My friend and colleague Nathan Prairie has served as the pastor of the Beecher campus of Faith Church for the past 8 years. When he announced in February that he would be transitioning out of his role as pastor in mid-March, he did not plan or foresee that it would be in the middle of a...
As the country seeks to contain the coronavirus, we are living in a time like we have never encountered before. However, this is not the first time Christians have faced a significant health crisis. In fact, one of the hallmarks of “our family history” of Christians has been the way...
While there were differences between churches in various towns and regions from the earliest days of the church, the Middle Ages saw the development of two distinct traditions or trajectories in terms of the church in the West and in the East, with the West reflecting Roman Catholicism (from...
The blog posts over the past couple of months have journeyed through the first few centuries of our family heritage as Christians. For the month of March, we now move into what is often labeled the “Middle Ages” or “Medieval Period” (essentially 500-1500). I feel like...
Have you ever been a bit confused about the Christian belief that there is one God and this one God exists in three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)? Or about the fact that Christians believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human? If you have ever wrestled with those ideas, you are not...
One individual who had a significant impact on the church was not a pastor or theologian but rather a Roman emperor by the name of Constantine. The fact that he impacted the church has not been disputed; however, the nature of his contribution is hotly debated as I have heard people describe his...
One of the things I love about studying church history -- our family heritage -- is realizing that some of the challenges and problems we face today existed many years ago. This is comforting, since we have a tendency to think that we are the only ones who have had to deal with these challenges...
