witness of the Church: A Review of Seasoned Speech
by Scott Culpepper
…ularly her Gilead trilogy, serve to illustrate eunoia as dwelling place or com munity. Robinson fashions a rhetorical world in which her readers are able to join a com munity of souls wrestling with brokenness and blessing. Beitler links this tension between the brokenness and blessing of Christian com munities with the celebration of Eastertide. In his final chapter, Beitler calls on the collective witness of his chosen exam ples to assert that Bakht…
Responding to Church Violence
by Rebecca De Smith
…here are several reliable websites dealing with this issue, too. Insurance com panies can also offer advice. In thinking about church safety, consider some of the most vulnerable members in you r congregation—you r children. Does you r church provide safe spaces for the m to worship, learn, and be cared for? If not, what could be done to provide this protection? Offer ing safety protocols about who can pick up children, securing certain doors, and ensur…
by Howard Schaap
…Bring some of the fish you have just caught,” Jesus instructs. The n, the se com forting words: “Com e and have breakfast.” We cannot live on bread alone, or fish. But we cannot live without the m either. We’re called to drop our nets, our poles, and follow Him, but we’re also affirmed in the stuff of the world, in the fish and bread and burning coals to cook the m on, and a meal already prepared after a long, dark night. “Bring some of the fish you hav…
by Nicole Baart
…urely send it back arguing that the plot is ridiculous: too convoluted and com pletely implausible. Hard pass . We’re reeling, all of us, because this is our reality. And the image that keeps com ing back to me is of a moment in my life a few weeks ago. I had just com pleted the substantive edits on my new novel, and was carrying the 400+ loose pages of the manuscript to my desk. I tripped over the dog. Trying to clutch the bundle of papers closer onl…
