The Slaughter of the Innocents in Matthew 2:14 is one of the most misunderstood stories in the New Testament. The few pastors who do preach on this passage spend most of their time trying to justify why Bethlehemite children had to be murdered to fulfill some obscure Old Testament prophesy. Yet, Matthew used these opening...
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In 2019 my wife and I worked with a team to start a new church in East Harlem. “I work on Wall Street. Will this church plant be a place where my non-believing finance co-workers feel welcome?” asked an attendee at one of our church plant vision nights. “Yes,” I responded. “We certainly want to...
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As a pastor in a local church, I deeply enjoy our weekly practice of walking through the Bible together section by section, book by book, and seeing how the timeless word of God comes alive to our people–that even though we are centuries removed from the original writing of the Scriptures and worlds away from...
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This article was edited and co-authored by Joe Palekas. In the rush and hurry of the Christmas season in a consumer-based culture, we are quick to pay lip-service to the appropriate Christmas hymns, enjoy them for their nostalgic feel, and then jump right back in to planning our next Christmas party or browsing for the...
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This article was edited and co-authored by Joe Palekas. Have you ever caught yourself singing along to a song on the radio that you know by heart, only to realize that you’ve never actually given serious thought to the words before? Worse yet, has this happened to you in church? Your eyes and heart glaze...
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One of the newest streaming services, Britbox, recently served up An Inspector Calls, the seminal work of English playwright, J.B. Priestley. Being fond of many BBC features, I decided to give it a whirl, expecting a plot with a similar feel to other British mysteries. However, I never expected “Agatha Christie meets the Twilight Zone,”...
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