Recently in Jesus Creed Category

This summer we were at Aldersgate UMC in Alexandria Virginia and we were deeply honored to hear a musical rendition of the Jesus Creed. Andreas Barrett, who wrote the song and music, now has the piece available for free streaming and I hope you stop by to listen to it.

Who wants to tell a story about the hardest (next-door) neighbor they've had to learn how to love? The practical reality is that it is much easier to want to love your neighbor than to love your neighbor in deed.

The major turns in the Church calendar can discourage even the most creative of pastors and leaders and lay folks -- how many times can you talk about Advent or Lent and not return to the same (ol') themes? Well, there's a reason we return to the same (ol') themes -- because they are important.  Still, many of us appreciate new angles on old themes, and so I'd like to suggest one of my own books for those still searching for a Lenten tool: 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed . 40 days of Lent, and a brief lesson a day about loving God and loving others -- a season that evokes Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness.

Recently I got a letter from a former student, now pastor, who explained that their church was going through this book week-by-week and was finding a renewed commitment to God, to one another, and to the local community. I won't publish the letter but I will encourage you to think of using this year's Lenten season to focus again on loving God and loving others, and perhaps to do so (as we will in our Lenten series) by repenting from our lack of love and asking God to awaken love in all of us.

Saturday afternoon, about 3pm, Kris and I were sitting in the front row at North Point Church in Atlanta. I was mulling over what I was about to say when I realized that Bill Willits, a leader at North Point, was calling to the stage three friends of ours: Norton Herbst, Steven Redden, and Jason Malec. Three excellent, gifted, young leaders -- and they have come together in a decision to plant a church in Denver. Bill barely managed to keep himself together ... and we too ... and yet it was a good moment. The kind of moment that many of you know -- the commissioning of those you love to leave and strike up a new work somewhere else.

We were at North Point for another reason.

The name for this blog came from a book I wrote called Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. That book has one central theme: that Jesus understood the moral life as one made of two loves -- loving God and loving others. We believe that this vision of Jesus is not just for the specific behaviors but for all of life -- including how we treat others on a blog. With the Jesus Creed as our theme we aim in this blog for civil conversation about all topics. (I should add that our Jesus Creed project also has a beautifully-produced DVD and a 40 Day Guide.)

Here is a copy of the The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others Jesus Creed in a Taiwan bookstore standing proudly next to Tom Wright's book. We were sent this picture by Dawn Husnick, whose story (the emergency room act...

Paraclete has now completed, with professional expertise, our DVD presentation of the Jesus Creed project: Jesus Creed -- DVD. I hope you consider it for Sunday School classes, adult Bible study groups, and a way to get a conversation started....

This week we got a nicely wrapped package from Paraclete, and inside the package was two copies of Jesus Creed ... in Chinese. Here's a picture and then a calculation: Now the calculation. If there are 70 million Christians in...

Paraclete has just released my new book, 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed in the format of a daily email. Beginning on Sunday, June 15th (Father's Day) and continuing for forty days, you can receive all of 40 Days Living...

We come to the end of our series. We are flying today to South Africa where I will be preaching a series of sermons on the themes of Pentecost. (Our home will be looked after by TK and our daughter,...

The last five chps of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed are dedicated to specific examples of the Jesus Creed in action in the pages of the New Testament. Today we look at how Paul spoke about Phoebe in Romans...

We might not realize it today, but the most intense challenge the first followers of Jesus met was including Gentiles into the people of God, the ecclesia. No, even more challenging was loving those Gentiles. Peter points the way. We...

The apostle Paul was a Jesus Creeder, and so in chp 27 of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, I look at the Jesus Creed in the hands of the apostle Peter when he ventured to establish churches in Asia...

This is our last week in our Preparing for Pentecost series. We are looking at themes/chps in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed and this week we'll look at people and authors in the NT who expanded the Jesus Creed...

I have to admit; I love what Paraclete did with this....

The best blog post I have ever read was by Dawn Husnick. I link to it here because the 25th chp of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed tells her story all over again. Please read the story. If this...

As we look forward to Pentecost, to the Day when God's Spirit filled that little bundle of followers of Jesus with the Spirit and gave them the "power to", we are led to see that at the core of that...

Paul didn't quote the Jesus Creed just once; I believe that he not only recited it along with Shema daily but also taught it as a foundational principle for Christian living. So, in chp 23 of 40 Days Living the...

I sometimes am told that the Jesus Creed is simple, or soft-headed and mushy, or light. I know whereof such persons speak because I once thought that way. But, the more I study the New Testament and the more I...

We are looking forward to Pentecost in this series, and to do that we are blogging through 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed as a form of preparation. Today I want to suggest four principles of a person who practices...

