What if the Restoration Movement actually set us up for the next leg for "church" in America? I am going to give you three reasons why I believe the underlying foundation of Churches of Christ can set us up to thrive in the coming years but it won't be easy (it wasn't easy for Jesus or the early church either).

I want to make you all aware of some changes coming to Wineskins. Over the last few months I have been praying for God's direction and it has become abundantly clear that it is time for me to transition out of my role running Wineskins. It is a long story and it is all very positive!

The initial impulse for a Restoration Movement that resulted in churches of Christ came out of a world of religious division. If the problem was division and the goal was unity, the approach was to achieving that unity was to shed tradition and get back to the basics of the Bible. The idea was that if we all go back to the way things were in the New Testament church then we would find unity.

Much ink has been spilt over the subject of hermeneutics. Most often, however, these discussions focus upon the method of interpretation. In this article I will focus upon the necessarily prior thing: the interpreter. Specifically, I intend to show that the spiritual formation and virtue (or lack thereof) of the interpreter is more determinative than any particular interpretive method.

When I first started in the world of ministry many years ago, one of the pieces of advice I received most often was to communicate, communicate, communicate. And then, if I felt like I had done a good job of communicating, I should do it some more. In other words, it would be impossible for me to over-communicate.

I’ve heard it. You’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it. People don’t want to be part of an Evangelical church. They are bothered by what they see online, and embarrassed at the behavior of some Evangelical leaders. They’ve had enough. They want out. In response to this, people occasionally ask me a simple question: Are we an Evangelical church? Though I hate to get into semantics, I usually respond with a discussion of word meanings: I guess it depends what you mean by Evangelical.

“My name is Alyssa, and I’m a PhD candidate completing a dissertation about representations of religious fanaticism in nineteenth-century British Gothic literature. When this is how you introduce yourself, you get used to a lot of responses. Typically, people mention books they think I’d like, make a joke about grammar, or tell me about their college English courses. But at churches, there has sometimes been a different response: that of distaste.

What do you do when church attendance shrinks, consolidation follows, and the meeting house and parsonage is left empty? A small Arkansas church moved their location from a remote part of their farming community to a main highway and used the empty parsonage and the old church building to house women seeking freedom from addictions.

The Choice I come now to this tenuous junctureWhere I must choose to believe.My breast-fed faithIs weakeningMy presumed and presumptuous tenetsAre eroding like river-run flagstone,Sloughing off like micaIn smoky-transparent sheetsI see no end to this hurting.I feel no confirmation of this hopeI have clutched for these long years;Nor do I require any giftings As brideprice for the unionOf my faith to You.

Many years ago I read this during my quiet time and it led me on a journey. Here it is: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12, NIV)

Last year at this time we were preaching from Acts called “Walking in the Way.” I covered the man at the Beautiful Gate (3.1-10) and then moved through the pericope on Solomon's Portico (3.11-26). This is followed by the arrest of Peter and John in chapter 4. It is a story that merits reflection.