Membership in the Christian Church of the first four centuries was not come by lightly. As an underground organization, the church had to scrutinize carefully every prospective member, and a prolonged period of probation was a requirement. This period would normally terminate with reception into the Church by baptism at Easter. The final period preceding baptism, Lent, was naturally the most rigorous. Candidates were required to fast in preparation, and to attend catechetical lectures and periodic examinations or “scrutinies.”    –Edward Horn III Lent. Among many Christian congregations it’s become something of a dirty,...

As I’ve said before, I am fascinated with the process of making things. Perhaps it’s because on the rare occasion I can do just that – making a mosaic as a gift, a toy for one of my kids, or dinner for friends – it seems so utterly satisfying. (More so, actually, than most of what I do.) I have a hunch that making things – bringing things into being – not only connects us with things of the earth like wood or food but also perhaps aligns us with the creating and creative God we know in and through Jesus. Whatever the reason, I’m intensely curious about the process of how we make things and so fan a well-made films about just...

The Christian Church does not reckon time according to the civil year.  It goes by its own system, called the church year, and its calendar differs in many respects from the civil one.  It is not determined by scientific exactness, but by spiritual experience.  In the civil year, days and seasons are determined by the revolution of the earth about the sun.  In the church year, however, the formative principle is the life and teaching of the Son of Righteousness. –Luther D. Reed, in Worship, p. 34. The Greeks had two words for time.  The first, “chronos” (from which we get our word “chronological”) refers to...

Liturgy in the church is a foretaste of the eternal song of praise, an earthly expression of that which is the content of eternity and the basic melody of creation, a never ending thanksgiving to the Creator and Father of all things.  Within its earthly poverty Liturgy contains something of the beauty of the heavenly, the blessed sense of the nearness of the Eternal, and the joy of being privileged to sacrifice everything in order to be one with Christ. –Bo Giertz What we commonly call worship is also regularly named “liturgy.” That word comes from two Greek words: “laos,” meaning people; and “orgia,” meaning work. In...