What is at the center of our life? For many, as I suggest in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, it is work. Abe Lincoln said this: "My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never...

Spiritual disciplines are a waste of time if they are not living out or toward the first element of the Jesus Creed: loving God. So, in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, I suggest the spiritual disciplines are actually the...

Only a genuine baptism of the Spirit, the Pentecostal Spirit, empowers us to be what the Sermon on the Mount calls us to be. In 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed I state that loving your enemies -- an important...

"Whoever does these commandments [of Jesus'] and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:19). The word "great" is here redefined by Jesus and it is defined by the Jesus Creed. Here is a Jesus...

If the Jesus Creed of loving God and loving others expresses the heart of Jesus' ethic and God's design for Eikons, then the Sermon on the Mount somehow expresses what loving God and loving others is all about. This is...

I don't think many think of this, so let me make it clear right away: if love of God and love others is the foundation and final expression of what we are designed to be, if Pentecost empowers us to...

The Pentecost community is one that loves God and loves others -- and it loves the self properly and it loves the real people of God -- and this love of God that loves the self and others reaches out...

There is a mood today at work in the church -- the mood of open season on the church. Fundamentalists are attacking what they think are signs of drifting away from the stalwarts of the faith; liberals are attacking the...

The apostle Paul, so it seems to me, believed in the Jesus Creed and in the significance of self-love (40 Days Living the Jesus Creed, 60-64). In fact, Paul thought marriage flourished when self-love was the standard for loving others...

No matter how altrustic we may not want to sound, no matter how much we might want to avoid sounding like a pop-psychologist, and no matter how much we might think it is selfish, Jesus in two very important statements...

"God's mercy lurks in the shadows of your life." This is from p. 44 in 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. One of the most revealing words in the Bible is the word "mercy." We sometimes translate it "compassion." Jesus...

Where do you find God? In chp 8 of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed I look at where Abraham found God and where we can find God anew this day. How odd for Abraham to have encountered the very...

If preparing for Pentecost means being prepared to become the people of God, then it is good for us to remind ourselves of what kind of God we have. It is this God who acted for us on Pentecost, and...

What are we here for? As we continue our journey toward Pentecost to discover the Spirit empowering God's people to live as God's people should, this question can help shape our preparation. We using our 40 Days Living the Jesus...

"At the center of the Jesus Creed is the Shema, and at the center of the Shema is the God of love, and at the center of the God of love is the word 'one." (From 40 Days Living the...

The first half of the Jesus Creed is to love God with everything we are and we've got. The second half is to love others [probably also with with everything we are and we've got]. "Loving others is a great...

When God's mighty Spirit comes upon us we will be awakened in our love for God. In many ways, then, the ancient Shema of Israel, found in Deut 6:4-5, points us toward Pentecost. The summons God gave Israel was to...

We now enter into Easter season as we prepare for Pentecost. To prepare us for Pentecost, I want to devote a spot on this blog each day on weekdays to 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. I've not blogged through...

I'm happy to announce that 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed is now being shipped, and I've heard from some of you that your copies have already arrived. Here's my plea: this is not a textbook, not a history book,...

Kris and I were in Fort Myers and Naples FL this weekend. We flew down early Friday and spent the day and next morning with our good friends, Jim and Bonnie Panther. The last time we visited them Jim and...

We're interested in how you are doing on your Lenten disciplines, but most especially we are hoping to hear some examples of how saying the Jesus Creed is helping in your ordinary life. What it does for me is to...

Paraclete was kind enough to give away 100 advance copies of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. They can't give away any more but they are now making available a 10 day offer of buying 40 Days at $9.99 plus...

Try this for a downloadable copy of the Jesus Creed itself. (HT Peggy Brown) Paraclete Press is willing to give away 100 advance copies of 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. [This order is now over but you are welcome...

I am asking my blog's readers to consider a challenge for Lent. No, it is not giving up anything. Instead, it helps move Lent into 40 days of living out the gospel: I am asking you to begin and end...

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor...

Some have created a "fake D.A. Carson site," which I won't link to here. A few comments: Yes, this can be funny stuff. Yes, Carson's big enough to handle it. Yes, we all need a little humor and satire can...

Kris and I were invited to King of Glory Lutheran Church, sitting next to Hwy 635 in North Dallas and not far from Valley View Mall, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Saturday night was a public event on the Jesus...

The following is a chapter from our forthcoming 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed. It is as yet unedited; we have forty chapters that explore dimensions of the Jesus Creed in the Gospels and the early Christian leaders. The Divine...

