Sublime

Bonhoeffer might have argued that a true theological conception of persons that creates a community of persons allows for a resonance that is encountered as the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He retired the belief that it was the pastor’s duty, particularly in the sermon, to prod the people into obedience. “Henry realized [that] the point was not to outline ‘correct’ doctrine but to motivate the audience psychologically.”18

there is another layer to this decline that affects pastors more directly. Perhaps these numbers are low because in the end many people aren’t sure what pastors are good for, other than guilting people to come to church and drop a twenty in the offering plate.3

Thus the Eucharist, like the meals held by Jesus with ‘sinners and publicans’, must also be celebrated with the unrighteous, those who have no rights and the godless from the ‘highways and hedges’ of society, in all their profanity, and should no longer be limited, as a religious sacrifice, to the inner circle of the devout, to those who are member

it is important to recognize that there was no place to go where people’s attention and practices were not focused on God. There was no holiday from the grind of prayer, confession, and absolution (except a few church-sanctioned carnivals). And everything was everyone’s business, because everyone was playing the same song. You had no right to priva

It is not an overstatement to credit Beecher, together with the nineteenth century itself, with finally accomplishing what the Western spirit of reform had sought for hundreds of years: to eliminate ecclesial hierarchy. But, unfortunately or not, to do so it had to end the dream that the whole of society could be pious priests. It relinquished the

Calvin Stowe helped free Henry from seeing ordinary life as a constant battle to keep each of its molecules sacred. Rather, Henry began to see that it was possible, even obedient and faithful, to seek happiness, for Jesus was a friend who accepts us.

Jesus justifies by giving us his person; he ministers to us by dying with us, so that having his person we might share in his resurrection. Justification gives us the gift of Jesus’s faith, that indeed the “although” is the “because.” So although we were dead in sin, we are alive because God is the minister who gives new life through the union of h

The pastor is not the one who saves people from any or all of the impingements. Rather, the pastor is the one who reminds the community that though God seems absent, nevertheless the God who is a minister arrives right here in the middle of such events of impingement, when things seem so hard.