You probably know the song: “Jesus loves me this I know….” “…for the Bible tells me so.” Those lines aren’t just sentimental, they are a great theological statement. In the world of theology, there are two identifying statements for Christian denominations. They are called the “Material Principle” and the “Formal Principle”. The “Material Principle” is…
A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace
Posts from 2022 (Page 3)
“Of” is a pretty small word for all of its uses. I’m reminded of when I learned that “Of David” above many of the Psalms (e.g. Psalm 4, 23, 31) can mean different things. Some of the “of David” psalms mean that they are written by him, others mean that they are written according to…
If you’ve ever played the Parker Brothers game “Monopoly,” you’ve landed on a space called “Community Chest”. This space has its roots in the history of Atlantic City, NJ, which is the “base city” for the game’s many property names. The “Community Chest” in the early days of Atlantic City was a philanthropic organization which…
I call “A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace” our “identity statement” at University Lutheran. In organizational parlance, there are mission statements galore, but this isn’t really a “mission statement” because rather than telling us “what we do” it tells us who we are. Because of our baptisms, the biggest part of our…
You can explore the PowerPoint Slides from our overview study of the Book of Concord, the Lutheran Confessions. The Book of Concord is the definitive guide to what it means to be a Lutheran. Assembled together in 1580, after Martin Luther’s death, these documents formed what defined Lutheran theology – including initial statements of faith…
If you’ve ever noticed the tag line that comes along with our branding at University Lutheran, you will know that it says “A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace.” The first part of that is the indefinite article “a”. Back in June I wrote about the power of the definite article, but there…
Tomorrow marks my 15th year of ordained service to the Church. Wikipedia tells me that fifteen is a “superabundant number,” but the article linked there confuses me. It also tells me it is a “triangular number” because you make make a triangle with 15 parts. It tells me that in Hebrew you write 15 as…
“The music seemed to come from all around us,” said one of the participants at the recent “Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival”. The music festival held underwater at Looe Key Reef featured special underwater speakers that blasted some “underwater hits” like “Yellow Submarine” from the Beatles and “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid soundtrack.…
During our road trip down from seeing my parents, one of my girls started asking questions about baptism as we were talking about baptism. It went something like this: Kid: “Hey daddy, do we need to baptize Dixie?” (the family dog). Jay: “God only tells us to baptize humans, so we only baptize humans.” (Matthew…
This Saturday at 11am at Epiphany Lutheran Church ( 8300 Deer Lake S, Tallahassee, FL 32312 ) there’s going to be something great happening, Seminarian Tim Barber will be ordained and installed at Epiphany Lutheran. This is a BIG deal. It’s a big deal for Tim, it’s a big deal for Epiphany, it’s a big…