This blog is Pastor Jay's weekly musings about God's Word, God's world, and God's call to our culture. We hope they encourage, challenge, and inform you. Sign up to recieve them in your email.
A few years ago, the publishing world was hot with a very specific topic: trips to heaven. It became so common that it basically spawned its own genre that some called Heaven Tourism. The problems with this genre however were not too difficult to spot because there was information that could easily be known about this topic from the Scripture, while other details contradic...
Keep ReadingKnowing God's will is an ever-present issue in Christian living, and rightly so. We are called to follow Christ, to submit to his will, and to obey. These commands make it necessary to know what God wants us to do. This much is clear. But after that clarity, the chaos begins. There is no end to the wild ways people have pursued knowing God's will. People have done everythi...
Keep ReadingWays to know that membership is becoming more than it is supposed to be. ...
Keep ReadingThis is a guest post from Caleb Morell who blogs at 9marks.org. It is brought in because we have been discussing this matter and this article is particularly helpful for a historical perspective. These days, it's common for people to get baptized at 10 or younger. This is true across many credo-baptist traditions, but perhaps especially so among Baptists. How does our c...
Keep ReadingDid this blog get hacked? What's happening here? Is pastor Jay finally losing it? Just last week there was a post about why Pastor Jay did not watch the show The Chosen, and now a post about watching it? Do we need an intervention? What's happening here is a good opportunity to address something that will be a regular occurrence. God's people must always be ready to dea...
Keep ReadingIt seems that Christendom is starting to be delivered from the cheesy movies that seemed ubiquitous a few decades ago. The production quality and acting are getting to a level that can at least be stomached. This is a good and blessed thing. While excellence and faithfulness are not a necessary pairing, there should be a desire for excellence, and a pursuit for it should...
Keep ReadingOur church has been thinking a lot about baptism, the Lord's supper, church membership and how all of them tie together. One of the areas where this raises big questions is concerning children. Should children be baptized and brought into membership and the Lord's supper? As always, we turn to God's word for our answer. Were children baptized in the New Testament? There ...
Keep ReadingThe elders are considering a change in our constitution. A change in the constitution requires a vote from the congregation, so we wanted to explain what this change is. Namely, the consideration is to remove the age requirement of 18 years old to be a member. This may seem to be a somewhat minor change, but this touches several areas that converge together in a signific...
Keep ReadingNo matter how hard people try, they can't escape the fear of death. They can surround themselves with a stack of evolutionary textbooks, a hoard of hardened atheists, and a phone full of comedy routines about aging, but death still haunts them. My understanding is that the original zombie movies were a representation of the slow and creeping inevitability of death. Sure,...
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