Deus Misereatur

 I jokingly say that most modern American Christians think church history began with their grandmother. It's sad, but too often true. Luke H. Davis, a teacher of ethics and church history at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis, is doing his part to rectify this in his "Risen Hope" series written for teenagers. The newest of newest installments is a 176-page paperback that addresses different streams of the Church's changes and movements after the Reformation, in "Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward".  This is a handy, easy-to-digest volume that walks readers through the years between 1600 and 1900, with fourteen attention-catching sketches. The value of the work shows up in the short retellings of the lives of various people. For example, did you know there was an Eastern Orthodox patriarch who had strong Calvinist leanings? Did you know that Harry Hosier was the first Black man to preach to a congregation in America and the first Black pastor of...

  Here I am, 62 years old (but still 16 inside, mind you), and I find myself thinking about retirement regularly. I've already retired once, after a 20 year career in the U.S. Air Force. But then I was 38, still flexible, with loads of years looming ahead of me (all things considered). And so, my attention was caught by Kenneth Boa, author, speaker, and president of Reflections Ministries, Omnibus Media Ministries, and Trinity House Publishers, and Jenny Abel, editor and writer. They teamed up to put together a new 256-page paperback, "Recalibrate Your Life: Navigating Transitions with Purpose and Hope". And it was that title the caught my attention. It's not a book about retirement, but life transitions. Those times of change and transition in life, and our response to them, all of which have a dramatic impact on the course of our journey and how we progress through life (3). This is a volume meant for anyone at any transitional moment in life. Score 1 for the author...

  Two major trends seem to be emaciating much of Christianity in the West: (1) dwindling knowledge of the Bible, and (2) a deficiency of the history of the church. To recover in both areas would build mass and muscle. Luke H. Davis, a teacher of ethics and church history at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis, is doing his part to remediate the lack regarding church history in his "Risen Hope" series written for teenagers. The newest installment is a 176-page paperback that addresses the Protestant movement in the 16th Century, "Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism".  This is quite a handy, easy-to-digest volume that walks readers through a very complicated historical season with twelve attention-catching sketches. But there's more here than just chronicled events. Davis takes the time to develop the role and significance of the five solas to the reformation churches. He shows what these meant, and still mean, and why they were and are import...

  You once declared to Moses: “ See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand ” (Deuteronomy 32:39); and Paul proclaimed: “ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy ” (Romans 9:16). And so we respond: “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices; Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way, With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today” (TH # 98 v.1). For those in every nation – including our own country as well as Palau, Palestinian Territories, Panama, and Papua New Guinea – we call upon you to govern their deliberations, machinations, maneuverings, decisions in such ways as will enhance peace and bring about goodness and rightness. For your Church in every place, together with this congregation, and Living Church of God on Main, Philadelphia Churc...