To tithe or not to tithe? That is the question…or at least a good question. And how we answer leads to other questions: Gross or net? What if in debt? Should we give 10% of everything, including Christmas presents, birthday gifts, and tax refunds? Do we have to give...
Geoff Ashley
Waking Up with Wisdom
I lived with my grandparents one summer while working construction shift work. Every third week, I would pull graveyard from 11pm-7am. I’d return to their house around 7:30, grab a quick shower and then jump into bed, exhausted from a night of manual labor in the...
Making Sense of Melchizedek
What’s the deal with Melchizedek? A seemingly small Old Testament character with a profound legacy. Though he appears in only 3 books of the Bible (Genesis, Psalms, and Hebrews), his influence is incredible. The narrative of Melchizedek occurs in Genesis 14:17-20....
The Deception of Projection
“Accuse your enemy of what you are doing...” This quote (often attributed to Karl Marx, Joseph Goebbels, or Saul Alinsky) describes a common strategy of propaganda referred to as projection. First labeled by Freud, projection in psychological studies is when someone...
Women in Ministry at Reformation Church
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27) There is a fundamental difference between man and woman; not a difference of dignity, but of role and responsibility. Contrary to cultural...
On Public Rebuke
In the Old Testament, Israel was to be guided by the lex talionis (Latin for “the law of retaliation”). In modern usage, we might know this as the principle of an eye for an eye. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,...
The Sin of Pity
We love to smooth the “rough edges” of biblical revelation. To take what is beautiful in its complexity and to mass produce reductionistic, monolithic, and bite-sized maxims and cliches. We like to avoid theological tension, by watering down the word to some lowest...
Should a Christian be Buried or Cremated?
As I write this, I’m trying to learn to live with the heartache of my dad’s death last week. The past few days have been a blur: planning a funeral, writing an obituary, writing a funeral message to preach, looking through pictures (thousands given that my dad was a...
What’s the Gossip?
We love being in the know. To hear the latest rumor, to take a sip of gossip, to delight in the scuttlebutt, to drink deeply of the local buzz. Like a favorite snack, such whispered words fill us with pleasure (Proverbs 18:8). Gossip adorns the magazines that line the...