Kris and I will be at King of Glory Lutheran Church in Dallas, TX, this Saturday (7:30pm). I will be talking about the Jesus Creed in this public event and will also be bringing in some new material from my...

I don't know about you, but I wasn't all that receptive yesterday to the idea that Michael Vick has now "found Jesus." The first words out of my mouth when I saw that someone had said this on my blog...

Scot, Not sure if you are much of a movie goer, but a friend and I just went to see the movie Breach and there is a section in the movie where the main characters are in a catholic bookstore....

Thanks to the kind invitation of Jerry Rushford at Pepperdine University (yes, that's a good picture of what it really looks like), I gave two lectures Tuesday -- one to local pastors about my spiritual autobiography and one to the...

Recently I received the following letter from a pastor; let's all look this situation over, ponder it and pray over it, and think about what to do. Those of you who feel prompted, tell us what you think the pastor...

Speaking at a college chapel, regardless of where it is, carries one of my biggest challenges. I’m not sure why, but one thing comes to mind immediately: by and large, students are there because they have to be. It's not...

The following letter and my response are posted here with permission. Please sit down because this is real stuff -- stuff out of a heart spiritually abused. I know from other letters that she is not alone, and we pray...

We were not only shocked by the graphic horror of those small kids in that schoolroom being murdered in cold blood, but at the same time dumbfounded by the simplicity of the Amish children and community in their unified response....

Paul argues that to love your neighbor as yourself, from Leviticus 19:18, is (1) our only debt to one another and (2) is the fulfillment of the law because it sums up the whole law. It was this text in...

From now until July 28th, order one copy of The Jesus Creed and you can get two additional copies for just $1.00 each! Use coupon code PRJesus and place your order on-line or call 1-800-451-5006 and ask to speak with...

I'm off early this morning for a Jesus Creed morning with the Covenant Church in Harbert, Michigan. The good folks there are going through the book during Lent, and so it is nice to be invited to put some "flesh"...

I'll be in San Diego next Tuesday through Thursday, speaking at the National Pastor's Convention. Hope to see some of you. We are in a two-day emerging church event called Critical Concerns (Tony Jones, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, John Burke,...

If those who are summoned to the table of transformation by Jesus are to love God, they are also to love others, and this has significant implications for the issues that swirl around homosexuality and the Church. It works in...

I'm not saying Benedict XVI has read Jesus Creed, but his first encyclical is a very nice and clear presentation of a theological and biblical understanding of love and he gets it going with Jesus' modification of the Shema. (HT:...

All of the Torah and all of the Prophets, Jesus says, are summed up in this simple golden rule: "do to others what you want them to do to you." Allison says no one called this the "golden rule" before...

A test I give to my Jesus of Nazareth students at the beginning and end of the semester, which I may have put on this blog before, derives from the North England Institute for Christian Education. This test asks questions...

Way back in November, I shut down a series on the Sermon on the Mount to get ready for Advent and Christmas. Today I want to resume that series. Today we look at Matthew 5:43-48. Most know this passage as...

Zondervan has asked me to offer you this invitation: Dear friend: In just a few weeks I’ll be part of the 2006 National Pastors Convention in San Diego on February 22-25, 2006. I thought you might be interested in what...

For Pastors and churches that used the Jesus Creed for a Bible study or more in your church. (This announcement is not for individuals who used this, but for churches.) If you would like to be in the "Pastor's Circle"...

From Carl Sandburg: Henry C. Deming, Congressman from Connecticut, reported that when Lincoln was asked why, with his obvious interest in religious matters and his familiarity with the Bible, he did not join a church, Lincoln replied: When any church...

The Lord's Prayer is an amendment of the Jewish prayer called the Qaddish. We stated in a previous post that the amendment was just like the amendment Jesus made to the Shema, where a balance between loving God and loving...

If the Lord's Prayer is the sort of thing we pray for if we love God and love others, then it would be good to look at some specifics.In the first half of the Lord's Prayer we learn the following...

One of the more interesting features of the Lord's Prayer is that it is both like a Jewish prayer, called the Qaddish, and at the same time unlike that same prayer.The Qaddish reads like this:Magnified and sanctified be his great...

... is much more demanding and difficult than you might expect.In this the last in a series of blogs on Legalism, beginning here, I suggested we follow the lights of Tom Holmen's book, Jesus and Jewish Covenant Thinking, and think...

The following test is designed to work with my book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. I am a bit of an assessment nut, so the test actually measures the degree to which readers begin to conform to what...

Alan Jacobs, in his brilliantly written and wide-ranging book, A Theology of Reading, makes a simple point that has sent my mind reeling and my heart into confession and prayer. Here it is: genuine interpretation of another's writing is an...