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The stranglehold that mammon appears to have over humans and the ways in which it worms its way into the faith community are of such gravity that we detain ourselves another week on the subject.  John 2: 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.14 In the temple courts he found…

“Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” Jesus roared. There is no way our series on the state of the church address could have omitted this example, in John 2:16, of Pastoral concern for the state of the church. We spoke last week of the disorientated state of the…

When Prayer Becomes A Sideshow         In using John’s Gospel as part of the text for this State of The Church address we indicated that John wrote to the church at Ephesus. No doubt he would have seen certain disturbing signs and used his first-hand knowledge of the life and ministry of Jesus as the…

As we continue examining the state of the church by surveying some of the Biblical Pastoral concerns for the church let us spend some more time on the matter of irrelevance.  We have argued that the large stone water jars which had been on the outside in an unused state represented the state of the…

Our Biblical survey of Pastoral concerns for the church now transitions from the Old Testament to the New Testament.  The state of the church still occupies our prayerful reflections. The Gospel according to John lends itself readily to this objective because the evangelist wrote with a love and passion for the early post ascension faith…