In the sermon on Sunday, Pastor Lloyd mentioned that the High Point Church staff are reading a book together about the strangeness of Christianity. We would love for you to join us. The book is Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell Moore. We hope this book will equip and encourage anyone who reads it to engage our city with the Gospel.
Continue reading Recommended Reading: Onward by Russell Moore
A recent survey of new parents in Germany has suggested that the birth of a child is, on average, more traumatizing than divorce or even the death of a spouse. Nic asked me to write a bit about why this matters for us.
The survey was conducted as an attempt to shed light on the seeming discrepancy between couples’ stated desire to have two children and Germany’s persistently low birth rate that has rested at 1.5 for forty years. If the average couple says they want two children, why are so few doing so? Continue reading Self-Inflicted Trauma
Pastor Glenn Smith (of Metro Believers Church) is teaching a nine-week course on leadership. You are invited to participate at a reduced rate, and we highly encourage anyone from High Point to attend who is interested in growing not simply in the ability to lead, but in the ability to serve.
What: Madison School of Leadership
When: Thursdays from 7pm – 9pm, September 24th – November 19th (nine weeks)
Where: High Point Church (7702 Old Sauk Road)
Who: Taught by Glenn Smith, pastor of Metro Believers Church in Madison
Reduced rate for High Point Church members and attenders: $35 / spouse $17.50
(General cost: $50 / spouse $25)
This is the eighth and final of a series of posts expanding on my Pastoral Letter post based on my sermon from June 28th.
If we’re going to be virtuous giants, we have to get our emotions in line with what’s true. When that is true of us, we will lament over wickedness…all wickedness. Continue reading Pastoral Letter Extended 8: Proper lament
This is the seventh of a series of posts expanding on my Pastoral Letter post based on my sermon from June 28th.
The original address was partially in response to the US Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage from this June. This series is not intended to be alarmist, but aims at equipping High Point Church to be faithful and vibrant followers of Jesus in a very sensitive cultural moment, while also anticipating what it may look like for us to do the same throughout whatever may follow.
We are often impatient and disinterested in learning the deeper points of consistency and understanding within the Christian worldview, especially in “meddlesome areas” like sexuality, money, parenting, and marriage. We are naturally resistant to being told what to do, particularly in these areas, but God has told us clearly how to live regarding these things.
Your response might be, “I don’t need to know the theological definition of marriage in order to be a good spouse.”
But you do.
Even when we are not actively resistant, the word “theology,” particularly when used outside of a church building, sometimes initiates alternating waves of yawns and glazed-over eyes. It can conjure images of dusty academia and old men in robes who are detached from everyday Christian life.
The result is that we struggle to give any meaningful form to our beliefs. Continue reading Pastoral Letter Extended 7: Get your roots ready
This is the sixth of a series of posts expanding on my Pastoral Letter post based on my sermon from June 28th.
Following the US Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage this June, American Christians have been giving more attention to the idea of suffering as a consequence of being a Christian. This is certainly not a new subject in Christianity. Jesus himself assured us it would happen, it has been a consistent narrative in the life of the Church ever since, and our brothers and sisters outside of America today have been experiencing this suffering in a more blatant way than most Americans to date. For comments on how we need to attend to their voices on the subject, revisit my post from earlier in this series: Pastoral Letter Extended 2.
The purpose of this post is not to speculate about what sorts of changes American Christians ought to anticipate or what new pressure churches will experience. While I discuss some of that, the main attention here is instead on the more important question of how we will respond to whatever may come. If American Christians’ worst fears were to be realized, what then? Continue reading Pastoral Letter Extended 6: The sunset of our idols
Engage & Equip 