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Trusting the Lord in the darkest valleys
Fall/Winter 2025-26
The Psalms teach us how to speak to God. Psalm 23 teaches us how to declare our trust in the Lord our Shepherd. We turn to this psalm at gravesides for good reason. It is more than just flowery language about God’s provision. It is quite honest that we all face evil, that we all have enemies, and that we all have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Psalm 23 bears witness that God shepherds us in the best and the worst moments in our lives.
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Book Review: Circles in the Stream
Spring/Summer 2025
Paul Koptak served for many years as a professor of homiletics and Old Testament at North Park Theological Seminary, and he brings his passion for the scriptures and good preaching together in his excellent book, “Circles in the Stream.” Koptak coaches his readers to follow the pattern of literary critic Kenneth Burke. First, serious Bible readers should start by indexing the text, circling and connecting similar words and writing themes in the margins. Second, they should look for points of identification, finding ways to communicate the story with the felt needs of a congregation or class. Third, they should find points of intertext: similar stories from the scriptures that shed light on the text.
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Hometown hero
Spring/Summer 2025
Today is the second Sunday of Epiphany. It’s the time of the church year when we’re encouraged to think of Jesus in a new light. The lightbulb flickers on above our heads and we realize, for the first time or the umpteenth time, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the World.
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Redeeming suffering
Spring/Summer 2024
The Olympic Games are being held this year in Paris. The ancient Olympic games happened every four years, just as they do today. The first Olympic sports were running, jumping, discus, wrestling, boxing, martial arts, and horse racing. There are 329 medal events these days, including skateboarding, rock climbing, breakdancing, and surfing in Tahiti almost 10,000 miles from France. Do you think the ancient Greeks would be mesmerized by the Paris Olympic games? What would they make of breakdancing?
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Kierkegaard’s debt to Pietism
Fall/Winter 2023-2024
Can we call Søren Kierkegaard a Pietist? Labels don’t stick easily to a solitary individual like Kierkegaard. Even though his methods and goals were nothing like Spener’s or Francke’s, this essay makes a case that there are some strong similarities between Kierkegaard’s writings and the Pietist awakening that transformed Protestant Europe.
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Created in the image of God
Spring/Summer 2023
It is always an honor to preach the Gospel. Today’s scripture is a strange passage to speak on for any preacher. Yet, a wise, old preacher named Glen Wiberg coached me to preach out of the lectionary especially when it feels uncomfortable. Glen taught that the Holy Spirit moves in wonderful ways when we submit to the Word of God, rather than trying to make the Bible fit what we want to say.
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A liturgy of humility
Spring/Summer 2023
I taught a church Bible study on human sexuality back in 2018. It felt safer to talk about important issues inside the church six years ago. We started each class with a liturgy of humility, with all of us—conservatives, liberals, and moderates—saying together in unison, “I might be wrong! I might be wrong! I might be wrong!” At our best, Covenanters have tried to find a way to disagree without being disagreeable. Philipp Jakob Spener’s “pious desire” to approach religious disputes with humility and love has seemed to become more difficult to realize as church people have stopped talking with each other face-to-face.
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Wrapping our minds around the gospel
Fall/Winter 2022
I first visited Bethlehem Covenant Church in November of 1990. My friend David Palmquist brought me home with a few other stray North Park College freshmen for Thanksgiving break. We slept in the parsonage basement. Pastor Kent and Bonnie Palmquist generously included us in a family meal of barbecued turkey at the Bevis household. It was a fun trip!
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Serving in love in times of crisis
Spring/Summer 2020
Jesus confronts our fear, our controlling behavior, and our desire to avoid suffering. In our text, a couple of Jesus’s disciples are struggling with power issues, namely James and John. They attempt to control Jesus: “We want you to do for us whatever we ask…. Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
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Cascades Camp and Conference Center: A Century of Covenant Camps in the Pacific Northwest
Fall/Winter 2018
This is a wonderful book for anyone who ever went to church camp. It is a particular treat for people with fond memories of Lake Sammamish, the Beach, Circle C, Driftwood Point, and, of course, Cascades. You might just find some old camp friends in the many colorful photos.
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The Pietist Option
Fall/Winter 2017
The Pietist Option by Christopher Gehrz and Mark Pattie III has much in common with Philipp Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria. Both books are slim, readable, and packed with practical advice on church revitalization.
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Reflections on “Pietism and Postmodernity”
Spring/Summer 2011
A report on Roger E. Olson's Aus Memorial Lecture at Luther Theological Seminary.
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Housing the Sacred by Glen Wiberg
Summer 2009
Like any good sermon, Housing the Sacred is not overlong. It’s just 97 pages. The preacher says what he needs to say and then sits down. And those of us who appreciate good preaching want to stand up and cheer! Here is a book on preaching that avoids the academic temptation to dissect the sermon like some unfortunate frog. If preaching is a craft, Glen Wiberg successfully mentors his apprentices with a simple illustration and six sermons that are concrete examples of his own artistry in the pulpit.
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Digging Deeper
Summer 2003
We often get caught up in familiar things and deeper meanings escape us. We can’t see the forest for the trees. The truth is not a secret. Everyone can know the truth if they desire it, but sometimes we miss the big picture because of the close-up right in front of us.
