Presence Weekly 9/16/2024, "The Paradox of Our Identity" Because we are elect exiles, we can live in our current cultural moment and every other moment as people who are valued, loved, and forgiven.
Presence Weekly 9/09/2024, "Maintaining Unity through Diversity" For Christians serving and leading in the public square, embracing the diversity of Christ’s body, and seeking to maintain the unity of the church will undoubtedly offer foretastes of the coming kingdom to all who witness this gospel-centered love.
Featured Presence Weekly 9/02/2024, "Character and Unity" By displaying character in our service and leadership of the local church and in our vocations (both are acts of worship), we promote the truth that equality of opportunity, flourishing, and justice are the full implications of the gospel.
Featured Presence Weekly 8/26/2024 - Maintaining Unity Through Service When we fracture and fight amongst ourselves, that disunity plays out in the public square. How can we expect unity in the public square when the church’s primary offering is factions and infighting?
Featured Presence Weekly 8/19/2024 - The Search for Significance But the gospel sets us free from that lie. Through the gospel, we can move from dependence on ourselves to dependence upon God. While our efforts and work are essential, they are only truly meaningful and worshipful as we are dependent on God. Psalm 127 calls us to see that reality.
Presence Weekly 8/12/2024 - Offering Forgiveness In the public square, offering forgiveness, even when it has not been asked for, relieves us from the burden of plotting our revenge or the demise of the one who hurt us.
Presence Weekly 8/05/2024 - Receiving Forgiveness The public square has a way of convincing us that the public is the only audience that matters, and the only forgiveness needed is from the public. But that is rarely the case.
Featured Presence Weekly 7/29/2024: The Process of Forgiveness (Part 1) When confronted with the reality of our transgression, some of us minimize, because we have a big view of ourselves and a low view of others. We do so by saying, “It’s not that big of a deal.”
Featured Presence Weekly 7/22/2024 - “Honoring the President” For Christians of either party, the one response of which we should be most cautious of is sinful and dishonoring rhetoric.
Featured Presence Weekly 7/15/2024 Much depends on our disposition. Lately, it seems like we are an angry nation. We are angry about certain policies. We are angry about the people who support certain policies. We are angry that people do not agree with us.
Featured Presence Weekly 7/08/2024 Whatever the case, when conflict exists, our joy is diminished—and not only our joy but also the joy of those around us. We were created by God to live in community, and yet, because of the fall, community life brings conflict.
Featured Presence Weekly 7/01/2024 While participating in Christ's mission of making all things new applies to all Christians, those working in Washington and the greater public square are uniquely positioned by God to seek the welfare of their neighbor.
Featured Presence Weekly 6/24/2024 The costs of pursuing the measures of success in the public square are high and often come with long-term interest payments. But there is another option - purchasing what you need from Christ.
Presence Weekly 6/17/2024 That is Christ’s assessment of the church. Imagine if this was the kind of information Communications Directors offered - accurate assessments of their employer.
Presence Weekly 6/10/2024 Increasingly, The United States no longer holds Christian ideals as foundational or even beneficial. Christianity is no longer in a place of cultural ‘power.’ That can make many of us feel weak, and therefore insecure.
Featured Presence Weekly 6/03/2024 Today, we live in an age where we look to science and politicians to answer and remove so much of our uncertainty because removing uncertainty increases our feeling of security.
Featured Presence Weekly 5/28/2024 Slavery, in other words, is a clear and present danger for many in Washington and the wider public square.
Featured Presence Weekly 5/20/2024 In some ways, Mark’s story of Jesus, like that of Kipling’s Dravot, ends with the death of the man who would be king. But, the humiliation of their death is the only thing the two stories have in common.
Featured Presence Weekly 5/13/2024 We need to realize that even our best prophets are broken. The scary thing is that, despite the multiplicity of prophets speaking into our lives, many of us are serving as someone else’s prophets right now. What are your words communicating to them?
Featured Presence Weekly 5/06/2024 Our emotional response, relational demeanor, and perhaps even vocational motivation may come from treatment at work as we see someone who was just hired offered more money than we are receiving despite our greater tenure.
Featured Presence Weekly 4/29/2024 As Christians, serving and leading in Washington, our renewed ethics create a recalibrating dissonance between what is seen as progress and what leads to true flourishing.
Featured Presence Weekly 4/22/2024 We are in search of comfort and, even as Christians, constantly forgetting where to find it. Further, our pursuit of comfort is often based on the things that we can control or acquire. Both present problems.
Presence Weekly 4/15/2024 God calls us to do exactly what the people had to do upon returning from the exile, to take a moment, stand on the vista, and then walk among the ruins and see what needed restoration. We cannot walk around our lives or our city with our eyes closed to the devastation and what is lacking.
Presence Weekly 4/08/2024 Misreading this verse as a word to individuals sets us up for asking, “What about when MY life is a disaster?”
Presence Weekly 4/01/2024 To rephrase Milton Friedman, "The social responsibility of a Christian is to seek the welfare of the city."